Chapter 3 - the medical secret
By midnight, the heavy black SUVs pulled through the high iron gates of the Moretti estate on Lake Shore Drive.
The grand limestone mansion stood majestically against the dark sky, its high windows lit by warm amber chandeliers.
Luca carried Sophia gently in his broad arms up the grand marble staircase to the second-floor nursery wing. Hannah and Dr. Clare Benton followed closely behind.
After tucking Sophia into her plush canopy bed, Clare stepped out into the quiet hallway, holding a leather medical file she had retrieved from the estate's private archive.
"Luca," Clare whispered, gesturing toward his private study down the hall. "We need to look at these records immediately."
Inside the warm, wood-paneled study, Luca poured two glasses of scotch, handing one to Clare while Hannah sat nervously in a plush leather armchair near the fireplace.
Clare opened the thick medical folder under the desk lamp. "I've been reviewing Sophia's quarterly nerve reports from Dr. Harrison—the family physician your uncle hired after the crash."
Luca leaned against his mahogany desk, his dark eyes narrowing. "What did you find, Clare?"
"The nerve-suppression medication Dr. Harrison has been prescribing Sophia for thirty-six months," Clare revealed, her voice filled with quiet rage, "is an experimental compound used to delay spinal healing. It wasn't curing her, Luca. It was intentionally keeping her legs weak."
Hannah gasped, covering her mouth with both hands. "They were poisoning her?!"
Luca’s face went deadpan and pale, his knuckles turning white around his scotch glass until the heavy crystal shattered in his palm!
Dark bourbon and droplets of red spilled onto the mahogany blotter, but Luca didn't even flinch. His dark presence turned terrifyingly lethal.
"Dr. Harrison was taking orders directly from my uncle Dominic," Luca growled, each word dripping with cold thunder. "They kept my daughter in that wheelchair so she would remain dependent on Dominic's medical council... and so I would stay distracted from the syndicate's financial audits."
"Why would Dominic want to distract you, Luca?" Clare asked, setting her glass down.
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"Because three years ago, before the river crash," Luca said, his deep voice dropping into an icy register, "my late wife discovered that Dominic was laundering forty million dollars through shell companies in London."
Hannah looked up into Luca's dark, fierce eyes, realizing with a sudden spike of panic that the river crash three years ago hadn't been an accident at all. It had been an attempted hit on Luca's entire family.
