Chapter 1 - Poison in the Blood
The doctor pulled down his surgical mask, his face devoid of color under the fluorescent lights of the private trauma suite. Outside the operating theater, six heavily armed guards stood like stone sentinels, watching every movement in the corridor. Dominic Rossi had shut down the entire fifth floor of St. Jude’s Hospital within five minutes of their arrival.
"Speak," Dominic commanded. His voice was terrifyingly low, a gravelly whisper that made the senior physician’s hands tremble. His black tuxedo jacket was discarded, his crisp white dress shirt rolled to his forearms and stained with Skyler’s blood.
"The cut on her face is serious, Mr. Rossi—sixteen stitches across her cheekbone," Dr. Vance stammered, holding a digital tablet with bright red toxicological charts. "But that isn't the problem. The convulsions... her respiratory failure... it isn't shock. She has been poisoned."
Dominic’s cold, amber eyes narrowed into lethal slits. "Poisoned?"
"A military-grade neurotoxin," Dr. Vance explained, pointing to a spike in the chemical breakdown on his screen. "Specifically a modified strain of ricin derivative mixed with an anticoagulant. It was applied directly to the surface of the object that cut her. When the diamond ring tore open her skin, the toxin entered her bloodstream instantly."
In the corner of the private waiting area, Carmela Rossi let out a soft, horrified gasp, clutching her rosary beads against her chest.
Dominic didn't flinch, but the air in the room suddenly grew suffocatingly heavy. His mind reconstructed the scene in the conservatory with terrifying speed: Bianca raising her hand, the heavy platinum band encrusted with jagged, raw-cut diamonds, the sudden swing meant for his fragile, fading mother.
It wasn't a sudden outburst of rage from a spoiled mob heiress. It was an assassination attempt.
Bianca Moretti hadn't just intended to humiliate Carmela; she had intended to kill her. A single scratch from that ring on an elderly woman with heart complications would have been written off by corrupt coroners as a sudden stroke or natural systemic failure.
And Skyler had taken the blow meant to end his mother's life.
"Is she going to survive?" Dominic asked, his hands clenching into tight, white-knuckled fists at his sides.
"We administered a broad-spectrum nerve agent neutralizing serum, but her vitals are crashing," Dr. Vance confessed, looking down. "Her body... her high body mass is actually delaying the toxin's journey to her vital organs, buying us precious minutes, but her heart is under immense strain. If we don't administer the specific synthetic antidote within twelve hours, her organs will shut down permanently."
"Where is the antidote?"
"It isn't commercially manufactured, Mr. Rossi," Dr. Vance whispered. "It’s a black-market counter-agent developed exclusively by the Moretti family's pharmaceutical front in New Jersey."
Dominic turned slowly toward his second-in-command, a scar-faced lieutenant named Mateo who stood near the doors.
"Mateo," Dominic said softly.
"Yes, Don Dominic?"
"Lock down the Moretti estate. Nobody leaves. Nobody breathes without my permission." Dominic stepped closer to the glass partition, looking into the trauma room. Skyler lay motionless on the steel table, surrounded by tubes, heart monitors beating in frantic, irregular spikes. Her pale face was bruised, a heavy white bandage covering the tear on her cheek.
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She looked small beneath the hospital sheets, stripped of the quiet dignity she had maintained despite every insult thrown at her size.
"She saved my mother," Dominic murmured, pressing his palm against the glass. "Bring me Victor Moretti and his daughter. If Skyler’s heart stops beating for even one second, the Moretti bloodline ends tonight."
