Chapter 3 - THE PATRIARCH’S SHADOW
Salvatore Moretti walked into his son’s quarters like a monarch entering a plague ward—repulsed, cautious, yet driven by an ironclad sense of territorial ownership. The patriarch was fifty-eight years old, his silver hair swept back impeccably, wearing an bespoke Italian suit that hid the broad, lethal shoulders of a man who had clawed his way to the apex of the city's underworld through sheer brutality.
Behind him walked Victor Sloane, wearing an expression of feigned sorrow that made Gabriel’s blood simmer beneath his skin.
“You’re still breathing, Luca,” Salvatore said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that filled the high-ceilinged room. He didn't walk toward the bed. He stopped ten feet away, leaning heavily on a gold-tipped cane. “Victor tells me you assaulted Dr. Hale again. That you tried to drive a shard of ceramic through his hand.”
From the bed, Luca’s eyes widened in sheer, helpless horror. “Father, no… I was lying down… I couldn't move my legs! Victor brought the tray, and then the room started spinning—”
“Silence,” Salvatore commanded, the cane striking the floorboards with the force of a gunshot. “I am sick of your sniveling, boy. Your grandfather commanded five hundred men before he was thirty. You can barely keep your hands from shaking long enough to button your shirt. Every woman we hire to tend this wing runs out the gates screaming within a week because you smash plates and scream at ghosts. Is this how an heir behaves?”
“He is profoundly ill, Don Salvatore,” Dr. Hale chimed in from the doorway, nursing a heavily bandaged left palm that Gabriel knew had not been injured five minutes ago. “The paranoid delusions are accelerating. When I attempted to evaluate his cranial reflexes, he lunged at me with a pen. If Mr. Sloane and the guards hadn't burst in, I might have lost an eye.”
Gabriel stood with his hands folded behind his back, his posture military-stiff, his eyes cast down toward the floorboards at a precise thirty-degree angle. He was playing the invisible servant, the disposable shadow that powerful men ignored until it was too late.
“And you,” Salvatore’s cold voice turned toward him. The cane pointed at Gabriel’s throat. “The sister’s brother. Victor told me you got insolent. Said you dared to tell a board-certified physician how to handle an injection.”
Gabriel raised his head slowly, meeting the Don’s piercing black gaze without blinking. “I worked field medical logistics for five years in private overseas contracts, Don Salvatore. When a man is experiencing autonomic dysregulation, injecting a neuroleptic directly near the carotid can cause ventricular fibrillation. If the young master died in this room tonight, the coroner would have ruled it malpractice—or worse, manslaughter under your roof. I was protecting your house from liability.”
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush a lesser man. Victor’s jaw clenched, his eyes throwing silent daggers.
Salvatore stared at Gabriel, his eyes narrowing as he evaluated the servant’s steady pulse, the utter absence of sweat on his brow, the absolute precision of his cadence. In the mafia boss's world, men lied with sweat, stuttering, and elaborate flattery. Gabriel offered none of those things.
“You talk well for a man carrying laundry,” Salvatore said softly, taking one slow step forward until the gold tip of his cane rested against Gabriel’s sternum. “Tell me, Cross. Does my son look sick to you?”
It was a lethal trap. To agree with Salvatore meant validating Victor’s narrative and signing Luca’s death warrant in an asylum; to call it a lie meant accusing the house manager and the family doctor of treason in front of the Don without definitive proof on the table.
Gabriel held his ground, feeling the cold metal of the cane through his cotton shirt. “He looks poisoned, Don Salvatore.”
Victor gasped in orchestrated outrage. “Don Salvatore, this is absurd! He’s trying to deflect from his own incompetence—his sister was an extortionist, and he is clearly carrying out her grudge!”
“Poisoned by what?” Salvatore ignored Victor entirely, his eyes drilling into Gabriel. “By his own twisted mind? His mother died screaming at the walls of a private hospital, Cross. Madness runs in the Moretti blood like bad wine.”
“Poisoned by circumstance, sir,” Gabriel pivoted smoothly, letting the double meaning hang in the air for the microphones to catch. “A man kept in darkness, fed sedatives, and isolated from sunlight will rot from the inside out. His symptoms mimic heavy metal toxicity or anticholinergic poisoning. If you permit me to manage his dietary intake and monitor his fluids for seven days, without external medical intervention, I will show you whether his sickness is in his blood… or in this room.”
Hale stepped forward, his face white. “This is madness! Don Salvatore, as his physician, I cannot authorize an unqualified grunt to dictate treatment—”
“You’ve had six years, Edwin,” Salvatore interrupted, his voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register that silenced the doctor instantly. “Six years, and sixty thousand dollars a month in retainers. Yet every month my son becomes more of an embarrassment. The Capos are talking. They say Salvatore Moretti cannot even govern his own bloodline, so how can he govern the port docks?”
Salvatore turned his back on them, walking toward the grand door. “Seven days, Cross. You prepare his food. You sleep outside his door. If he attacks another staff member, you both go into the concrete foundations of the new marina. If he recovers… we will see what your sister’s honor is worth.”
“Thank you, Don Salvatore,” Gabriel said.
As the heavy oak door closed behind the Don and his retinue, Victor lingered for a solitary second. He stepped close to Gabriel, his breath smelling of stale espresso and expensive cigars.
“You think you’re clever, Cross,” Victor whispered, his hand sliding smoothly into his jacket pocket. “You think you’re going to be the hero who saves the prince and avenges the crippled sister. But you don't know who owns the police in this county. You don't know who owns the coroner. By day three, you’ll be begging to join Elena in a wheelchair.”
Victor pulled something from his pocket and tossed it onto the floor between them. It was a silver locket, bent and scratched, covered in faded dried mud.
Gabriel’s heart slammed against his ribs. It was Elena’s confirmation medal—the one she had been wearing the night she was found broken at the bottom of the east wing stairs, the one the police claimed had been lost in the ambulance.
Victor grinned, a sick, predatory sneer. “I kept it as a souvenir. Keep your eyes open tonight, Cross. The east wing has a terrible draft.”
Victor walked out, locking the door with three distinct turns of the key.
May you like
Gabriel stood in the dark, the silver medal burning in his palm. He looked back at Luca, who had curled into a fetal position, weeping silently in the corner of the bed. Gabriel reached into his boot, withdrew a satellite transponder, and pressed a single encrypted key.
The message sent to his outside contact was four words long: The rat is biting.
