Chapter 8 - THE MEDICINE THAT WAS MEANT TO KILL AGAIN
"That's the man who brought me Giorgio's medicine!"
Eleanor's scream filled the hospital room.
The stranger struggled against the two security officers holding him.
"She's confused!" he shouted. "I have authorization!"
"Then show it," I said.
He looked at me.
For a second, his expression changed from anger to something colder.
Recognition.
He knew who I was.
I could see it.
"You're the housekeeper," he said.
I stepped closer.
"My name is Delilah Moore."
His face tightened.
"Thomas Moore's wife?"
Before I could answer, Detective Vega appeared with two uniformed officers.
The man stopped struggling.
Vega looked at the syringe lying on the floor.
"Nobody touches that. Secure the medication case and identify this man."
One officer turned his identification badge around.
"Julian Cross."
Vega looked up.
"Your occupation?"
Cross swallowed.
"I'm a medical contractor."
"Where do you work?"
He hesitated.
"Marlowe Private Medical Center."
I felt the air leave my lungs.
The same clinic.
The same family.
The same trail of medicine that had followed two dead men and one terrified elderly woman.
Eleanor began crying.
"He used to come to the house," she whispered. "Carlo said he was a pharmacist."
Cross looked away.
Detective Vega instructed the officers to take him into custody while she verified the hospital's records.
As he passed me, I noticed a small gold ring on his finger.
A black stone sat in its center.
For some reason, the detail stayed with me.
Thomas had once told me that the people who worried him most were never the ones carrying weapons.
They were the ones carrying briefcases.
Luca arrived minutes later.
When he saw the red marks on my wrist, his expression changed.
"He hurt you?"
"I'm okay."
"Delilah."
I looked at him.
"Your mother is alive. That's what matters right now."
He turned toward Eleanor.
She was trembling beneath her blankets.
Luca sat beside her and gently touched her cheek.
"I'm here, Mom."
"I thought he was going to give me the same thing."
"I know."
"He said Giorgio needed it. He said it would strengthen his heart."
Luca closed his eyes.
"Mom, listen to me. You didn't know."
Eleanor shook her head.
"I should have asked more questions."
"Yes," Luca whispered. "We all should have."
She looked surprised.
Then he took her hand.
"But Carlo lied to you. The blame for what he put in that medicine belongs to the people who did it."
Eleanor began crying harder.
Luca leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
It was the first time I'd seen him do that.
The investigation changed after Julian Cross's arrest.
Hospital cameras showed him entering through a service corridor with a borrowed identification badge.
There was no legitimate medication order.
Preliminary laboratory testing later identified a powerful cardiac medication in the syringe, in a concentration that could have been dangerous if administered.
Detective Vega also obtained records connecting Cross to medication deliveries for Giorgio five years earlier.
He had not been a random intruder.
He had worked for Carlo Bellini's private clinic for more than a decade.
And he'd been present during the period when Giorgio's treatment records were altered.
But evidence still mattered more than suspicion.
Investigators obtained warrants for the clinic's pharmacy records and relevant financial accounts.
Several employees were interviewed.
One longtime technician confirmed that unusual medication orders had been processed outside the normal approval system.
She remembered Carlo personally requesting certain deliveries.
She also remembered Julian Cross handling them.
When detectives compared the orders with Giorgio's medical records, they found changes his regular physician had never authorized.
Eleanor had not invented the strange medicine.
She had not imagined the white envelopes.
And she had not been imagining her gradual weakness.
Someone had been deliberately manipulating her treatment.
Two days later, Carlo Bellini was arrested.
The footage of Cross's attempted attack, the financial records, and evidence gathered from the clinic had given investigators grounds to pursue multiple serious charges.
The homicide investigations remained open.
Carlo's photograph appeared on television screens across the city.
He was sixty-two, silver-haired, impeccably dressed, and accustomed to being welcomed into rooms where everyone else waited for permission to sit.
Now he stood between two officers.
He looked furious.
Not frightened.
Furious that ordinary people had been allowed to challenge him.
When Detective Vega later told me he had denied every allegation, I wasn't surprised.
Men like Carlo didn't build their power by admitting what they'd done.
They built it by convincing other people to carry the blame.
Vanessa requested another interview.
This time, she was prepared to provide evidence against her father.
I didn't understand why she'd finally decided to cooperate.
Until I saw her.
She was sitting across from Detective Vega, her engagement ring lying on the table.
Luca stood near the window.
Vanessa looked at him.
"My father told me if we married, he'd forgive the mistakes I'd made."
Luca said nothing.
"He promised I could start over. That nobody would ever find out about Thomas or the clinic."
"And you believed him?" Luca asked.
"I wanted to."
Her voice trembled.
"I wanted a life where nobody knew what I'd done."
I stood by the doorway.
"You could have had that life by telling the truth six years ago."
Vanessa looked at me.
"I know."
"Thomas asked you to call me."
She nodded.
"And you didn't."
"No."
I waited for another excuse.
Another explanation about fear.
Another attempt to make herself the victim.
Instead, she said, "I chose myself."
The simplicity of it hurt more than any elaborate lie.
"I was afraid of my father, but I was also afraid of losing the money and the future he'd promised me. I let your husband down because helping him would have cost me something."
I looked away.
Finally, she was saying what I'd needed to hear.
Not that she was helpless.
Not that she was innocent.
That she'd made a terrible choice.
Vanessa admitted she'd helped restrict Eleanor's access to Luca.
She acknowledged knowing that the medication affected Eleanor's judgment and strength.
She described her father's instructions to discredit the older woman before the engagement.
She also told the detective about the threat against Marcus.
Then Vega asked about the night Thomas died.
Vanessa went pale.
"There's something I left out."
Her attorney spoke quietly.
"Vanessa, think carefully."
"I have."
She looked at me.
"When I reached Thomas's car, someone was already there."
My heart began pounding.
"Who?"
"One of the Moretti employees."
Luca turned toward her.
"Who?"
Vanessa stared at the table.
"I didn't recognize him at first. He was wearing a dark jacket. He kept asking Thomas where he'd hidden the records."
I gripped the doorframe.
"Was Thomas conscious?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
Vanessa's eyes filled.
"He said he wasn't giving anything to men who would hurt his family."
I covered my mouth.
Even then.
Even while injured and trapped.
Thomas had been protecting us.
Vanessa continued.
"The man took Thomas's keys. He looked inside the glove compartment."
"Did he find anything?" Vega asked.
"No. Then he stepped away and made me promise not to mention him."
Luca moved closer.
"Describe him."
Vanessa hesitated.
"Broad shoulders. Dark hair. A scar near his left eyebrow."
Luca went still.
I knew that scar.
I'd seen it every morning for six years.
Dominic Rusk had told the housekeepers he'd gotten it in a construction accident.
Vanessa looked at Luca.
"His name was Dominic."
The room became completely silent.
Detective Vega wrote something in her notebook.
Then she asked, "What was his role in the accident?"
Vanessa took a shaky breath.
"My father told him to make sure Thomas drove home by the old quarry road."
Luca stared at her.
"Why?"
"Because there were fewer cameras. And because somebody had already arranged for Thomas's brakes to fail."
My knees weakened.
The detective stopped writing.
Vanessa began crying.
"I thought the crash was supposed to scare him. That's what my father told me."
I looked at her.
"But you knew afterward."
She nodded.
"I knew."
Luca turned toward Detective Vega.
"Dominic told me he only opened the gates."
Vanessa shook her head.
"He did much more than that."
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Then she delivered the words that finally exposed the betrayal at the center of everything.
"DOMINIC RUSK WAS THE MAN WHO SENT THOMAS MOORE DOWN THAT ROAD TO DIE."
