Chapter 7 - The Nursing Student Who Recognized a Second Poison

Rosa’s recovery should have become easier once she left the hospital.

Instead, on the third night at the safe house, she collapsed at dinner.

Her fork struck the plate.

Sadie was beside her before Dominic had reached the table.

Rosa’s skin was gray. Her pulse was fast and irregular. She tried to speak but could not form the words.

“Call an ambulance,” Sadie said.

Dominic’s private physician was already in the building. He arrived within two minutes with oxygen and a portable monitor. Rosa’s rhythm was unstable, but her blood pressure remained high enough that he hesitated before administering medication.

Sadie looked at the water glass near Rosa’s plate.

“Don’t give her anything yet.”

The doctor bristled. “Miss Brooks—”

“What medication did she take before dinner?”

“Only her prescribed beta blocker.”

“Who gave it to her?”

A house nurse stepped forward. “I did.”

Sadie turned to the pill organizer on the counter.

The tablets in Rosa’s evening compartment were white, oval, and scored.

The pharmacy bottle beside them contained round tablets.

Sadie’s chest tightened.

“Those aren’t the same.”

The physician grabbed the organizer.

He checked the imprint code.

His face changed.

“This is flecainide.”

Dominic looked at him. “Meaning?”

“At her age and with her current condition, a large dose can provoke dangerous arrhythmias.”

“How much?”

The physician counted the remaining pills.

“Enough to kill her.”

The ambulance arrived under armed escort.

Rosa stabilized on the way to a private cardiac unit, but Dominic did not leave the safe house immediately. He stood in the kitchen staring at the medication organizer as if it were an enemy he could intimidate into speaking.

Only six people had access to the residence.

Dominic.

Carmine.

Two guards.

The physician.

The nurse.

And Rosa.

The nurse was searched and questioned. Her background was clean. The physician had worked for the Castile family for twelve years.

Sadie examined the medication drawer.

“Someone wanted this to look like an error,” she said.

Carmine nodded. “Same as the hospital.”

“No. Better than the hospital. At the hospital they needed fake credentials. Here they needed access to your house.”

Dominic turned to the guards.

“Security logs.”

One guard brought up the digital entry system.

No unauthorized person had entered.

Then Sadie noticed something.

“Why does that door say service access?”

The display showed a side entrance opening for eleven seconds at 5:42 p.m.

Carmine frowned. “Catering delivery.”

“There was no catering,” Sadie said. “I cooked.”

Everyone looked at her.

“You made that soup?” Dominic asked.

“This is not the time.”

Carmine enlarged the log.

The credential used belonged to his own deputy, Nathan Cole.

Nathan had been with the family for nine years.

Dominic’s face closed.

“Where is he?”

No one knew.

They found his phone in a security locker and his apartment empty.

Inside the apartment, investigators discovered thirty thousand dollars in cash and a photograph of Sadie clipped from traffic-camera footage.

On the back was an instruction in black ink.

IF SHE IDENTIFIES VALE, REMOVE HER.

Sadie stared at it.

The handwriting did not match the messages on Bellini’s burner. But the phrasing did.

Witnesses were not people to whoever ran this operation.

They were problems to be removed.

Dominic took the photograph from her.

“You’re leaving Chicago.”

“No.”

“This is not a discussion.”

“It became one the moment someone put my face on a kill order.”

“Exactly.”

Sadie’s temper flared. “You think sending me somewhere else makes me invisible again? Whoever this is found my apartment within hours. They found your mother in a hospital and in your safe house.”

“I have properties outside the state.”

“And they have people inside your organization.”

Dominic stepped closer. “You do not understand what happens when men like this become desperate.”

“I understand perfectly. They burn houses with sleeping women inside.”

His jaw tightened.

Sadie lowered her voice. “Running only works if I can run farther than your leak can reach.”

Carmine entered before Dominic could answer.

“We found Nathan.”

“Alive?”

“No.”

Sadie closed her eyes.

“Where?”

“Parking garage near Midway. Looks like suicide.”

“Looks like,” Dominic repeated.

Carmine placed a clear evidence sleeve on the table.

Inside was a handwritten note.

Nathan claimed responsibility for the fire, the sniper, the hospital poisoning, and the safe-house medication.

A complete confession.

Too complete.

Sadie read it twice.

Then she pointed at one line.

“He says he used Vale to pour accelerant through the kitchen door.”

Dominic looked at her.

“The fire marshal said it was poured through the mail slot and along the foundation.”

Carmine’s face hardened.

Nathan’s confession contained a mistake only the real planners would know.

He had not written it.

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Someone had killed him and tried to close the entire case with a lie.

Dominic folded Nathan’s forged confession and placed it beside the medication bottle. Two attempts on Rosa’s life had been disguised as accidents, and now a dead guard had been disguised as the mastermind. The pattern was no longer subtle. Whoever stood behind it wanted Dominic to stop investigating precisely when the evidence reached the people closest to him.