Chapter 6 - The Last Dose
Lucas’s heart stopped for eleven seconds at 8:16 that morning.
Grace was standing beside his bed when it happened.
One moment the monitor was tracing a weak rhythm.
The next, alarms exploded through the room.
Nurses rushed in.
Grace grabbed Emma and backed toward the wall.
“Mommy?”
“Don’t look.”
“But Brother Lucas—”
“Don’t look, baby.”
Doctors surrounded the bed.
A nurse pushed Grace into the hallway.
The doors closed.
Emma began crying.
Grace sank onto a chair and held her so tightly the child complained she could not breathe.
“I’m sorry.”
“Is Brother Lucas going to heaven?”
Grace’s throat closed.
“No.”
She had no right to promise it.
She promised anyway.
“No. He’s staying here.”
Forty miles away, Lorenzo drove while Daniel held a phone against Simon Hale’s face.
Simon was trying to explain the treatment.
“I don’t know the reversal protocol.”
“You created the compound,” Lorenzo said.
“I modified it.”
“You gave it to my child for three years.”
“Under Adrian’s instructions.”
“If you say Adrian’s name one more time instead of telling me how to save Lucas, I will forget every promise I made this morning.”
Simon swallowed.
“There’s a binding agent Mara will know. But the cardiac damage—”
“Can he survive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
“Possibly!”
Lorenzo drove faster.
Daniel received a location ping.
“Mara’s phone just activated.”
“Where?”
“Warehouse district in Yonkers.”
Simon’s face changed.
Lorenzo saw it in the mirror.
“You know the place.”
“No.”
Daniel put pressure on Simon’s injured ribs.
He screamed.
“Fine! It’s a lab.”
“What lab?”
“Adrian funded it. Private pharmaceutical testing.”
Lorenzo took the next exit hard.
The building looked abandoned from outside.
Brick walls.
Boarded windows.
A rusted sign.
Inside, security cameras tracked their vehicle.
Daniel noticed.
“They know we’re coming.”
“Good.”
Lorenzo did not bring an army.
Six men would have drawn attention.
He brought Daniel, Salvatore, and two trusted guards.
Simon remained handcuffed in the vehicle.
Salvatore looked at Lorenzo before they entered.
“If something goes wrong—”
“Nothing happens to Mara.”
“I was going to say nothing happens to you.”
Lorenzo almost smiled.
“Getting sentimental?”
“I’m seventy-one. It’s a medical condition.”
They entered through a side loading door.
Two men waited inside.
The confrontation lasted seconds.
Then Daniel found Mara tied to a chair in an upstairs laboratory.
Adrian stood behind her holding a pistol.
“Mara.”
She looked furious rather than frightened.
“Took you long enough.”
Adrian pressed the gun against her shoulder.
“Stop.”
Lorenzo stopped.
Adrian’s elegance was gone.
His suit was torn. One sleeve was stained with blood.
“You ruined everything,” he said.
“No,” Lorenzo replied. “A three-year-old did.”
Something like disbelief crossed Adrian’s face.
“This entire empire brought down by a child who couldn’t mind her own business.”
“Children notice what arrogant men ignore.”
Adrian tightened his grip on Mara.
“I need the Alessia files.”
“They aren’t here.”
“Give me access.”
“No.”
“Then Mara dies.”
Mara rolled her eyes.
“He’s bluffing.”
Adrian pressed the barrel harder.
“I am not.”
“You need me,” Mara said.
“For what?”
“You need someone to certify Lucas’s death as natural.”
Adrian hesitated.
That was enough.
Mara drove her heel backward into his knee.
Adrian stumbled.
Daniel moved.
A gunshot cracked.
Glass shattered.
Adrian fell.
His pistol skidded across the floor.
Salvatore kicked it away.
Lorenzo rushed to Mara.
“You hit?”
“No.”
She looked at Adrian.
He was alive, wounded in the shoulder.
“Unfortunately, neither is he.”
Daniel restrained him.
Mara stood.
“Lucas?”
Lorenzo handed her his phone.
She listened to the doctor at the hospital.
Her expression tightened.
“We go now.”
“What do you need?”
“Simon.”
They dragged Simon from the vehicle.
Mara questioned him during the drive.
Compound composition.
Dose patterns.
Changes over time.
How much had been used in the previous forty-eight hours.
Simon answered everything.
For the first time, he seemed to understand that the child might actually die.
When they arrived, Lucas was unconscious.
Mara read the latest lab numbers.
“This is worse.”
Lorenzo stood beside her.
“Can you save him?”
“I can treat the toxin.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Mara looked at him.
“I don’t know what damage has become permanent.”
Lorenzo went into Lucas’s room.
He sat beside the bed.
For three years he had tried not to let his son see fear.
That morning he stopped pretending.
He took Lucas’s hand.
“You remember when you were four and wanted a horse in your bedroom?”
Lucas did not move.
“I told you it wouldn’t fit through the door.”
The monitor continued its slow rhythm.
“You told me we could remove the wall.”
Lorenzo smiled through tears.
“I should have known then you were impossible.”
Grace stood silently in the doorway.
Emma slipped from her hand.
She walked to Lorenzo.
“Can I talk to Brother Lucas?”
Lorenzo nodded.
Emma climbed carefully into the chair.
“Brother Lucas.”
Nothing.
“You have to wake up.”
Grace covered her mouth.
Emma leaned closer.
“I found the bad pillow.”
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
“So you don’t need to be sick anymore.”
For several seconds, the room contained only the monitor.
Then Lucas’s fingers moved.
Emma gasped.
“Mommy!”
Lorenzo looked down.
Lucas’s eyelids fluttered.
“Dad?”
Lorenzo stood so quickly the chair nearly fell.
“I’m here.”
Lucas looked confused.
Then he saw Emma.
“You found it?”
Emma nodded proudly.
“The bad thing.”
Lucas whispered, “I knew the purple drink was gross.”
Lorenzo laughed.
It came out broken.
Mara entered.
“Everyone out except Lorenzo.”
Hours passed.
The treatment began.
Lucas developed another arrhythmia.
Then another.
At noon, Mara warned Lorenzo they might need emergency cardiac support.
At one thirty, Lucas’s blood pressure crashed.
At two ten, it stabilized.
At four, his laboratory numbers finally stopped worsening.
At six, Mara walked into the family room.
Grace stood.
Lorenzo could not.
Mara looked exhausted.
“The toxic compound in his blood is falling.”
Lorenzo’s eyes filled.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the treatment is working.”
Grace cried.
Salvatore lowered his head.
Daniel sat down.
Lorenzo asked the only question that mattered.
“Is he going to live?”
Mara hesitated.
“He has a chance.”
Not certainty.
A chance.
For that moment, it was enough.
Then Daniel’s phone rang.
His expression hardened.
He answered, listened, and walked toward Lorenzo.
“What now?”
“Adrian’s lawyer filed an emergency petition.”
“For what?”
“Control of the Duca family trust.”
Lorenzo stared at him.
Daniel continued.
“He claims the poisoning investigation proves you failed to protect Lucas and that you’re medically and morally unfit to remain trustee.”
Salvatore laughed in disbelief.
“He poisoned the boy and now wants the trust?”
Daniel shook his head.
“It gets worse.”
“How?”
“Adrian transferred copies of Alessia’s evidence to federal prosecutors before we found him.”
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed.
“That hurts him more than me.”
“Not all of it.”
Daniel handed him a phone.
On the screen was a scanned document.
Lorenzo recognized his own signature.
A fifteen-year-old agreement.
One he barely remembered signing.
The document stated that if criminal conduct by Lorenzo placed Lucas in danger, temporary guardianship could pass to the next approved family representative.
The approved representative listed beneath the clause was:
SALVATORE DUCA.
Lorenzo slowly looked at his uncle.
Salvatore looked just as shocked.
Then the hospital room doors opened.
Two federal agents stepped into the corridor.
One held a warrant.
May you like
The other said:
“Lorenzo Duca, we need you to come with us.”
