flash
The video on the handyman’s phone was crisp, high-definition, and utterly devastating. / Chapter 5 / 6

Chapter 5 - THE FINAL GAMBIT

Sloan’s blood ran completely cold. She frantically opened the secure app that monitored her mother’s private ICU room.

The video feed showed the hospital bed. Her mother was there, breathing heavily under the ventilator. But sitting in the armchair right next to the bed, holding a small, silver syringe filled with a clear liquid, was Valentina Caruso.

The fifteen-year-old girl looked directly into the hospital security camera, smiling her trademark, psychotic smile. She held up a sign written on a piece of printer paper: RELEASE MY FATHER, OR SHE DIES NOW.

Valentina hadn't been at the cathedral. While her father was being walked into a trap, the teenage monster had gone straight for Sloan’s weakness.

Sloan spun around, grabbing the jacket of the lead FBI agent, Special Agent Miller. “My mother! Fallon’s daughter is in her room right now with a lethal dose of digitalis! You have to stop her!”

Miller immediately grabbed his radio. “All units, code red at St. Jude’s Memorial, Room 412! We have a hostage situation!”

“No!” Sloan screamed. “If she sees sirens, she’ll inject her! I have to go in alone. She wants me.”

Leo pulled up to the curb in his truck, having tracked Sloan’s GPS. Sloan didn't wait for the FBI. She bolted from the command center and threw herself into Leo’s passenger seat. “Hospital! Now! Valentina has my mom!”

Leo slammed on the gas, tires screeching as they tore through the city streets. “How did she even get past hospital security?”

“The Carusos own the board of directors,” Sloan said, her hands shaking violently as she loaded the copy of the ledger onto a flash drive she had kept in her pocket. “Valentina isn't just a spoiled brat, Leo. She’s her father’s daughter. She has his cruelty, but none of his restraint. She’ll kill my mom just out of spite.”

Ten minutes later, the truck slammed to a halt outside the hospital. Sloan ran through the lobby, ignoring the shouting security guards. She took the stairs three at a time, her heart pounding against her ribs.

When she reached the fourth floor, the hallway was eerily quiet. The nursing station was empty—likely cleared out by Caruso lackeys on the payroll.

Sloan pushed open the heavy door to Room 412.

Valentina didn't look up. She was calmly tapping the side of the silver syringe, removing the air bubbles.

“You’re late, Sloan,” Valentina said, her voice chillingly casual for a teenager. “Daddy always said punctuality is the mark of a good servant.”

“Put the syringe down, Valentina,” Sloan said, her voice tight, stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind her. “Your father is done. The FBI has him. The ledger is already in federal hands. Killing my mother won't save him.”

“Maybe not,” Valentina said, finally looking up, her eyes wide and chaotic. “But it will hurt you. You ruined my family. You made my father look weak on the internet. Do you know what happens to a mafia boss who looks weak? They kill him in jail. You killed my father, Sloan. So I’m going to kill your mother. It’s only fair.”

Valentina moved the needle closer to the IV line.

“Wait!” Sloan shouted, holding up the flash drive. “There’s a second ledger. The real one. The one I gave the FBI only had the murder charges for your mother, Elena. This drive contains the offshore bank accounts—over eighty million dollars that the feds don't know about. If you kill my mom, I destroy the drive, and you freeze to death in a foster home with zero dollars to your name. Take the drive, leave the country, and you can rebuild the Caruso name.”

Valentina paused. Greed flickered in her eyes, battling with her psychopathic desire for revenge. “Throw it on the bed.”

Sloan tossed the flash drive onto the white sheets.

Valentina reached for it with her left hand, keeping the syringe poised with her right.

But as Valentina’s attention shifted to the drive for a fraction of a second, Sloan didn't lung at her. Instead, she hit the emergency override switch on the wall next to the door—the one meant for cardiac arrest teams.

A deafening alarm blared through the room, and the automated privacy glass of the ICU window instantly shattered inward.

Leo swung through the broken window from the exterior window-washing platform he had hijacked, tackling Valentina to the floor. The syringe flew from her hand, smashing against the medical equipment.

Valentina screamed, fighting like a wild animal as Leo pinned her arms behind her back. “You bitch! I’ll kill you! I’ll hire someone to slice your throat!”

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The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure terminal on my desk flashed a violent crimson. I hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, my eyes burning from staring at columns of ghost figures, duplicate invoices, and shell corporations linked to Dominic Rossi. But the red alert wasn’t from Rossi’s faction. It was an internal security flag originating from the estate’s main vault deep beneath the west wing.

The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure ter...

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scattering the light from the chandeliers. The muffled laughter died instantly, replaced by a suffocating, heavy silence that crept outward from the grand staircase.

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scatter...

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking out the clinical, terrifying silence of the kitchen. Evelyn Crane stood stiffly in front of my mahogany desk, her hands folded over her apron with the rigid precision of someone who had spent decades micromanaging every square inch of my estate. Behind her, Norah hovered near the doorway, clutching her clipboard like a shield.

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking...

Sloan walked over, picking up the silver syringe from the floor. She looked down at the hysterical teenage girl.

“The police are downstairs, Valentina,” Sloan said quietly. “And unlike your dinner party, this time, everyone is watching.”

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