Chapter 4 - The Midnight Audit
At 2:30 AM, the Moretti mansion was a fortress wrapped in a coastal fog. Most of the staff were asleep in the east wing, and the security guards were rotating their perimeter checks. Claire used this window of quiet to slip out of Victor’s room and head toward the private medical supply dispensary on the second-floor landing.
Victor had given her a key code earlier—a sequence known only to him and his primary physicians. He told her where the physical logs were kept in a locked filing cabinet.
As she punched in the code, the heavy steel door clicked open. The room smelled of antiseptic, sterile and cold. She pulled out the medication logbooks for the past three months, flipping rapidly through the pages. Her medical training kicked in: she cross-referenced the administered dosages of anticoagulants and blood pressure regulators with the electronic printouts from the bedside monitors.
Her breath hitched.
On three separate occasions—specifically the weeks before she was hired—the dosage of Victor’s primary heart medication had been doubled for a forty-eight-hour window, coinciding with mysterious spikes in his heart rate that the attending nurses had logged as 'stress-induced panic attacks.' But panic attacks didn’t cause localized neurological numbing in the right arm that didn’t match stroke patterns.
“Looking for something interesting, Nurse Donovan?”
Claire spun around, dropping the binder against the stainless steel counter.
Dominic Moretti stood in the doorway. He hadn’t made a sound. He wore a dark charcoal sweater, the sleeves pushed up slightly to reveal lean, powerful forearms. His dark eyes caught the fluorescent overhead light, devoid of warmth.
“You scared me,” Claire whispered, keeping her voice steady despite her racing pulse.
“This is a restricted medical wing. Only family, designated physicians, and authorized handlers are permitted here after midnight,” Dominic said, stepping slowly into the room. He was taller than she realized, imposing enough to fill the entire space.
“Your father is my patient. His medical history is my business if I’m going to keep him alive,” Claire answered back, refusing to shrink away from him. She held her ground by the counter.
Dominic stopped a foot away from her. He looked down at the open ledger on the counter, then back up into her eyes. “You’re looking at dosage logs from before you arrived. Why?”
“Because nurses notice patterns, Mr. Moretti. And the pattern before I got here was sloppy. Someone was altering his baseline metrics.”
Dominic’s expression didn't change, but a muscle in his jaw ticked. “Sloppy is an understatement. In my world, sloppy gets people killed.” He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly register. “My father told you something tonight. I want to know what it was.”
Claire looked straight into those dark, dangerous eyes. She knew that lying to a man like Dominic Moretti was a fatal error, but telling him the truth—that his father suspected someone inside the family was trying to murder him—could trigger a bloodbath that would tear the criminal empire apart.
“He told me he hates chess,” Claire lied smoothly.
May you like
Dominic studied her face for five agonizing seconds. The silence between them felt electric, charged with unspoken warnings and mutual appraisal. Then, slowly, a faint, humorless smile touched the corner of his mouth.
“My father hasn’t played chess in five years, Miss Donovan. He taught me how to play when I was six. He doesn't hate it at all.” Dominic reached past her, his hand brushing the edge of the counter as he closed the ledger. “Let’s see if you can keep him alive long enough for a rematch.”
