SHE LOCKED US IN WITH A MONSTER

The heavy brass lock clicked with a sound that felt as loud as a gunshot.

Rosa DeLuca took a step back from the hospital door, her frail hands trembling as she dropped the key into her black leather purse.

Paul slammed his fist against the wood.

“Grandma, open the door!”

He stepped toward her, his face flushed with a sudden, violent panic. But Daniel moved faster. He grabbed his older brother’s arm, pulling him back.

“Don’t touch her,” Daniel snapped.

Salvatore was sitting up in the hospital bed, the color completely drained from his face. The monitors tracking his heart rate began to beep slightly faster.

“Ma,” Salvatore’s voice was a low, dangerous rumble. “What are you doing?”

Rosa didn’t look at her son. She looked at Paul.

“Your guards are outside,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. “The men in the dark suits. The ones who drove us here.”

Paul’s jaw clenched. “They are Dad’s men.”

“No,” Rosa shook her head, tears finally spilling over her wrinkled cheeks. “They are your men, Paul. They have been for six months. Ever since you took over the payroll.”

I stood beside the bed, my clinical training warring with my survival instincts. I kept my hand on Salvatore’s wrist. His pulse was thready. Too fast.

“What is she talking about?” Salvatore asked, looking at his oldest son.

Paul held his hands up, trying to look perfectly innocent. “Dad, she’s confused. The stress of the ambulance, the video tape. Her mind is playing tricks on her.”

Rosa reached into her purse again.

She didn’t pull out a tissue.

She pulled out a small, empty plastic wrapper and threw it onto the foot of Salvatore’s bed.

It was the packaging for a transdermal medication patch. The exact same kind I had found hidden on Salvatore’s lower back three hours earlier.

“I put them on him,” Rosa cried, her voice echoing in the small room.

The entire room froze.

I looked at the eighty-one-year-old woman. “You? Why?”

“Because he was dying!” Rosa sobbed, pointing a shaking finger at Paul. “I saw Paul crushing pills into Salvatore’s soup three weeks ago. I saw him doing it in the kitchen when Maria wasn’t looking!”

Paul’s face went completely blank. The mask of the concerned son vanished, replaced by something cold and terrifying.

“You’re insane, old woman,” Paul said flatly.

Salvatore tried to push himself out of the bed. The IV line pulled taut against his arm. I grabbed his shoulder to hold him down, but his strength was terrifying.

“You poisoned me?” Salvatore roared, the sound rattling the windows.

Daniel stepped in front of his brother. “Dad, calm down. Your heart—”

“Don’t you speak to me!” Salvatore barked.

I looked at the wrapper on the bed, then at Rosa. “If Paul was poisoning him, what are the patches? Where did you get them?”

Rosa wiped her face. “From Anthony.”

The name sucked the remaining oxygen out of the room.

“Anthony gave them to me,” Rosa continued, her voice dropping to a whisper. “He said Paul was using a slow-acting neurotoxin. He said the patches would counteract it. But they had to be hidden.”

I looked at the IV bag dripping clear fluid into Salvatore’s vein.

If Paul had taken over the security.

If Paul had been the one to arrange this specific private hospital suite.

My blood ran cold.

I didn’t ask for permission. I reached up and ripped the IV tube out of the machine, unclipping it from Salvatore’s arm with one swift motion.

“Hey!” Paul shouted, lunging toward me.

Before he could reach me, the bathroom door adjoining the hospital suite swung open.

A woman stood in the doorway.