Chapter 1 - The Venom in the DiamondThe emergency room doors of St. Jude’s Private Hospital banged open with violent force.
Four armed men in tailored charcoal suits cleared the hallway, their hands resting ominously inside their jackets as hospital orderlies rushed a gurney down the corridor. On the mattress lay Skyler Gallagher, her two-hundred-and-forty-pound frame thrashing in the grip of a violent, uncontrollable seizure.
Her skin, usually pale and soft, had turned a terrifying shade of mottled ash-gray. Foam and dark blood bubbled at the corners of her mouth, and her breathing sounded like dry leather tearing in two.
Dominic Rossi walked beside the gurney, his white silk handkerchief still pressed firmly against the torn flesh of her cheek. His custom tuxedo jacket was ruined, drenched in her blood, but he didn't seem to notice. His ice-blue eyes were fixed entirely on the girl struggling for air beneath his hand.
“Get the chief of trauma!” Dominic roared, his voice rattling the glass windows of the triage station. “Now!”
Dr. Elizabeth Vance, a sharp forty-something trauma surgeon, intercepted the gurney, instantly snapping surgical gloves over her hands. “What happened? Was she shot?”
“A ring,” Dominic said, his jaw locked tight as iron. “She was struck with a platinum ring set with raw diamonds. The cheek was sliced open.”
Dr. Vance shined a penlight into Skyler’s eyes. Her pupils were blown, unequal, and fixed.
“This isn't trauma shock,” Dr. Vance stated sharply, cutting away Skyler’s bloody apron with a pair of shears. “She’s in full neurotoxic collapse. Pulse is a hundred and eighty, blood pressure is dropping through the floor. Get her into Bay Four! Start her on high-flow oxygen and run a full toxicology panel!”
Dominic was pushed back as the medical team wheeled Skyler into the trauma bay, the heavy lead-lined doors swinging shut behind them.
Standing in the quiet, sterile hallway, Dominic looked down at his right hand. It was stained dark with Skyler’s blood. His breath came in measured, dangerous intervals.
Five minutes later, his mother, Carmela Rossi, was brought into the private waiting area by two guards. The old woman was trembling uncontrollably, her eyes wide with terror, clutching her pearl rosary so tightly her knuckles were white.
“Dominic...” Carmela sobbed, reaching out for her son with frail hands. “Dominic, is she going to die? The sweet girl... she took the hit for me.”
Dominic knelt before his mother, taking her trembling hands into his own. For the first time in ten years, the icy, unyielding leader of the Rossi syndicate let his guard down, his voice softening into a low, fiercely protective whisper.
“She’s not going to die, Ma,” Dominic promised, though his own heart was hammering against his ribs. “I won't let her.”
The trauma bay door opened, and Dr. Vance pulled down her surgical mask. Her face was grim, carrying the heavy weight of a terrifying discovery.
Dominic stood up instantly. “What is it?”
“The cut on her face is clean, though it will require thirty stitches,” Dr. Vance said, looking directly into Dominic’s eyes. “But as I suspected, the laceration isn't what’s killing her. Something entered her bloodstream through the wound.”
“What kind of something?” Dominic demanded, his voice dropping into a register that made the floorboards seem to vibrate.
“A microscopic dose of Tetrodotoxin—a concentrated neurotoxin derived from pufferfish,” Dr. Vance revealed. “It was coated along the jagged edge of the diamond ring. The moment the stone sliced into her facial artery, the venom was pushed directly into her circulation. In ninety-nine percent of cases, it causes complete respiratory paralysis within fifteen minutes.”
Carmela gasped, covering her mouth in horror.
Dominic stood completely still. The silence in the hallway became absolute, heavy enough to crush steel.
A poison-coated ring.
This wasn't an impulsive, angry slap from a spoiled mafia heiress over a stained dress.
Bianca Moretti hadn't just brought that ring to the gala to look beautiful. She had come to the Rossi estate with a lethal weapon hidden on her finger, designed to deliver a subtle, untraceable poison through a scratch—a poison meant to look like a sudden, natural heart attack.
And Bianca hadn't been aiming for the maid.
She had been aiming for Carmela.
Dominic turned his head slowly toward his chief of security, Marco, who stood at the end of the hall.
“Marco,” Dominic said softly.
May you like
“Yes, Boss?”
“Lock down every exit of the Moretti estate in Long Island,” Dominic ordered, his voice terrifyingly calm, devoid of all human mercy. “Bring Bianca Moretti to the warehouse on Pier Forty-Two. If her father tries to step between you and her... burn the estate to the ground.”
