Chapter 10 - THE DYING MISTRESS AND THE HIDDEN CONTRACT
The private underground trauma bay beneath Moretti Tower was sterile, modern, and smelled sharply of antiseptic and fresh blood.
Vanessa Hale lay on the narrow operating gurney, hooked up to three separate intravenous lines and a fluctuating cardiac monitor.
Her once-striking face was bruised and pale, her lips cracked, and her breathing shallow and ragged.
The medical team stepped back as I walked through the sliding glass doors, wearing a white sterile coat over my dark clothes.
Adrian stood in the corner of the room, still covered in soot and harbor dust, his arms crossed as he watched the woman who had fractured our lives six years ago.
When Vanessa heard my footsteps, her eyelids fluttered open with immense effort.
Her sunken blue eyes locked onto mine, filled with a mixture of profound shame, pain, and desperate relief.
"Evelyn..." Vanessa whispered, her voice barely a scratchy rasp above the steady beeping of the heart monitor.
I stopped beside the gurney, looking down at her without pity, but without malice.
"Save your strength, Vanessa," I said quietly.
"The medical team is preparing you for surgery to repair your internal bleeding," I informed her.
"No... there's no time," Vanessa gasped, coughing weakly as a trace of pink foam appeared at the corner of her mouth.
"The trauma to my heart... it's real this time," she whispered with a bitter, self-deprecating smile.
"Poetic justice... don't you think?" she added, her chest heaving.
Adrian took a step forward, his jaw tight.
"Why did you track Evelyn to Boston, Vanessa?" Adrian demanded, his voice rigid with unresolved anger.
Vanessa turned her head slowly toward him, tears welling in her tired eyes.
"Because I hated her, Adrian," Vanessa confessed with brutal honesty.
"I hated her because from the moment you married her, you never looked at me the same way again," she wept.
"Even when I pulled you away that rainy night... even when you were sitting beside my hospital bed... you were staring out the window thinking about her," Vanessa revealed.
"You called her name in your sleep while you were watching over me," Vanessa sobbed softly.
Adrian stood frozen, the harsh truth stripping away years of defensive walls.
"I thought if I broke you two apart, you would belong to me again," Vanessa continued, turning her gaze back to me.
"I was wrong," she whispered.
"He was an empty shell for six years," Vanessa admitted.
"He turned into an unfeeling monster who cared about nothing but violence and expanding his territory," Vanessa said.
"Then, two weeks ago, I hired a private investigator to check on you in Cambridge," Vanessa continued, struggling for every breath.
"I wanted to see you miserable," she said.
"I wanted to see you broken and lonely," she gasped.
"Instead... I saw Noah and Lily playing in that park," Vanessa smiled faintly through her tears.
"Noah looks so much like him... it was terrifying," she murmured.
"And Lily... she has your eyes, Evelyn," Vanessa said softly.
"That was the moment I realized New York had already intercepted my investigator's files," Vanessa explained.
"Dominic Russo sold those photographs to Victor Vance before I could even burn them," Vanessa confessed.
"Dominic planned to kidnap your children at Logan Airport and use them to force Adrian into signing over the entire Chicago syndicate to the Luciano family," Vanessa revealed.
She reached down with agonizing slowness, slipping her trembling fingers into the waistband of her torn jeans.
She pulled out a tiny, blood-stained titanium flash drive.
She held it up toward me, her hand shaking violently.
"Take it, Evelyn," Vanessa pleaded, gasping for air as the heart monitor's alarms began to chime in alarm.
"What is this?" I asked, taking the cold metal drive from her fingers.
"It's the master contract," Vanessa choked out.
"Signed by Dominic Russo and the heads of the Five Families in New York," she revealed.
"It details the exact time, date, and execution order for Adrian's entire inner circle," Vanessa warned.
"And the execution order begins..." Vanessa gasped, her eyes widening in sudden horror.
"It begins today at noon," she cried.
Suddenly, the bright overhead fluorescent lights of the trauma bay flickered twice and died.
The low, mechanical hum of the building's ventilation system groaned and cut off completely.
Red emergency backup lights flared to life, bathing the entire room in a bloody, sinister crimson glow.
The heavy security blast doors of the subterranean medical wing slammed shut with a deafening, hydraulic clang that shook the concrete floor.
"What just happened?" I shouted, looking around in the dim red light.
Marcus burst through the emergency stairway door, his weapon drawn and his face pale with dread.
"Boss!" Marcus yelled, his voice echoing through the chamber.
"Dominic Russo just severed the main power grid from the control substation!" Marcus reported.
"He has eighty armed men surrounding Moretti Tower, and they just sealed the penthouse elevators!" Marcus screamed.
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My heart stopped cold as the air left my lungs in one violent gasp.
Noah and Lily were trapped on the top floor.
