Chapter 2 - The Poison in the Diamond
Helena March stopped dead in her tracks, her high heels clicking sharply against the wet tile.
She was thirty years old, dressed in a black silk trench coat, her blonde hair swept up in a flawless chignon. Her face was a masterwork of surgical perfection, her lips painted a dark, blood-red hue. In her hand she held a crocodile-skin clutch, and on her left finger, the thirty-carat diamond Cassian had given her three months ago sparkled like ice.
Beside her stood Lucien Vale—Cassian’s thirty-two-year-old half-brother. He wore a navy double-breasted suit, his thin moustache slicked with wax, his eyes constantly moving like those of a man checking for exits.
"What are you doing in here?" Helena snapped, her voice dripping with disgust as she looked at Nora’s faded yellow uniform. "Who allowed a cleaner into a private bereavement suite?"
Nora kept her head down, her hands tightly gripping her mop handle, using her body to block their view of the bed.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," Nora said, making her voice sound high, uneducated, and trembling with fake nervousness. "The head nurse told me to scrub the floor before the coroner arrives. I was just leaving."
Lucien stepped past Helena, pushing his way into the room. He looked at the silent, dark heart monitor, then glanced at the still shape under the white blanket on the bed.
"Is he... still flat?" Lucien asked, his voice tight with anticipation.
"Yes, sir," Nora mumbled, backing toward her cleaning cart. "The doctors said he passed ten minutes ago. I didn't touch anything."
Lucien let out a long, slow breath that looked like pure relief. He reached into his suit jacket, pulled out a thick gold pen, and signed a document clipped to a legal folder he was carrying.
"Get out," Helena ordered Nora, pointing a red-nailed finger toward the door. "And take that noisy brat with you. Why is there a child in a hospital at midnight anyway?"
Maisie buried her face in Nora’s neck, clutching her teddy bear tightly against her chest. Barnaby’s mechanical heart was silent now, its spring fully run down.
"Yes, ma'am. Right away, ma'am," Nora whispered.
She grabbed her mop bucket, pushed her cart out into the corridor, and walked as fast as her legs could carry her toward the service elevators at the back of the building.
The moment the elevator doors slid shut, Nora leaned against the metal wall, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
"Mommy," Maisie whispered, looking up at her with big, wide brown eyes. "Is the man going to be okay?"
Nora reached into her apron pocket, pulling out the small plastic IV bag she had stolen from the room. She looked at the chemical code printed on the side: T-42/Cardioplegic Suppressant.
This wasn't just a hospital mistake. This was a calculated, cold-blooded murder attempt executed by the two people Cassian Vale trusted most in the world.
Nora knew how the system worked in Chicago. If she went to the hospital security guards, they would report it straight to Lucien Vale—who sat on the hospital’s board of trustees. If she went to the police, she was an unemployed night cleaner making wild allegations against a multi-billion-dollar dynasty. They would label her crazy, take her daughter away, and finish Cassian off before morning.
The elevator doors opened onto the basement parking garage.
Nora didn't go to her beat-up sedan parked in the employee lot. She walked straight to the private VIP parking bay near the underground loading dock.
Parked in the far corner, illuminated by a single overhead fluorescent light, was a sleek, matte-black Maybach armored sedan.
Standing beside the driver's door was a massive man in a dark charcoal suit. He had a scarred jaw, a broken nose, and eyes like polished granite. His name was Vance—Cassian Vale’s personal bodyguard and former British Special Air Service operator. Vance was the only man in the city who never left Cassian’s side, but he had been ordered out of the hospital suite two hours ago by Lucien under the guise of an "emergency security sweep" at the corporate tower.
Nora walked straight up to him, holding Maisie in one arm and her cleaning rag in the other.
Vance’s hand instantly moved inside his suit jacket, his posture shifting into a lethal combat stance. "This is a restricted vehicle zone, miss. Step back."
Nora didn't step back. She pulled the plastic IV bag out of her pocket and held it out to him.
"Your boss isn't dead," Nora said, her voice dropping all pretense of fear, ringing with absolute, rock-hard clarity. "His brother and his fiancée are poisoning him with T-42 cardioplegic suppressants. They just turned off his heart monitor and they are waiting for the coroner to sign the death certificate so they can steal his empire."
Vance froze. His eyes darted from the IV bag in her hand to Nora's face, searching for any sign of a lie or a hustle.
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"Who the hell are you?" Vance demanded, his voice low and dangerous.
"I'm the cleaner," Nora said, stepping closer. "And if you don't get him out of that room in the next three minutes, you're going to be guarding a corpse."
