Chapter 3 - BLOOD TIES AND FORGERIES
My heart slammed against my ribs, but my clinical training locked my limbs into rigid, methodical action. I didn't scream. I didn't run to the window like a frightened animal. I moved swiftly to the bedroom door, quietly clicked the latch shut, and grabbed the heavy brass lamp from the end table, unscrewing the base to turn it into a solid iron baton.
I approached the suite’s front door and peered through the wide-angle peephole.
Standing in the hallway wasn't Luca or a hired thug. It was Marcus Vance—a legendary criminal defense attorney and former head prosecutor whose daughter’s life I had saved two years ago after a near-fatal equestrian accident. Beside him stood Elena Diaz, the chief forensic toxicologist from my hospital.
I opened the door three inches, keeping the latch chain engaged. “Marcus?”
“Unlatch the door, Jessi,” Marcus said in a low, commanding rumble. “Luca just filed an emergency ex-parte child abduction report with the county sheriff’s department. You have roughly twenty minutes before your license plate gets flagged on the state dispatch.”
I slipped the chain off and pulled them inside, locking the deadbolt behind them. “How did you find me?”
“Elena called me forty minutes ago,” Marcus said, setting a heavy leather briefcase onto the dining table. “She said you ran an unauthorized priority stat panel on a pediatric blood sample from your hospital locker before you walked out this morning.”
I turned toward Elena. Her face was grim, devoid of the usual teasing warmth she carried in the pathology lab.
“I processed Fiona’s vial, Jessi,” Elena said quietly, pulling a printed lab readout from her coat pocket. “You suspected it, didn't you?”
My throat constricted into a knot of hot wire. “She was so groggy. When I picked her up off that floor, her pupils were sluggish, and she could barely keep her head up. Luca claimed she had sleepwalked.”
“She didn’t sleepwalk,” Elena said, handing me the paper. “Fiona had a massive dose of Zolpidem in her system. Ambien. Crushed and mixed into something sweet. At her body weight, that dosage could have caused severe respiratory depression or cardiac arrest on that cold floor.”
A strangled sob tore from my throat, but I caught it behind clenched teeth, turning the agony into pure, lethal rage. He hadn't just made up a cruel game about a puppy. Luca had drugged our five-year-old child so she wouldn't wake up while he and my sister were together in the next room.
“That’s attempted manslaughter in the second degree, plus felony child endangerment,” Marcus said, his eyes narrowing as his gaze swept over the open lockbox on the table. “What do you have there?”
“Everything,” I said, my voice trembling with suppressed fury. “Their sham life. Their baby. The offshore Cayman accounts. And this.” I slammed the two-million-dollar life insurance policy down before him. “Luca took this out on me last month. He forged my signature.”
Marcus scanned the document with a razor-sharp legal eye, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his weathered face. “He was getting sloppy. Greed always makes them careless. But you need to understand the battlefield, Jessi. Luca’s father sits on the county judicial oversight committee. If you just call 911, his family will squash the local deputies, claim you’re an unstable, sleep-deprived nurse suffering from postpartum psychosis, and put Fiona in emergency custody with her biological father.”
“Over my dead body,” I spat.
“Then we don’t play defense,” Marcus said, leaning in. “We go for total annihilation. We hit his accounts, his reputation, and his freedom in one synchronized strike. But first, you have to bait him into confirming the drugging on a recorded line.”
As if on cue, my main phone began vibrating wildly on the counter. The caller ID flashed: CHLOE.
I looked at Marcus. He nodded, tapping the record icon on his encrypted tablet and signaling me to put it on speaker.
I took a deep breath, buried the hatred under a facade of trembling exhaustion, and swiped to answer.
“Jessi?” Chloe’s voice was weeping, hysterical, soaked in rehearsed guilt. “Please, Jessi, don’t do this to our family! Luca told me what happened. It was a mistake! We were going to tell you after the holidays!”
“You were going to tell me?” I asked, keeping my tone fragile. “While you let my baby freeze on the floor?”
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“She wasn't freezing! Luca gave her warm milk with a little sleep aid so she wouldn't feel lonely while we talked!” Chloe blurted out defensively. “We only did it so she’d rest peacefully! Why are you turning this into a crime?”
Marcus pointed at the recording meter, grinning like a shark that had just smelled blood.
