Chapter 4 - The Poisoned Needle
The realization crashed down on me like an avalanche.
The hospital director was dead.
The entire facility had been turned into a closed slaughterhouse before Ethan even collapsed on that playground.
"How did Moretti know Ethan existed?" I asked, my voice shaking with raw terror.
"I didn't tell a single soul."
"I moved three times."
"I used cash for everything."
Adrian looked at me, his gaze softening with an unbearable sadness.
"Moretti didn't find you, Clara," Adrian said softly.
"Someone inside my own family sold your location three days ago."
Before I could process the betrayal, the side door of the trauma room clicked open.
A female nurse wearing a sterile surgical mask rushed inside, holding a tray with two fresh saline bags.
"The central line is clotting!" she announced in a hurried, clinical tone.
"I need to clear the pediatric valve right now, or the transfusion will cause an air embolism!"
Adrian's eyes flickered toward her hands.
The nurse moved with practiced speed, reaching for the injection port closest to Ethan's neck.
She wasn't holding a heparin flush.
In her latex glove, concealed beneath a sterile gauze pad, was a pre-loaded glass syringe filled with milky white fluid.
"Stop," Adrian whispered.
The woman didn't stop; she lunged toward the IV line with blinding speed.
Adrian moved with the lethal reflexes that had kept him alive through a decade of mob wars.
Despite the thick needle still embedded in his forearm, he lunged across the bed and seized the woman’s wrist in an iron grip.
Bone cracked audibly beneath his fingers.
The syringe clattered onto the linoleum floor, shattering into glistening droplets.
The woman didn't scream; she kicked outward with military precision, aiming for Adrian's wounded arm.
Adrian roared, twisting her arm behind her back and slamming her face-down onto the stainless-steel instrument tray.
Instruments clattered wildly across the room.
Victor stepped forward, pressing the muzzle of his pistol against the back of the woman's skull.
Adrian ripped the surgical mask from her face.
It was not a hospital nurse.
Her left jaw was tattooed with the small, coiled serpent insignia of the Moretti death squad.
"Who paid you?" Adrian demanded, his voice shaking the glass partitions.
The woman sneered through bloody teeth, her eyes burning with fanatic devotion.
"Look closer to home, Blackwood," she choked out.
Before anyone could stop her, she bit down hard on her back molar.
A sharp chemical odor filled the air as cyanide took her life in less than three seconds.
Her body went completely limp on the floor.
Adrian let go of her lifeless collar and looked down at his own arm.
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The sudden, violent movement had ripped the transfusion line completely out of his vein.
Crimson blood sprayed across the sheets, and Ethan's heart monitor began emitting a long, continuous warning chime.
