Chapter 5
The steel staircase descended twenty feet beneath the pool terrace, leading into a brightly illuminated, clinical corridor lined with poured concrete and soundproofing foam. It looked less like an ancient wine cellar and more like a high-security black site. Fluorescent tubes hummed overhead with surgical white glare, casting stark shadows across the industrial epoxy floor.
At the end of the forty-foot hallway stood a reinforced steel security door, fitted with an electronic cipher lock and a double-paned reinforced observation window.
Inside, illuminated by the dim glow of vital-sign monitors and an IV infusion pump, sat a hospital bed.
Cassandro stopped at the threshold. His heart slammed against his ribs with the force of a sledgehammer, but his face remained an immovable mask of marble.
Through the glass, he saw her.
Natalie.
She was twenty-nine years old, painfully thin, her fair skin translucent beneath the harsh fluorescent tubes. Her long chestnut hair was braided neatly over her shoulder, an oxygen cannula resting beneath her nose, an intravenous line running into the back of her pale hand. Her chest rose and fell in slow, chemically regulated intervals. She was asleep—kept in a medically induced twilight state, surrounded by automated feeding bags and neurological monitors.
Standing beside the medication cart, adjusting an intravenous drip bag, was a woman in a lab coat—a licensed private nurse who froze the second she heard the steel door latch rattle.
"Don't move," Frank’s voice barked from behind Cassandro, leveling a suppressed pistol through the doorway.
The nurse threw her hands into the air, backing against the medicine cabinet, her clipboard clattering to the floor. "Please! Don't shoot! I was hired through an agency in Philadelphia! Mr. Hale said this was an in-house private hospice patient!"
Cassandro stepped into the sterile room, holding Audrey against his chest.
The child gasped, her small arms extending toward the bed. "Mommy! Daddy, look, Mommy’s right there! Wake her up!"
Cassandro handed Audrey gently to Frank. "Take her into the hallway, Frank. Keep her facing the wall."
"Yes, Don Cassandro," Frank murmured, stepping backward with the child.
Once the door clicked shut, Cassandro walked to the side of the bed. He reached out with his large, calloused right hand, his ink-stained fingers trembling with rare, suffocating reverence as he touched Natalie’s cold cheek. Her skin was soft, smelling faintly of lavender soap and antiseptic.
She had not run away to Zurich with thirty million dollars of syndicate money. She had not abandoned her three-year-old daughter. She had been buried alive thirty feet beneath her own rose gardens, kept in a chemical cage while her husband married the sister of the man who orchestrated the coup.
Behind him, Marco shoved Damian and Vivienne through the doorway. Both fell to their knees on the concrete, their breathing shallow and terrified.
Cassandro slowly withdrew his hand from Natalie’s cheek. He did not look at them; he looked at the digital readout on the IV infusion pump.
"Midazolam. Propofol. Lorazepam," Cassandro read aloud, his voice dropping into a register so dark and low that the hum of the monitors seemed to quiet down. "A continuous twilight infusion. Enough to keep a grown woman conscious during physical therapy, but unable to speak, walk, or form long-term memories."
May you like
He turned slowly to face his wife and her brother.
"Explain this to me, Vivienne," Cassandro murmured, tilting his head slightly, his wavy dark hair falling across his forehead. "Before I decide how you die."
