Chapter 4 - THE LION’S DEN
The private ICU room was dim, illuminated only by the faint green phosphorescence of the telemetry monitors.
It was 2:15 AM.
Outside the door, Crane stood with two men I trusted with my life—former military operators who took cash directly from my private account, bypassing the syndicate payroll entirely. Nobody entered this floor without clearance.
I pushed the door open quietly.
Nina lay in the bed, swathed in white cotton. She looked fragile, stripped of the vibrant, defiant spark that had once commanded the bar at Vantage. Her collarbones were stark under the hospital gown, her lips chapped, an IV line taped to the back of her bruised hand.
Yet, even battered by emergency surgery and trauma, she took up all the space in the room.
I pulled a vinyl armchair to the side of her bed and sat down.
For five minutes, I simply watched her breathe. Nine months of silence, nine months of convincing myself that walking away had protected her from the filth of my life, shattered by the reality of a smashed sedan on the Dan Ryan Expressway.
Her eyelashes fluttered. A soft groan slipped from her throat.
Her dark eyes opened, clouded with anesthesia and pain. She blinked against the dim light, staring at the ceiling tiles before her gaze slowly drifted to the right.
When she saw me, her entire body stiffened.
The heart monitor spiked instantly: *eighty... ninety-five... one-ten.*
"Nina," I said softly.
She tried to pull herself up, her face contorting in agony as the fresh surgical incision across her lower abdomen pulled. "No..." Her voice was a dry, raspy scrape. "No... get out."
"Don't move. You're torn open. You have forty staples in your belly."
"Where is he?" Panic blew her pupils wide. Her trembling hand clawed at the sheets. "Where is my baby? What did you do to him?"
"He's in the NICU on the fourth floor," I said, keeping my tone as calm, as grounding as humanly possible. "He had fluid in his lungs, but he's breathing on his own now. He's five pounds, eight ounces. He's alive, Nina."
Tears spilled over her lower eyelids, carving clean tracks down her pale cheeks. She closed her eyes, her lips moving in a silent prayer of gratitude before she opened them again, cold and venomous.
"Get out of here, Dorian."
"Nina—"
"I don't want your money. I don't want your guards. I don't want you." Her voice cracked, but the steel underneath it was unbreakable. "I left the city. I changed my name. I was living in a duplex in Rogers Park doing bookkeeping for a bakery. I did everything you wanted! I vanished!"
"I didn't want you to vanish," I said, the words tasting like ash. "I wanted you safe."
"Safe?" She let out a wild, breathless laugh that ended in a wince of pain. "Look at me! You think this is safe? You walked out of my bed nine months ago because you said you couldn't be a husband and a boss. You said the Cavallos would rip me apart if they found out you loved someone they couldn't control!"
"And I was right," I said harshly. "You think today was a random traffic accident?"
Nina’s expression froze. The anger in her eyes was abruptly swallowed by absolute dread.
"What?" she breathed.
"The car that rammed you wasn't an unlicensed driver, Nina. It was an Escalade owned by Felix Cavallo’s logistics front." I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, staring into her frightened face. "They hunted you down. They tried to kill you and the child before he could take his first breath."
Nina stared at me, her chest heaving against the blankets. She didn't look surprised.
She looked guilty.
"Nina," I said, a cold suspicion suddenly coiling in my gut. "How did Felix Cavallo know where you were?"
She swallowed hard, turning her head away to look at the dark window overlooking the Chicago skyline.
"Nina. Look at me."
"He didn't find me because of the baby, Dorian," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the IV pump.
"Then why?"
She looked back at me, tears streaming down her neck, her hands shaking uncontrollably against the bed rails.
"Because he didn't just want me dead," she sobbed. "He’s been hunting me since before I ever poured you a drink at Vantage. Dorian... my maiden name isn't Reyes. It’s Moretti."
I stopped breathing.
The Morettis were the founding family of the Chicago Outfit—wiped out twenty-five years ago in a bloody, coordinated coup orchestrated by none other than Felix Cavallo.
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"I am Marco Moretti’s youngest daughter," Nina whispered. "And Felix knows that if your son carries my blood, he doesn't just inherit your empire... he inherits the legal deed to everything Felix stole."
***
