Chapter 4 - The Blood on the Altar
Dominic Moretti let go of the surgeon’s shoulders.
The air in the sterile white hallway seemed to drop twenty degrees, thick with the scent of floor wax, dried plasma, and betrayal.
"Cut?" Dominic whispered.
The word was small, but it sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil.
"The state police investigator confirmed it three minutes ago," the surgeon said, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of a bloody forearm.
"The braided steel casing was sliced cleanly through near the rear axle."
"Whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing."
"The fluid would hold enough pressure for three or four slow stops in the city, but the moment she hit sixty miles per hour on the wet highway incline, the master cylinder would blow dry."
"She had no brakes when she approached the Harbor Avenue bend."
Dominic didn't speak.
He stood entirely motionless, his tall silhouette casting a long, jagged shadow across the linoleum floor.
His mind replayed the sound of the rain, the shattered blue wool dress, the smell of burnt rubber, and the sight of his infant daughter fighting for air inside an acrylic cage.
They had not just tried to kill his wife.
They had tried to slaughter his unborn child in the dark water of the rail yard canal.
"Where is she now?" Dominic asked, his voice returning to a smooth, horrifying whisper.
"Intensive Care Unit, Bed 4B," the doctor replied, stepping back cautiously from the dangerous stillness radiating off the man.
"She is on full life support."
"A mechanical ventilator is breathing for her, and we have intracranial pressure monitors inserted into her skull."
"The next seventy-two hours will determine if there is any brain function left."
"If the swelling doesn't subside by Thursday, Mr. Moretti... you will have to make a decision regarding withdrawal of care."
"There will be no decision," Dominic said, walking past the doctor toward the ICU security doors.
"She lives."
"If her heart stops, you start it again."
"If her kidneys fail, you put her on continuous dialysis."
"If she sleeps for ten years, you keep that machine running for ten years."
"If anyone touches that plug, Doctor, I will bury them alive under the concrete of the new terminal."
He shoved the double doors of the intensive care unit open and stepped into the dim, cold room where Claire was resting.
The room was filled with the rhythmic, mechanical wheeze of the ventilator—hiss, click, pause... hiss, click, pause.
Claire lay beneath a heavy white thermal blanket, her head wrapped in clean white bandages, tubes snaking from her throat, her wrists, and her collarbone.
Her delicate face was swollen, black-and-blue bruising spreading from her cheek down to her throat, but the serene, heartbreaking curve of her lips remained untouched by the violence.
Dominic pulled an aluminum chair to the side of the bed, the metal legs scraping loudly against the floor.
He sat down and took her limp, ice-cold right hand between his large, warm palms.
Her wedding finger was bare.
The skin where the gold band had rested for five years was pale, a white circle marking the absence of his promise.
"You knew," Dominic whispered, leaning his forehead against her cold knuckles, his eyes burning with an unbearable heat.
"You knew Anthony was stealing from the port authority."
"You knew Vanessa was helping him falsify the maritime manifests."
"And you thought I was in on it with them."
"You thought your husband was willing to let them frame you to save his own empire."
A soft shudder ran through his massive shoulders as he held her hand against his lips.
"Why didn't you come to me, Claire?"
"Why didn't you scream at me in the study?"
"Why did you pack two bags and hide in a cold apartment with my daughter growing inside you?"
The room offered no answer except the mechanical hiss of the ventilator.
The door behind him opened silently.
Ethan Vale stepped inside, his expression grim, holding a secure tablet computer in his left hand.
"Dominic," Ethan said softly.
"Anthony just arrived on the floor."
"He’s in the private family waiting room with your mother and two of the union directors."
"He’s asking to see the child."
Dominic did not lift his head from Claire’s hand for five full seconds.
When he finally stood up, his face was entirely devoid of human emotion.
It was the face of the man who had ordered three rival docks burned to the waterline in 2018 without dropping his cigar.
"Did he bring anyone with him?" Dominic asked, buttoning his bloodstained cuffs.
"Two of his private security guys from the logistics terminal," Ethan answered.
"They’re waiting near the elevators."
"Disarm them," Dominic ordered quietly.
"Take their phones, take their weapons, and lock them in the basement laundry chutes until morning."
"Then bring my brother to the private chapel on the second floor."
"The chapel?" Ethan blinked, surprised.
"Yes," Dominic said, turning to look at Claire one last time, gently tucking her bruised hand beneath the thermal blanket.
"Anthony always loved praying when there was money to be stolen."
Ten minutes later, the second-floor chapel of Mercy Lake Medical was silent, lit only by the flickering red glow of vigil candles burning before a marble statue of the Virgin Mary.
The stained-glass windows were dark with the midnight storm, rain beating against the leaded panes with a steady, relentless thrum.
Anthony Moretti walked through the heavy oak doors, adjusting the lapels of his charcoal cashmere overcoat.
At thirty-four, Anthony was four years younger than Dominic, possessing the same sharp Moretti jawline but with none of Dominic’s iron discipline.
His eyes darted nervously across the rows of empty wooden pews until they settled on Dominic, who was kneeling at the communion rail near the altar.
"Dominic?" Anthony called out, his voice echoing awkwardly in the cavernous sacred space.
"What the hell is going on up there?"
"The hospital staff won't let Mom into the NICU, and there are four armed guards blocking Claire's room like it’s a federal vault."
Dominic did not stand up.
He stayed on one knee before the altar, staring at the brass crucifix illuminated by the flickering candles.
"Did you see the baby, Anthony?" Dominic asked, his voice calm, ringing like a bronze bell against the stone floor.
Anthony paused three pews back, his hands buried deep inside his coat pockets.
"No, I told you, they wouldn't let me past the biometric scanner."
"They’re saying she was eight months along."
"Dominic... did you know she was pregnant?"
"Did Claire tell you she was carrying a kid before she walked out on you?"
Dominic slowly rose to his feet.
He turned around, his tall, imposing figure silhouetted against the glowing candles behind him.
"Claire didn't tell me," Dominic said, stepping down from the altar platform with slow, deliberate steps.
"She thought I was the one who signed the contract to destroy her."
Anthony let out a nervous chuckle, shaking his head as he pulled a hand from his pocket to adjust his watch.
"What contract?"
"Dominic, you’re exhausted, man."
"You’ve been up all night with the trauma surgeons."
"Look at your shirt; you’re covered in her blood."
"Go back to the hotel, let me handle the hospital administrators and the press release."
"We need to control the narrative before the Chicago Tribune runs a front-page story about the Moretti family’s marital breakdown."
Dominic stopped two feet in front of his younger brother.
The physical contrast was stark: Anthony smelled of expensive cologne, dry tobacco, and fear; Dominic smelled of rain, motor oil, and dried plasma.
"Where were you at ten o’clock tonight, Anthony?" Dominic asked.
Anthony’s eyes flickered, his jaw twitching slightly.
"At the terminal office in Cicero, going over the third-quarter shipping manifests."
"Vanessa was there with me helping sort through the municipal freight taxes."
"Vanessa was having dinner with me forty floors above Michigan Avenue at ten o’clock," Dominic said softly.
"She was telling me to sign the divorce papers."
"She was telling me that Claire was already dead in every way that mattered."
Anthony’s breath caught in his throat.
He took half a step backward, his back brushing against the corner of a polished oak pew.
"Dominic, listen to me—"
"Who paid the mechanic at the Racine Avenue garage, Anthony?"
The question fell between them like a guillotine blade.
The color completely drained from Anthony’s face, leaving his skin a sickly, ashen gray under the red candlelight.
"I... I don't know what you’re talking about," Anthony stammered, his right hand instinctively reaching toward his inner jacket pocket where he usually kept his snub-nosed revolver.
Before his fingers could even touch the fabric, Dominic moved with blinding, explosive violence.
Dominic’s left hand shot out like an iron claw, clamping around Anthony’s throat and slamming him violently backward onto the communion rail.
The heavy brass rail groaned under the impact, Anthony’s legs kicking wildly against the stone floor as Dominic pinned him down with one arm.
Dominic reached into his own coat, pulled the waterlogged photograph from his pocket, and shoved it directly into Anthony’s face.
"Belmont Harbor," Dominic snarled, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, demonic fury that shook the small chapel.
"October fourteenth."
"Passing bribes to the Department of Transportation inspectors to reroute the maritime manifests into Claire’s shell company."
"You and Vanessa."
"My brother and my mistress."
"Sleeping in the same bed, plotting at the same table, planning to bury my wife under twenty years of federal prison time!"
Anthony choked, his hands clawing uselessly at Dominic’s iron grip, his face turning a dark, mottled purple as his oxygen was cut off.
"Dom... please..." Anthony gasped, tears of agony springing from his bloodshot eyes.
"She... she found the books... she was going to the U.S. Attorney..."
"She was going to destroy the whole family!"
"She was carrying my daughter!" Dominic roared, lifting Anthony off the rail by his throat and slamming him down onto the cold marble floor before the altar.
The sound of Anthony’s skull hitting the stone echoed like a gun blast in the silent church.
Dominic stood over his brother, his boots planted on either side of Anthony’s chest, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.
"She carried my blood, she carried my heir, and you sent a junkie with a rotary saw to cut the brakes on her car!"
Anthony lay coughing on the floor, vomiting a thin string of bile onto the polished stone, his fingers clutching his bruised windpipe.
"Vanessa... it was Vanessa’s idea," Anthony wept, curling into a fetal position beneath his brother’s boots.
"She said if Claire died before the divorce, the grand jury would drop the maritime subpoenas."
"She said you’d be so broken up you’d hand the logistics division over to me and marry her within a year!"
"She promised me the port terminals, Dominic!"
"I swear to God, she hired the guy from the South Side docks!"
Dominic looked down at his brother with an expression of pure, unadulterated disgust.
There was no anger left in his eyes—only the cold, surgical detachment of a man about to amputate a gangrenous limb.
"You swore to God," Dominic whispered, glancing up at the crucifix hanging above the altar.
"In this chapel."
"Where our father brought us every Sunday to teach us that family was the only thing standing between us and the dirt."
Dominic reached down, grabbed Anthony by the collar of his cashmere coat, and dragged him across the marble floor toward the chapel doors.
The heavy oak doors swung open.
Ethan Vale was standing in the corridor, flanked by four men in unmarked black tactical gear, their faces hidden behind ballistic masks.
Dominic threw his weeping brother onto the corridor tiles like a sack of garbage.
"Take him to the cold storage facility at Terminal Four," Dominic commanded, his voice cold enough to freeze water.
"No doctors."
"No lawyers."
"No phone calls to my mother."
"If he opens his mouth before I get there, remove his teeth one by one."
"Dominic, no!" Anthony screamed, thrashing as the four men grabbed his limbs and hoisted him off the ground.
"I’m your brother! You can't do this to me! Dominic!"
The heavy oak doors slammed shut, cutting off Anthony’s screams in an instant.
Dominic stood alone in the hallway, looking down at his hands once more.
The dried blood of his wife was still beneath his fingernails.
He pulled his encrypted burner phone from his pocket, dialing a number he hadn't used in four years.
The phone rang three times before an elderly, gravelly voice answered on the other end.
"Dominic?"
"Judge Miller," Dominic said, walking toward the private elevator.
"Wake up the chief clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court."
"I need twenty-four arrest warrants, eight asset freezes, and an emergency seizure order signed before the sun comes up."
"Who is the target, Dominic?" the retired judge asked, sensing the blood in the younger man's voice.
May you like
"Vanessa Crane," Dominic said, stepping into the elevator as the steel doors closed.
"And every single person who ever smiled at her in this city."
