Chapter 3 - The Hospital Room and the Shadow
Mount Sinai’s VIP pediatric wing smelled like floor wax and expensive flowers instead of antiseptic and despair.
When Cara pushed open the door to Room 402, she stopped dead in her tracks. The tiny, cramped room with its peeling wallpaper and flickering fluorescent light was gone. In its place was a sunlit suite overlooking the East River, complete with a leather pull-out couch, a flat-screen television, and a team of nurses moving quietly around the medical bed.
There, sitting propped up against a mountain of plush pillows, was Toby.
He was twelve years old, thin as a dry twig, with dark circles under his bright blue eyes, but for the first time in months, he was laughing. A handheld video game controller was clutched in his frail hands.
“Cara!” Toby beamed as she rushed into the room, dropping to her knees beside the bed and burying her face in his blanket.
“Oh, Tobe... oh, my God,” she sobbed, wrapping her arms around his thin shoulders, careful not to dislodge the oxygen cannula resting under his nose. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you? What happened?”
“Hurt me? Are you kidding?” Toby grinned, his eyes wide with wonder. “An hour ago, some guys in sharp suits walked in, pushed a whole bunch of paperwork around, and told me I was being transferred to the elite care program. Dr. Vance said I’m getting the new gene therapy treatment starting tomorrow! My breathing tests are already better!”
Cara looked up, her heart pounding. Standing quietly in the corner of the room was one of Adrian’s guards, a bulky man in a dark suit who gave her a single, respectful nod.
“Who did this, Cara?” Toby asked, tilting his head. “The nurse said a private benefactor paid the whole bill. Three hundred grand! Are we rich now?”
Cara forced a trembling smile, brushing a lock of hair off her brother’s forehead. “Something like that, Tobe. We... we had a very lucky break.”
An hour later, after assuring herself that Toby was resting comfortably under the care of the hospital’s best physicians, Cara returned to the Queens apartment she shared with him. It was a tiny, rundown third-floor walk-up where the radiator clanked all night and the wallpaper peeled in damp strips.
She was packing her few remaining clothes into a worn canvas duffel bag when the floorboards in the hallway groaned.
Cara froze.
The front door didn't pick or smash open; it swung inward with a quiet, practiced click.
A shadow fell across the tiny kitchen.
“I told you,” a smooth, chillingly polite voice echoed from the doorway, “that Queens wasn't safe for you anymore.”
Cara whirled around, her hand flying to her mouth.
Leaning against the doorframe was not one of Adrian’s men. It was a man she had never seen before—tall, wearing a slate-gray trench coat, holding a silver-knobbed cane, with a smile that didn't reach his cold, dark eyes.
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“Who are you?” Cara demanded, backing up against the dresser.
“My name is Dante Moretti,” the man said softly, stepping into the cramped room as if he owned it. “And you must be the little cleaning girl who just shook the entire New York underworld to its foundations.”
