Chapter 4 - The House of Cards
Dominic Costello’s office was a room of secrets, but it wasn't enough. Fiona knew she needed to get into the central server room. If someone was controlling the cameras and the staff, they were doing it from inside the mansion.
She spent the next forty-eight hours playing the role of the devoted nurse, but beneath the surface, she was mapping the mansion's infrastructure. She discovered that the "housekeeper," the one who had warned her, was the key.
She caught the woman, Elena, in the kitchen while the guards were busy with a delivery.
"Your daughter," Fiona said, cornering her. "I know about the threats. But if we don't stop whoever is doing this, they will kill Arthur, and then they will kill you and your daughter anyway. They don't leave witnesses."
Elena began to sob. "It's the Chief of Security. Marcus. He’s been siphoning money from the freight lines for years. Dominic found out, and he was going to kill him. Marcus decided to kill Dominic’s legacy first. He’s been poisoning Arthur to drive Dominic into a state of paranoia and weakness, so he can stage a coup."
Fiona felt a cold clarity. The pieces clicked into place. The needles, the fake symptoms, the flickering cameras—it was a coup by a slow, agonizing assassination.
"We have to get to Dominic," Fiona said.
"He won't believe you," Elena warned. "He trusts Marcus more than his own blood."
"Then we don't tell him with words," Fiona said. "We show him."
She spent the night rigging a portable heart-rate monitor to the security system’s main hub. She knew that when Marcus entered the room to ‘check’ on the boy, the alarm would trigger in the main command center.
It was a trap.
At 3:00 AM, the alarm blared through the house. Fiona stood in the hall, holding a syringe filled with a sedative, waiting.
Marcus rounded the corner, his hand on his sidearm. He stopped when he saw Fiona standing alone in the hallway.
"What is this, nurse?" he sneered.
"It's the end of your shift, Marcus."
He pulled his gun, but before he could aim, a heavy shadow stepped out from behind the velvet curtains. Dominic Costello. He wasn't wearing his suit. He was holding a suppressed pistol, and his eyes were no longer wounded. They were arctic cold.
"You were always my best hand, Marcus," Dominic said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "I treated you like a brother. And you chose to break my heart by trying to kill my son."
"He was soft, Dominic!" Marcus shouted, his face contorting. "You got soft! You started caring about the kid instead of the business!"
"I cared about him because he’s all I have," Dominic replied.
He didn't hesitate. One shot. A clean, clinical sound. Marcus dropped to the floor, dead before he hit the carpet.
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Dominic turned to Fiona. He looked at her not as a nurse, but as an equal. "How did you know?"
"I'm a trauma nurse, Mr. Costello," she said, her hands steady. "I’m very good at identifying the source of the pain."
