Chapter 3 - Shadows in the Monitor Room
The dining room incident dissolved into chaos within seconds. Guards rushed in, Sophia gasped, and Dominic was by his father’s side instantly, lifting the old man with effortless power and carrying him back upstairs. Claire followed, her mind racing. The weight of Victor’s whispered confession pressed against her ribs like a lead weight.
Later that night, long after the mansion had settled into a deceptive, midnight quiet, Claire sat in the corner of Victor’s room while he pretended to sleep. His breathing was heavy, uneven. She knew he wasn’t resting.
“You’re still awake,” she whispered softly.
Victor didn’t open his eyes, but his lips moved. “You shouldn't have stayed in the room after they left.”
“Your son would have fired me if I left you on the floor.”
A dry chuckle escaped the old man’s throat. “Dominic doesn’t fire people easily. He destroys them or he uses them. Sometimes both.”
Claire stood up, walking over to adjust the IV drip line that supplemented his medication. “Who are you afraid of, Victor? You said someone is trying to kill you. Is it Raymond? Is it your family?”
Victor’s eyes snapped open, sharp as broken glass in the dim moonlight. “Keep your voice down. The walls in this house don't just have ears; they have lenses.”
“Then tell me why. If someone is poisoning you or tampering with your medicine, I need to know what I’m looking for. I’m a nurse, not a bodyguard.”
“They aren't using poison,” Victor murmured, his voice barely audible over the hum of the air conditioner. “Poison leaves traces. It’s too loud. They are changing the parameters. Slow drops in blood pressure. Tweaking the digital monitors so the nurses adjust the wrong valves. Small things. Things that look like natural decline after a major stroke.”
Claire felt a chill crawl up her neck. In her emergency room days, she had seen institutional malpractice, but this sounded methodical. Calculated.
Unknown to them, two floors below in the fortified security bunker, Dominic Moretti stood staring at a muted close-up of their faces on a high-definition monitor. He couldn't hear their exact words because Victor had turned on the white-noise machine near the bed, but he could read the urgency in their posture. He saw the terror in his father’s eyes. He saw the intense, analytical focus in Claire’s expression.
Dominic reached out and pressed the intercom override button, connecting directly to Raymond DeLuca, who was still in his study down the hall.
“Raymond,” Dominic’s voice cut through the phone speaker like a razor blade.
“Yes, Dominic?”
“Pull the employment files on all eight nurses who have cared for my father since the stroke. Every background check. Every reference. I want them on my desk by morning.”
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“You suspect the new nurse?” Raymond asked smoothly.
Dominic stared at Claire’s frozen image on the screen, watching her lean close to his father. “No, Raymond. I suspect everyone except her. Which is precisely why she needs to be watched.”
