Vincent.

Gabriel’s younger cousin. The golden-boy executive of the Moretti family empire—the smiling face that dealt with city councilmen, real estate developers, and high-society charity galas while Gabriel handled the brutal, blood-soaked realities of the underworld. For years, Vincent had played the dutiful, polished second-in-command, always standing a respectful half-step behind Gabriel in photographs, always smiling, always deferential.

“Are you certain?” Luca choked out, his hands trembling slightly as he gripped the back of a velvet armchair for support. He looked down at Gabriel’s back, his eyes fixated on the dark, weeping stitches of the lower lumbar incision. “Dr. Vale swore the second procedure was just a localized washout for a deep staph infection caused by clothing fibers from the bullet.”

“Dr. Vale lied,” I said, my voice cutting through the panic in the room like a scalpel. I grabbed a pair of sterile gloves from the supply cart, snapping them onto my hands with sharp precision. “A staph infection doesn't require a precise, micro-surgical laminectomy. Look at the margins of this incision. This wasn't emergency cleaning—this was targeted interference with the spinal cord.”

I carefully pressed two gloved fingers near the base of the lower scar. Gabriel let out a strangled groan, his massive body tensing so violently that the metal bed frame groaned in protest.

“Hold him,” I ordered Luca. “Don't let him thrash, or he’ll tear whatever nerve roots are left intact.”

Luca moved instantly, pressing his heavy forearms across Gabriel’s shoulders, keeping him pinned to his side while I inspected the wound closer. Using a penlight from my pocket, I illuminated the dark fluid oozing from the stitches.

“He’s developing acute osteomyelitis,” I muttered, my clinical detachment kicking in to override the creeping dread in my stomach. “And look at the neurological presentation—loss of lower extremity function, autonomic instability, high fever. Whoever operated on his lumbar spine didn't just cause an infection. They introduced something, or they severed something crucial.”

Gabriel turned his face against the pillow, his slate eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that could melt steel. The fever was burning hotter now, sweat carving tracks through the stubble on his jaw.

“Kill him,” Gabriel rasped, his voice a low, vibrating promise of absolute slaughter.

“Who? Dr. Vale?” I asked, keeping my hands steady as I applied a sterile dressing to the weeping incision.

“Vale is a coward,” Gabriel spat, coughing weakly before continuing. “He... he only holds the knife. Vincent... Vincent holds the hand.”

Luca’s expression twisted into a mask of pure fury and disbelief. “Vincent was the one who insisted on moving you to the private surgical center after the ambush. He stayed in the waiting room for six hours. He cried when the first bulletin came out saying you might not walk.”

“An Oscar-winning performance,” I dryly observed, gently rolling Gabriel back onto his back and adjusting his oxygen lines to ease his labored breathing. “People who want you dead are remarkably good at playing the grieving relative in the waiting room. It buys them time while the sepsis finishes the job.”

Luca stood frozen for a long moment, the pillars of his entire world crumbling around him. For fifteen years, he had bled for the Moretti family, serving Gabriel with unquestioning loyalty while treating Vincent like a younger brother. The realization that the rot had come from inside the house—that the crown prince had poisoned the king from behind a surgical curtain—shattered the simple, black-and-white code he lived by.

“If Vincent did this,” Luca whispered, his voice dangerously quiet, “then half the security detail downstairs answers to him now. The men guarding the perimeter, the drivers, the cooks... they’ve been taking orders from Vincent for the past month while Gabriel has been bedridden.”

“Then we are sitting ducks in a glass cage on the fifty-eighth floor,” I said, walking over to the sink to strip off my contaminated gloves and scrub my hands once more. “If Vincent realizes his surgeon botched the job—or worse, if he realizes I’ve identified the second incision—he won't wait for the sepsis to kill your boss. He’ll send a cleanup crew.”

As if on cue, a sharp, electronic chime echoed from the hallway outside the master suite.

Luca’s head snapped toward the heavy oak double doors.

“That’s the service elevator chime,” Luca murmured, his hand dropping back down beneath his jacket, his fingers wrapping around the grip of a concealed firearm. “Nobody uses that service lift after midnight unless they’re bringing in scheduled medical restock or... or housekeeping.”

“Did you schedule a restock?” I asked, my heart finally beginning to hammer against my ribs.

“No.”

The heavy silence returned to the penthouse, heavier and deadlier than before.

From the bed, Gabriel let out a harsh, rasping breath. He reached out with his right hand, his fingers clumsily brushing against my sleeve as I walked past the mattress. He didn't grip me this time; his touch was heavy, pleading, and entirely stripped of his usual arrogance.

“Don't... let them... finish it,” he whispered, his eyes locking onto mine with the desperate gravity of a dying monarch.

I looked down at the most feared man in Chicago—helpless, paralyzed, burning with infection, and betrayed by his own blood. Years ago, I would have panicked. I would have run for the elevators and prayed I made it to the street.

Instead, I felt a cold, sharp spike of adrenaline clear my head completely.

“I didn't survive ten years in county emergency rooms to let a spoiled corporate heir murder my patient in his sleep,” I told him, pulling my arm free and turning to face Luca. “Lock the doors. Cut the internal security feed to the lower floors. And tell me where you keep the trauma kit.”