Chapter 4 - The Shadow in the Mirror
By three o'clock in the morning, the penthouse had transformed into a war room.
Gabriel was still weak, but he refused to stay in bed. He sat in a heavy leather armchair wrapped in a dark silk robe, an IV bag of high-potency antibiotics suspended from a metallic stand beside him, dripping steadily into his arm.
Nora stood near his chair, keeping a watchful eye on his blood pressure monitor every fifteen minutes.
"You need to rest," Nora reminded him, her voice flat and uncompromising. "Your muscle tissue suffered severe chemical inflammation. If you tear those stitches, I am not sewing you back up."
Gabriel looked up at her, amused by her tone. In his world, men bowed when he entered a room, and women spent years trying to flatter him. Yet this heavy-set nurse talked to him like he was a unruly child who hadn't finished his homework.
"You have a terrible bedside manner, Nurse Bennett," Gabriel remarked, taking a sip of black coffee Luca had brought him.
"I offer survival, Mr. Moretti, not hospitality," Nora replied without skipping a beat, writing down his vitals on her clipboard. "If you wanted tea and sympathy, you should have kept one of the four nurses who ran away."
Luca let out a muffled snort from the computer desk across the room.
Gabriel’s dark eyes flashed with an intriguing warmth. "Fair enough." He turned his attention to Luca. "Did you trace the capsule?"
"I ran the serial numbers stamped on the titanium casing through our private contact at the federal medical registry," Luca reported, turning his monitor around. "It’s a specialized military-grade drug delivery implant. Only three private medical labs in the Midwest have access to it. All three are funded through shell companies owned by Dr. Adrian Vale."
"And who pays Vale's off-shore accounts?" Gabriel asked, his voice dropping into a dangerous register.
"Vincent," Luca confirmed grimly. "I checked the wire transfers from the private estate account. Three hundred thousand dollars moved to Vale’s Swiss account the morning after you were shot."
Gabriel closed his eyes briefly, leaning his head back against the leather. The betrayal clearly cut deep, though his face remained a mask of carved stone.
"Vincent was like a brother to me," Gabriel said softly. "When his father died, I took him into the business. I gave him twenty percent of the holdings. I built his entire life."
"He didn't want twenty percent, boss," Luca said bitterly. "He wanted the whole throne. And with you out of the picture, the board meeting at nine a.m. would have named him CEO by default."
"Then we let him think it worked," Nora piped up.
Both men looked at her.
Nora set her clipboard down on the small marble table. "Dr. Vale is supposed to receive an update from the private nursing agency at four a.m. every morning. That was in my contract instructions. I'm supposed to send a digital status report to the clinic portal."
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "And what are you going to tell him?"
"I'm going to tell him that at three-forty-five a.m., the patient suffered respiratory distress, lost consciousness, and ceased breathing," Nora said calmly. "I will attach a forged flatline heart monitor printout."
Luca gasped softly. "They'll think he's dead."
"They'll think the capsule did its job," Nora corrected him. "Vincent will arrive at the board meeting at nine o'clock, completely confident that no one is coming to stop him. He won't have his armed guards in the room, and he won't be prepared for Gabriel to walk through those doors."
Gabriel stared at Nora, his dark eyes lingering on her face, studying the quiet intellect and icy calm behind her plain features.
"You're remarkably ruthless for a woman who spends her life caring for the sick," Gabriel observed, a soft smile playing on his lips.
Nora looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the dark Chicago skyline.
"The sick are easy to care for, Mr. Moretti," Nora said softly, a shadow of pain touching her voice. "It’s the people who hurt them that require a little ruthlessness."
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Gabriel felt a strange pang in his chest—a sudden, intense curiosity about the personal history of this woman who carried herself like a soldier hiding in a nurse's uniform.
"Luca," Gabriel ordered, his voice echoing with absolute authority. "Prepare the cars. And get Nurse Bennett whatever she needs. She’s coming with us to the board meeting."
