Chapter 1 - THE NEEDLES IN THE DARK
Late on a snow-heavy night at the Moretti estate, Gabriel Moretti—a crippled crime syndicate boss paralyzed and heavily sedated after an SUV crash—screamed in agony. His temporary private-duty nurse, Clara Bennett, a curvy, sharp-eyed former neuro-ICU specialist, refused to dismiss his suffering as phantom pain. Noticing an unnatural mechanical hum and click beneath the German custom-designed mattress, Clara used leverage and grit to transfer the two-hundred-pound incapacitated boss to an examination bed. Slicing through the layers of foam with a surgical scalpel, she uncovered a motorized nightmare: rails, microscopic tubes, and dozens of rising automated needles loaded with colorless toxins calibrated to slowly murder Gabriel while sedatives masked the pain. Before Clara could stabilize him, Gabriel’s personal physician, Dr. Richard Hale, stepped into the bedroom brandishing a remote control and a silenced pistol. When Hale sneered that she was interfering with a "succession," Clara swung a heavy stainless-steel IV pole, disarming him, kicking the trigger device away, and standing her ground between a ruthless killer and an empire's dying lord.
