Chapter 10 - THE HOSPITAL ID
Chicago General Hospital was quiet at 2:00 AM.
The VIP suite on the top floor smelled of expensive lilies and antiseptic.
My father, Thomas Reed, lay in the large bed, hooked up to a series of monitors.
His left side was paralyzed, but his right eye opened when we walked into the room.
He saw me first. He smiled weakly.
Then he saw Luca.
My father’s breath hitched. He tried to sit up, panic flashing in his eyes.
“It’s okay, Dad,” I rushed to his side, taking his good hand. “He knows everything. He knows you tried to save her.”
Luca walked to the side of the bed.
He looked down at the man who had carried the weight of his wife’s death for seven years.
Luca gently placed his hand over my father’s.
“You’re a good man, Thomas,” Luca said, his voice thick with emotion. “You kept my wife’s secret. You protected her legacy. You are family.”
My father closed his eyes, a single tear slipping down his weathered face. The heavy burden he had carried for so long finally lifted.
Anna and Matteo stepped forward, thanking the man who had tried to save their mother.
It was a moment of profound, quiet healing.
But as I adjusted my father’s blanket, my hand brushed against something hard in his hospital gown pocket.
I frowned.
I reached in and pulled it out.
It was a plastic hospital ID badge.
But it didn’t belong to a nurse or a doctor.
It belonged to my father.
Thomas Reed - Maintenance Supervisor - Chicago General.
“Dad?” I asked, confused. “Why do you have a hospital badge? You work at the auto shop.”
My father opened his eyes. He looked at the badge, then at Luca.
“I lied,” my father rasped, his voice weak but urgent.
“About what?” Luca asked.
“I haven’t worked at the auto shop in five years,” my father confessed. “I took a night job here. As a janitor.”
I stared at him. “Why? Dad, you had the fifty thousand dollars hidden away. Why would you work nights scrubbing floors?”
My father looked at Anna.
Anna, who was a nurse.
Who worked in this exact hospital.
“Because she worked here,” my father whispered, pointing a shaky finger at Anna.
Anna’s eyes went wide.
“You were watching over her,” Luca realized, the truth hitting him hard.
My father nodded.
“Victor’s men were always circling,” my father coughed. “They knew Anna worked the night shift. I couldn’t protect her during the day, but at night… I made sure nobody got off the elevator on her floor who didn’t belong there.”
Anna covered her mouth, tears welling in her eyes.
This broken, paralyzed mechanic had spent the last five years secretly guarding the mafia boss’s daughter.
“Three weeks ago,” my father continued, his breathing labored. “I saw Vanessa Bellini on Anna’s floor.”
Luca went perfectly still. “Vanessa was here?”
“She was paying off the floor manager,” my father said. “She wanted Anna transferred to the East Wing. The psychiatric ward. She was going to have Anna discredited so you would institutionalize her, Luca.”
Vanessa’s cruelty knew absolutely no bounds.
“I intervened,” my father said. “I stole the transfer paperwork from the manager’s office and shredded it. That’s why Vanessa’s plan failed.”
“And the stroke?” Anna asked gently, stepping closer.
My father looked down.
“It wasn’t a stroke,” he whispered.
The monitors beeped steadily in the silent room.
“Vanessa’s men caught me shredding the papers,” my father said. “They beat me in the boiler room. They injected me with a heavy neurotoxin to make it look like a stroke. They thought I would die quietly in this bed.”
Luca’s eyes turned absolutely lethal.
He had spared Vanessa’s life earlier, handing her over to the Commission.
But this? This was personal.
Before Luca could speak, his phone buzzed.
He answered it. Listened for three seconds.
“I see,” Luca said coldly. He hung up.
He looked at us.
“Vanessa escaped the Commission’s transport,” Luca said. “She’s running.”
“Where would she go?” Matteo asked.
Luca looked at the hospital badge in my hand.
“She doesn’t have money. She doesn’t have her father. She only has one thing left.”
May you like
Luca turned toward the door.
“She’s coming here to finish the job.”
