Chapter 3 - The Best Friend Who Arrived Too EarlyDante did not rage.
That frightened everyone more.
At 8:02 that morning, he sat behind his desk looking at the photograph of Adrien Cole in the pale blue suit.
Victor stood opposite him.
Marcus was near the window.
Vivien and Isla had been moved to the breakfast room with two female security officers.
“Find him,” Dante said.
Victor nodded.
“Alive?”
Marcus glanced toward Dante.
Six years earlier, no one would have needed to ask.
Dante would have answered with a location and allowed everyone to understand the rest.
But now there was a six-year-old girl eating pancakes twenty yards away.
A girl who had walked into his life less than twelve hours earlier.
Dante remembered Isabella’s photograph downstairs.
He remembered her belief that their child should grow up in a house where furniture was meant to be used.
Not feared.
“Alive,” Dante said.
Victor nodded.
Dante added, “Nobody touches him unless he gives them no choice.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow.
Dante looked at him.
“I want him talking.”
That explanation satisfied them.
Mostly.
The investigation produced its first serious break before noon.
Adrien’s account of the night Isabella died had always been simple.
He had claimed to be in Queens meeting with contractors until approximately 11:30.
He said he learned about the crash through one of Dante’s drivers, then went directly to Dante.
But Marcus located an archived parking transaction from a garage two blocks from St. Brendan’s.
11:21 p.m.
The vehicle registered to a shell corporation controlled by Adrien had entered.
12:02 a.m.
It left.
Dante stared at the timestamps.
Adrien had been at the hospital before Isabella arrived.
He had been there while she was alive.
Then he had reached Dante at 11:57?
Impossible.
Unless someone else had driven the car out.
Or the records had been manipulated.
Either way, Adrien had lied.
At 12:16 p.m., Victor received another report.
One of the guards stationed outside Vivien’s guest suite had found a small envelope pushed beneath the door.
No one had been seen approaching.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
Dante read the sentence.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT THE DEAD BURIED.
The paper crumpled in his hand.
Vivien entered seconds later.
She saw it.
Her face changed.
“He knows.”
Dante looked at her.
“He knew the moment Isla spoke downstairs.”
“How?”
“Because he was in my house.”
Isla appeared behind Vivien.
Dante immediately folded the paper.
Too late.
“What does it say?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
Isla frowned.
“That usually means something children definitely need to worry about.”
Dante looked at Vivien.
“She gets that from Isabella.”
Vivien almost smiled.
Almost.
Dante crouched in front of his daughter.
“Someone may be unhappy that your mom told me what happened.”
“Is he the blue-suit man?”
Dante hesitated.
“We think so.”
“Is he bad?”
Dante could have given the easy answer.
Yes.
Instead he said, “I thought he was my friend for a very long time.”
Isla considered that.
“Can friends be bad?”
“Yes.”
“That’s worse.”
Dante had no argument.
That afternoon, Samuel Park finally returned Marcus’s call.
He refused to speak over the telephone.
He agreed to meet Dante in Connecticut at an abandoned private medical office owned by his brother.
Dante traveled with Victor and Marcus.
Vivien insisted on coming.
Dante refused.
She refused his refusal.
Ten minutes later, she was in the vehicle.
Isla remained at the mansion with four guards, a housekeeper, and instructions from Dante that nobody—not even the mayor of New York—was permitted into the family wing.
Dr. Park looked twenty years older than his forty-one years when he opened the clinic door.
He stared at Vivien first.
“You kept her?”
Vivien nodded.
Samuel’s eyes filled.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s perfect.”
Only then did he look at Dante.
“I’m sorry.”
Dante stepped inside.
“Tell me why.”
Samuel locked the door.
He had kept records.
Not official ones.
Copies.
He had known the hospital paperwork was being altered, and a young doctor frightened enough to obey could still be frightened enough to preserve proof.
He removed a sealed plastic envelope from a floor safe.
Inside were photocopies of neonatal records.
A surgical note.
Medication logs.
And a handwritten delivery summary.
Baby Girl Moretti.
Delivered 12:06 a.m.
Weight: 3 pounds, 14 ounces.
Spontaneous respiration established.
Dante touched the page.
For six years, the world had officially claimed his child had never taken a breath.
Here was proof that she had.
“Why did you help Vivien?”
Samuel looked at him.
“Because they told me to kill the baby.”
Nobody moved.
Dante slowly lifted his head.
“What?”
“Not directly. Dr. Vale told me the infant was not to leave the hospital.”
“That does not mean—”
“He handed me potassium chloride.”
Vivien closed her eyes.
Dante’s face became terrifyingly blank.
Samuel continued quickly.
“I refused. Vale told me I misunderstood. Then the man in the blue suit came into the room.”
“Adrien.”
Samuel nodded.
“He told me mistakes happen during premature deliveries.”
Marcus cursed under his breath.
Dante said nothing.
Samuel looked ashamed.
“I was terrified.”
“But you helped.”
“Vivien made me.”
Vivien frowned.
Samuel almost smiled.
“She threatened to scream loud enough to bring the entire emergency department into the room.”
“That sounds like her,” Marcus said.
Samuel handed Dante another document.
“There’s more.”
It was a medication authorization.
The drug administered to Isabella shortly before her death.
A dose dramatically higher than medically appropriate for someone suffering catastrophic blood loss.
Dante knew enough to understand what he was looking at.
“Was she murdered?”
Samuel looked away.
“I can’t prove that the dose killed her.”
“But?”
“It may have shortened the time she had left.”
Dante turned toward the wall.
For a full ten seconds, he did not move.
Then his phone rang.
Victor answered his own at the same time.
Both men looked down.
Security alert.
Mansion.
Dante’s blood froze.
Victor was already speaking.
“What happened?”
A guard shouted through the phone.
Then came a crash.
Another voice.
“Sir, someone breached the west entrance.”
Dante was moving before the sentence finished.
“Isla?”
The line went silent.
Dante grabbed Victor’s phone.
“WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?”
Static.
Then a guard responded.
“We’re trying to reach the family wing.”
Dante’s heartbeat slammed against his ribs.
Six years ago, someone had taken his wife from him while he was miles away.
It would not happen again.
He ran for the car.
May you like
Behind him, Vivien shouted Isla’s name.
And back in Manhattan, the alarm system inside Dante Moretti’s mansion suddenly went dark.
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