Chapter 4 - The Midnight Visitor
The digital clock on the bedside table read 11:42 PM. The hospital had quieted down into that eerie, sterile hush that only descends upon medical wards after midnight, broken only by the occasional distant squeak of a nurse's cart or the rhythmic beep of a monitor.
I was back in the bed, lying flat on my back with my eyes closed, breathing in slow, measured rhythms to mimic a deep coma. Grace was stationed in the adjoining small private bathroom with the door cracked an inch, holding a heavy metal oxygen tank wrench like a makeshift club.
Suddenly, the heavy oak door of the suite clicked.
It wasn't a nurse checking vital signs. Nurses knocked, or at least announced themselves with a polite chime of the door frame. This was the silent, calculated turn of a latch belonging to someone who expected to find an empty room or a helpless target.
Footsteps padded across the linoleum. Slow. Deliberate. Heavy-soled leather shoes.
I kept my eyes half-shut, peering through my eyelashes into the dim moonlight filtering through the window blinds.
A tall figure stepped out of the shadows, dressed in a sharp, expensive dark overcoat. The faint scent of expensive cologne and damp autumn air drifted through the room. As the figure stepped closer to the bed, the ambient light caught the sharp, aristocratic jawline and thinning silver-gray hair.
Senator Thomas Vance.
He didn't look like a grieving statesman now. His face was hard, his eyes cold and calculating as he stared down at my motionless body.
"Still hanging on, Dominic?" Vance murmured softly, his voice dripping with venomous irony. "Stubborn to the very end. You always did cling to power like a drowning man to a spar."
He reached into his overcoat pocket and pulled out a small, pre-filled medical syringe with a thick, ominous needle.
"Alistair tells me your heart is surprisingly strong," Vance continued, unscrewing the cap with a quiet click. "Too strong for comfort. If you don't expire naturally by tomorrow night, Veronica's lawyers are going to face a barrage of injunctions from your board of directors. We can't afford legal delays. The gubernatorial announcement is on Monday, and I need those offshore accounts liquidated to fund the media blitz."
My muscles tightened beneath the blanket. Every fiber of my being screamed to leap out of bed and snap his neck right then and there, but I forced myself to remain completely still. I needed him to talk. I needed him to confess every detail into the hidden burner phone resting in the pocket of my hospital gown, recording audio through the open seam.
Vance leaned over my face, pressing the tip of the syringe toward the intravenous port in my arm. "Goodbye, Dominic. Consider this a campaign donation."
Before the needle could pierce the plastic line, a shadow detached itself from the bathroom doorway.
"Drop the syringe, Senator," a voice rang out—clear, cold, and echoing in the quiet room.
Vance spun around in shock, his eyes widening as Grace stepped out of the shadows, holding the heavy metal oxygen wrench raised like a baseball bat, while I sat straight up in bed, the burner phone blinking a steady red recording light in my right hand.
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"Looking for a donation, Thomas?" I asked, my voice cutting through the silence like a razor blade.
Senator Vance froze, his face draining of all color as he stared from the living, breathing Dominic Moretti to the recording device in my palm. The trap had just snapped shut, and the hunter had become the hunted.
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