Chapter 1 - The Countdown in the Dark
Five nights earlier, my Bentley had crashed on the FDR after someone cut the brake line.
My driver, Nico, died at the scene. I woke in the ambulance with fractured ribs, blood coating my tongue, and one thought burning hotter than the pain: whoever wanted me dead knew exactly where I would be.
“Tell them I’m gone inside,” I ordered my private physician, Dr. Samuel Vance.
By sunrise, New York believed Dominic Moretti was comatose.
My injuries were real.
The coma wasn’t.
For five days, I lay motionless in a private Manhattan hospital suite while people I had trusted began circling my bed like vultures.
My consigliere cried beside the window. My cousin Anthony discussed “modernizing the family,” while a politician whose career I had built promised his support for a transition.
Even my lawyer calmly discussed emergency control of my trusts and offshore accounts.
I wanted to open my eyes and destroy them all.
Instead, I endured.
Then Veronica arrived.
Whenever nurses were watching, my fiancée performed grief like an actress chasing an Oscar. Black silk. No lipstick. One perfectly timed tear sliding down her cheek.
But alone with me, she became someone else.
“You should’ve signed everything over when I asked,” she hissed.
The next day, she called me an old man.
I was forty-six.
Then came the fifth afternoon.
Her perfume—expensive, sickly sweet gardenia—reached me before her breath touched my ear.
“Die before Friday, Dominic,” she whispered. “The money moves faster when you stop breathing.”
Every muscle in my body screamed for me to grab her throat.
I stayed still.
Three minutes after she left, softer footsteps entered.
“Mr. Moretti?”
Grace Miller.
She had cleaned my penthouse for six months. Quiet. Invisible. The kind of woman people like Veronica spoke around because they never considered her important enough to notice.
Grace replaced the white lilies beside my bed.
“I hate these things,” she murmured. “They smell like a funeral home pretending to be a wedding.”
I nearly smiled.
Then she pulled my blanket over my shoulder, not because anyone was watching, but because she thought I might be cold.
“I heard her,” Grace whispered.
My heartbeat sharpened.
“I heard Miss Hale yesterday too. She said grief is only useful if someone photographs it.”
Grace swallowed.
“People like me get paid to pretend we don’t hear things.”
She moved closer.
“But what she said just now wasn’t grief.”
Her voice trembled.
“That was a countdown.”
Silence swallowed the room.
“I think they’re planning to finish what the crash didn’t.”
Her fingers brushed mine beneath the blanket.
I moved my smallest finger.
Grace froze.
Her breath caught as I slowly opened my eyes.
Her face turned white.
Before she could scream, I forced out the first words I had spoken in five days.
“Lock the door.”
Grace’s hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide as saucers as she backed away from the bed. For a second, I thought she might panic and run out into the corridor. But instead, she turned on her heel, glided silently toward the heavy wooden door, and turned the deadbolt until it clicked into place.
She rushed back to the bedside, trembling, her hands clutching her white cleaning apron. "Mr. Moretti... you're... you're awake."
"I was never asleep, Grace," I rasped, my throat raw from disuse. I winced as I forced myself to sit up, the cracked ribs beneath my bandages throbbing with dull, blinding agony. "Help me pull this IV line out."
"Should I call Dr. Vance?" she whispered urgently, her hands hovering over the medical apparatus.
"Dr. Vance is the only reason I'm alive, but if anyone else in this building sees me sitting up, I won't survive until midnight," I said, reaching down to pull the medical tape from my wrist. "Veronica said Friday. Today is Wednesday. That gives us less than forty-eight hours."
Grace stared at me, her mind clearly racing. She wasn't just a maid; I could see the sharp, calculating intelligence behind her quiet brown eyes—an intelligence that my fiancée and my greedy relatives had completely overlooked.
"Why would she say Friday?" Grace asked, her voice dropping lower. "What happens on Friday?"
"Friday is the quarterly board meeting for Moretti Enterprises," I answered, leaning back against the pillows to catch my breath. "If I am declared dead or permanently incapacitated before noon on Friday, my cousin Anthony and Veronica can execute the emergency proxy clause in my living trust. They take control of sixty percent of the voting shares."
"And the crash on the FDR?"
"Nico took my car to the mechanic on Monday morning," I said, my jaw tightening as a wave of cold fury washed over me. "The only person who had access to my private garage besides me was Veronica."
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Grace swallowed hard, looking toward the locked door. "They think you're defenseless, Mr. Moretti."
"I am defenseless," I corrected her, looking up at her steady, unblinking eyes. "Unless the woman everyone treats like furniture decides to help me stand up."
