Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN BED FOUR
The rain began to fall in sheets as our convoy cut through the neon-lit gloom of downtown Chicago.
I sat in the back of the reinforced Yukon between Mrs. Carter and the window, holding a clean linen napkin against the elderly woman's wounded wrists. Beside us in the leather seat sat Luca. He hadn't said a single word since we left the mansion. His jaw was set like granite, his gaze fixed on the wet asphalt blurring past outside. In his right hand, he held the tiny, yellowed photograph of the young woman holding the newborn baby outside the brick hospital.
His thumb gently traced the faded ink on the back: *June 14.*
“She was so pretty, Lu,” Mrs. Carter whispered into the quiet hum of the engine, her voice raspy from crying. “When she came to the kitchen door yesterday… her hair had turned gray, and she was thin as a reed, but she had your eyes. The exact same green. Like the sea in winter.”
Luca’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, but he kept his eyes on the window. “Why didn't Giovanni tell me, Martha? When he was dying… when I sat beside his bed for three weeks… why did he let me believe she died of fever when I was two?”
Mrs. Carter reached out with a trembling, bandaged hand and laid it over Luca’s knuckles.
“Because Giovanni loved you too much, sweetheart,” she whispered gently. “He was a hard man in a brutal world, but from the moment he held you in that blue blanket, you were his world. He was terrified that if you knew Salvatore had sold you, you would look at Giovanni with hatred for being the buyer. He took the secret to his grave to protect your pride.”
A single, silent tear broke free from Luca’s eye, tracking down the sharp ridge of his cheekbone before he wiped it away with the back of his sleeve. He glanced sideways, noticing me watching him in the dim interior light.
I immediately lowered my eyes, my cheeks warming with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Mr. Moretti. I didn't mean to stare.”
“You’re still here, Olivia,” Luca said, his voice surprisingly gentle amidst the wreckage of his evening.
I looked back up. “Sir?”
“You could have run,” he murmured, studying my face with an intensity that made my stomach flutter. “When Vanessa threatened you. When Salvatore pointed his cane at you. Any sane person in your position would have stripped off their apron and fled into the night. You earn eighteen dollars an hour to dust my books. Why did you stay?”
I swallowed hard, feeling the rough texture of my uniform against my collarbones.
“Because nobody should be tied up like an animal in their own home,” I answered honestly, meeting his gaze. “And because Mrs. Carter has made me hot tea every morning since my mother had her surgery. In this house, Mr. Moretti, people talk about loyalty like it’s a currency you trade with guns and money. But Mrs. Carter gave me kindness when nobody was looking. I wasn't going to let them break her wrists for a lie.”
Luca stared at me. For a long moment, the ruthless syndicate boss disappeared completely, replaced by a man looking at something rare and incomprehensible.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
Before I could reply, the Yukon banked hard to the left, tires hissing on the slick pavement as we entered the emergency ambulance bay of St. Catherine’s Medical Center.
The hospital was an ancient, sprawling brick structure on the south side of the city, its red neon emergency sign buzzing fitfully against the downpour. Daniel, who was driving the lead escort vehicle, had already deployed eight armed guards in plain clothes across the perimeter by the time Luca opened the door.
“Stay close to me,” Luca instructed, offering his hand to Mrs. Carter to help her down from the high vehicle. When she was steady on her feet, he turned and extended the same hand to me.
His fingers were warm, rough, and remarkably steady despite the chaos in his chest. As my smaller hand rested in his, a sudden jolt of electricity raced up my forearm, causing my breath to catch. He held my hand just a second longer than necessary before releasing it, guiding Mrs. Carter and me toward the double glass doors.
Inside, the hospital smelled of bleach, stale coffee, and industrial antiseptic. The emergency waiting room was half-empty—a few weary mothers with coughing toddlers, an elderly man with a bandaged arm—all of whom shrank back as Luca swept through the entrance flanked by four towering security operatives.
A nurse at the intake desk stood up, alarmed. “Sir! You cannot bring armed personnel into this wing—”
Luca pulled a gold clip from his interior pocket, tossed a heavy black credentials folder onto the counter, and leaned forward. “My name is Luca Moretti. Eleanor Hayes was admitted here at four forty-seven. Which room?”
The nurse looked down at the name on the card, her eyes widening as she recognized the surname that held sway over half the commercial real estate and political offices in Cook County. She swallowed hard, typing furiously on her terminal.
“Intensive Care, fourth floor,” she stammered, her voice dropping. “Bed four. But sir, the attending physician said she’s in critical condition. She had a massive pulmonary embolism upon arrival. She’s on high-flow oxygen.”
Luca didn't wait for the rest of the sentence. He turned toward the elevators, Daniel pressing the call button ahead of him.
The ride up to the fourth floor felt like an eternity. The mechanical ding of each passing level seemed to echo the ticking clock of a woman’s failing life. When the elevator doors finally parted, the hushed, sterile atmosphere of the ICU greeted us with the rhythmic, haunting beeps of heart monitors and the rhythmic hiss of ventilators.
A young doctor with dark circles under his eyes stepped out of an alcove, holding a clipboard. “Mr. Moretti?”
“Is she alive?” Luca demanded, his voice raw.
“Barely,” the doctor said bluntly. “She suffered an acute respiratory collapse on the way here. Her driver dropped her at the curb and sped off. If the EMTs hadn't found her within two minutes, she would have died on the concrete.”
A violent muscle twitched in Luca’s jaw. The driver was Vanessa’s personal chauffeur. Another score that would have to be settled in blood.
“Can she talk?” Luca asked.
“She regained consciousness twenty minutes ago,” the doctor replied, motioning toward a glass partition at the end of the hall. “She refused a sedative. She kept repeating that she was waiting for someone. She said if she went to sleep, she would never wake up to see him.”
Luca stopped walking. For a brief second, his knees seemed to buckle. He reached out, his hand catching the doorframe of Bed Four to steady himself.
Through the glass, the scene was agonizingly fragile.
A frail woman lay beneath a thin hospital blanket. Her skin was translucent, pale as winter milk, mapped with blue veins. Silver hair was fanned out across the white pillow. A clear plastic mask covered her nose and mouth, misting rhythmically with every shallow, agonizing breath she drew.
On the bedside chair sat a small, battered blue suitcase with peeling leather corners.
Luca took a deep, shuddering breath. He straightened his tie, smoothed his suit jacket, and slowly pushed open the heavy door.
Mrs. Carter and I remained in the doorway, giving him his space, while Daniel stood guard in the corridor with his back turned to ensure their privacy.
Luca took three slow steps into the room. The soles of his leather shoes squeaked softly against the linoleum.
The woman’s eyelids fluttered open at the sound.
Her eyes were sunken, shadowed by dark violet hollows, but the moment they found Luca’s face, they flared with a light so brilliant, so utterly incandescent, that it seemed to defy the failing machinery around her.
Green.
Mrs. Carter had been right. They were the exact, piercing emerald-green of Luca’s eyes.
“Eleanor,” Luca whispered, the name tasting entirely foreign on his tongue.
A weak, muffled sound came from beneath the oxygen mask. Her frail, trembling hand lifted an inch from the mattress, searching the empty air.
Luca didn't hesitate. He fell to his knees beside the hospital bed, dropping his head against the edge of the mattress, and clasped her cold, paper-thin hand between both of his large palms.
“I’m here,” he choked out, his voice fracturing into open tears. “I’m here. I’m Luca. I’m your boy.”
A tear slid from the corner of Eleanor’s left eye, soaking into the fabric of her pillow. With agonizing slowness, her trembling fingers reached up and tapped against the plastic edge of her oxygen mask, begging him to pull it down.
“No, ma'am, you need the oxygen—” I started softly from the doorway, out of medical instinct.
“Let her, Olivia,” Mrs. Carter whispered gently, holding my arm with tearful reverence. “Let a mother speak to her son.”
Luca carefully reached up with one hand and slipped the elastic band, lowering the mask so it rested around her neck.
Eleanor took a shallow, rattling gasp of air. Her voice was barely more than a dry rustle of leaves, but every syllable carried the weight of four decades of longing.
“Luca…” she breathed, her trembling fingers touching his cheek, tracing the line of his jaw, feeling the warmth of his skin as if trying to prove to her dying mind that he was real. “You… you have his chin. But you have my eyes.”
“I’m sorry,” Luca wept openly, pressing his face into the palm of her hand. “I’m so sorry. I didn't know. They hid your letters. They threw them away. If I had known, I would have searched the earth for you.”
Eleanor smiled through her tears, shaking her head weakly.
“I know, my baby,” she whispered, her chest heaving with the effort. “I never… I never blamed you. When Salvatore ripped you from my arms in that basement clinic… he told me he would put a bullet in your cradle if I ever crossed the river. I had to let Giovanni take you… to keep you alive.”
Luca squeezed her hand, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs. “He’s in my cellar right now. Salvatore will never hurt you again. I swear it on my life.”
Eleanor’s eyes widened slightly with sudden, desperate urgency. Her fingers tightened around Luca’s thumb with shocking strength.
“No… Luca, listen to me,” she gasped, her heart monitor speeding up in an erratic, warning rhythm. “The suitcase… open the suitcase.”
Luca frowned through his tears, looking toward the battered blue case on the chair. “Mother, rest. We have time—”
“No time!” Eleanor gasped, her breath catching in her throat. “Salvatore… he didn't just come to your house for the wedding. He came because he knows… knows what’s inside.”
I stepped forward into the room, drawn by the terror in the dying woman's eyes. “What is inside, Mrs. Hayes?”
Eleanor looked at me, her green eyes piercing through my uniform. “The ledger. Giovanni’s real ledger. The night Giovanni took my baby… he made Salvatore sign a blood confession. Salvatore… Salvatore didn't just sell Luca. He murdered Luca’s real grandfather to take the Bellini seat thirty-nine years ago. If the Commission sees that ledger… Salvatore is dead.”
Suddenly, the red lights above the door began to flash violently.
The heart monitor let out a long, terrifying, continuous beep.
Eleanor’s hand went limp in Luca’s grip. Her eyes rolled backward, her chest seizing as alarms blared across the entire fourth-floor nurses' station.
“Doctor!” I screamed, stepping into the hallway. “We need help! She’s arresting!”
Doctors and crash-cart nurses poured into the room, pushing Luca away from the bedside. “Sir, step back! Clear the room! Get the defibrillator ready! Charge to one-fifty!”
Luca stood frozen, his eyes locked on his mother’s lifeless face as the medical team swarmed her.
“Luca!” I yelled, grabbing his sleeve and pulling him back toward the door to give the doctors room to work. “Luca, move!”
He stumbled backward into the corridor like a blind man, his hands still covered in the faint dust of his mother’s skin.
Just as the nurses charged the paddles for a second shock, the corridor lights suddenly flickered.
Once.
Twice.
May you like
Then, with a deafening pop from the electrical circuit at the end of the hall, the entire fourth floor plunged into pitch-black darkness.
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