Chapter 2 - THE CODE OF A DEAD MAN
Adrian did not ask Gabriel to repeat himself.
He released my hand and walked toward the window, though the blinds were closed.
“Confirm it,” he said.
“I confirmed it twice.”
“My father’s key was destroyed after his funeral.”
“That was the official report.”
Adrian turned.
“Official reports are written by people.”
Gabriel’s expression remained controlled.
“And people lie.”
Dr. Sloan exchanged a glance with Dr. Patel.
“This conversation needs to continue somewhere else,” she said. “My patient requires rest.”
Adrian looked as though he had forgotten anyone else was in the room.
Then he glanced at me.
“I need five minutes.”
“No,” Dr. Sloan replied. “You need to leave until we finish treatment.”
He stepped closer to her.
Gabriel moved subtly, positioning himself between Adrian and the medical staff.
Not because he thought Adrian would hurt the doctor.
Because he knew Adrian’s presence could frighten everyone in the room.
I had once watched Adrian silence a table of twelve men merely by placing his glass down.
He did not shout.
He never needed to.
“Go,” I told him.
His attention returned to me.
“Elena—”
“If you want to help, find out who used the code.”
“I’m not leaving you unprotected.”
“Gabriel can stay outside.”
Gabriel nodded.
“I’ll assign four men to this floor.”
Dr. Sloan crossed her arms.
“Unarmed men.”
Adrian stared at her.
“Absolutely not.”
“This is a medical facility.”
“And someone is trying to kill the mother of my child.”
The words made the room silent.
Dr. Sloan lowered her voice.
“Then place your people at the entrances. No weapons near my neonatal unit.”
Adrian considered her demand.
“Two men outside this door.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“One at the door, one at the elevator.”
He nodded.
It was the closest thing to compromise Adrian usually offered.
Before leaving, he bent toward me.
His mouth stopped beside my ear.
“Do not eat or drink anything unless Sloan opens it herself.”
“I understand.”
“And do not trust anyone who says I sent them.”
I looked at him.
“What are you expecting?”
His eyes were colder than I remembered.
“Someone used a dead man’s code. I’m expecting a ghost.”
He walked out with Gabriel.
The door closed.
Dr. Sloan exhaled.
“Your ex-husband is intense.”
“That’s the polite word.”
She adjusted the intravenous medication.
“Is he really who the newspapers say he is?”
I stared at the monitor.
“The newspapers don’t know half of it.”
“And yet you married him.”
“He wasn’t always this man.”
That was not entirely true.
Adrian Moretti had been born into power, violence, and loyalty purchased with fear. Even when we met, he carried danger like other men carried wallets.
But I had seen what the city did not.
I had seen him sit all night beside an injured driver’s hospital bed because the man had saved my life during a freeway accident.
I had watched him quietly pay the college tuition of every child whose parent died while working for the Moretti organization.
I had seen him cook terrible pasta at two in the morning because I was sick and refused to let the staff enter our bedroom.
Adrian was capable of tenderness.
That was what made loving him dangerous.
Cruel men were easy to leave.
Complicated men convinced you there was still something worth saving.
Dr. Sloan checked the monitor.
“The baby’s heart rate looks better.”
“Will the medication stop the bleeding?”
“It should help your blood clot normally again. We’ll repeat the tests in two hours.”
“And if they don’t improve?”
“We deliver.”
I closed my eyes.
“Do you have someone you want me to call?”
“No.”
“Parents? Siblings?”
“My mother died when I was seventeen. My father and I don’t speak.”
“A friend?”
The only friend who knew where I lived was Claire, the owner of the bookstore.
I almost gave Dr. Sloan her number.
Then I remembered the erased security recordings.
“No,” I said. “There’s no one.”
Dr. Sloan touched my arm.
“You have people outside this room who appear prepared to start a war.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m not alone.”
She seemed to understand.
After she left, I listened to my daughter’s heartbeat.
My mind returned to Adrian’s father.
Vittorio Moretti had died nine years earlier in a boating accident on Lake Michigan. His body was recovered two days later. The police found no evidence of sabotage.
Adrian had been twenty-nine.
He became head of the Moretti family before the funeral flowers wilted.
People said he had inherited his father’s empire.
They did not understand that he had also inherited every enemy Vittorio had ever made.
Six months before Adrian divorced me, I found something that changed the way I saw his father’s death.
It began with a key.
A small brass key hidden inside the lining of an old leather notebook.
The notebook belonged to Vittorio.
Adrian kept it inside a locked drawer in his private study, a room I had entered hundreds of times. He never forbade me from going inside, but I understood that certain drawers remained closed.
The night I found the key, Adrian was in New York negotiating a peace agreement between two families.
I had been searching for our marriage certificate because the insurance company needed a copy.
The drawer was already open.
That should have warned me.
Adrian never forgot to lock anything.
Inside the notebook, one sentence had been underlined.
The heir is safest when everyone believes there is no heir.
At the time, I thought it referred to Adrian.
Later, I realized it referred to his child.
Our child.
I found the safe-deposit box connected to the key three days later.
Inside was a ledger containing coded payments, judges’ names, shell companies, and photographs of people who had disappeared.
The final page contained a list of dates.
The last date was the day Vittorio died.
Beside it were three initials.
C.M.
G.V.
B.M.
Carlo Moretti.
Gabriel Voss.
Bianca Moretti.
Adrian’s uncle.
His security chief.
His younger sister.
I never told Adrian.
Before I could decide what the list meant, someone entered our bedroom while I was sleeping.
I woke to the sound of the balcony door closing.
On my pillow rested a photograph of Adrian standing beside his father’s grave.
Across Adrian’s face, someone had drawn a red line.
A note was taped to the back.
Tell him what you found, and the Moretti bloodline ends with him.
Two weeks later, Adrian handed me divorce papers.
He said our marriage had become a weakness neither of us could afford.
I believed someone had discovered the ledger and manipulated him.
I also believed leaving was the only way to protect the child I had not yet known I carried.
The door opened.
Gabriel entered alone.
My body went rigid.
He stopped immediately.
“What is it?”
“Where is Adrian?”
“Speaking with his uncle.”
“Carlo?”
“Yes.”
Of the three initials in the ledger, Carlo’s was the least surprising. Vittorio’s younger brother had spent his life standing one step behind the throne.
He smiled too easily.
He touched people too often.
He called Adrian “son” whenever reporters were nearby.
“Why would Adrian speak to him?” I asked.
“Because Carlo was the only other person authorized to access Vittorio’s encryption archive.”
I studied Gabriel.
“And you?”
His gaze sharpened.
“What about me?”
“You were my father-in-law’s security chief before you became Adrian’s.”
“I was twenty-three when Vittorio died. I handled transportation and perimeter security.”
“Did you have access to his codes?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Gabriel moved toward the counter.
“Adrian asked me to stay with you.”
“I would prefer one of the other guards.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
“Have I done something to make you distrust me?”
I thought about the initials.
G.V.
Maybe they belonged to someone else.
Maybe the ledger was not a list of enemies.
Maybe fear had made me see guilt where none existed.
But Gabriel’s presence suddenly made the room feel smaller.
“I have spent six months distrusting everyone.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
His jaw tightened.
Then he nodded.
“I’ll wait outside.”
As he reached the door, a woman in blue scrubs approached from the hallway carrying a tray.
“Medication for Mrs. Moretti.”
Gabriel blocked her path.
“Who authorized it?”
“Dr. Sloan.”
“What is it?”
The woman lifted the syringe.
“Vitamin K and an additional clotting agent.”
Gabriel examined her identification badge.
“Wait here.”
She frowned.
“I need to administer it now.”
“Then waiting thirty seconds won’t matter.”
He contacted someone through his earpiece.
The nurse shifted impatiently.
I noticed her shoes.
They were black leather.
Not hospital shoes.
The soles were wet even though it had not rained since morning.
“Gabriel,” I said.
His eyes moved toward me.
“She came from outside.”
The woman dropped the tray.
Her hand reached beneath her scrubs.
Gabriel moved first.
He slammed her wrist against the doorframe. A small pistol fell to the floor and slid beneath my bed.
The woman struck him with her free hand and ran.
Gabriel caught the back of her uniform.
Fabric tore.
She twisted, drove an elbow into his ribs, and pulled a knife from her waistband.
The blade flashed.
Gabriel blocked it with his forearm.
Blood appeared instantly.
I pressed the call button as alarms erupted throughout the hallway.
The woman lunged again.
Gabriel caught her wrist, turned it, and forced her against the wall.
Two Moretti guards entered.
They restrained her while Gabriel kicked the knife away.
“Search her,” he ordered.
One guard removed a second weapon from her ankle.
The other pulled a plastic identification card from beneath her uniform.
“This badge is fake.”
The woman stared at me.
There was no fear in her face.
Only hatred.
“You should have stayed hidden,” she said.
Gabriel grabbed her jaw.
“Who sent you?”
She smiled.
Then her body jerked.
Foam appeared at the corner of her mouth.
“Stop her!” I shouted.
Gabriel forced her mouth open, but it was too late.
She had bitten into something hidden between her teeth.
Within seconds, her eyes became empty.
Dr. Sloan rushed into the room with hospital security.
“What happened?”
“She had a weapon,” Gabriel said.
The doctor saw his bleeding arm.
“You need treatment.”
“I need the syringe tested.”
Dr. Sloan looked down at it.
“I did not order additional medication.”
Adrian appeared behind her.
His gaze moved from the dead woman to Gabriel’s injury and finally to me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He crossed the room in three strides and checked me himself.
His hands moved over my shoulders and arms.
“I’m fine.”
He looked toward the woman.
“Who was she?”
“We don’t know yet,” Gabriel answered.
Adrian picked up the false badge with a handkerchief.
“Where did she get the uniform?”
“Hospital laundry reported one missing twenty minutes ago.”
Dr. Sloan took the syringe using a specimen bag.
“I’ll have this analyzed.”
Adrian’s phone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
“Carlo.”
He answered without taking his eyes off the dead woman.
“What?”
For several seconds, he listened.
His expression changed.
Not shock.
Recognition.
“When?” he asked.
Another pause.
“Do not touch anything. I’m coming.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?” I asked.
Adrian slipped the phone into his coat.
“Someone broke into my father’s crypt.”
A chill passed through me.
“What did they take?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why break in?”
His eyes met mine.
“They left something.”
He reached into his pocket and placed a photograph on the bed.
It showed me leaving the bookstore three days earlier.
A red circle had been drawn around my stomach.
May you like
On the back, four words had been written in black ink.
THE HEIR BELONGS TO US.
