Chapter 6 - The Poison Inside the HouseDr. Elias Vane had treated Isabella for fourteen years.
One second, she was crouched beside Isabella.
The next, she threw her entire body across the younger woman and drove them both behind a metal medication cart.
The gun fired.
The bullet struck the wall where Isabella’s head had been.
Alessandro turned.
His weapon appeared so quickly that Hattie barely registered it.
Two shots.
The fake orderly collapsed.
Nurses screamed.
Alessandro crossed the hallway with terrifying calm and kicked the gun away.
“Alive?” Marco shouted.
“Barely.”
“Good.”
Isabella clung to Hattie.
“Are you hurt?”
Hattie checked herself.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Isabella was sobbing.
Not elegantly.
Not quietly.
She buried her face against Hattie’s shoulder like a terrified child.
Alessandro stared at them.
Then something in his expression changed.
Fear.
Gratitude.
And guilt.
He knelt.
“Bella.”
She looked up.
He touched her face.
“I’m getting you out of here.”
“What about Lorraine?”
Marco answered.
“She’ll be moved under protection.”
Hattie shook her head.
“I’m staying with my sister.”
“No,” Alessandro said.
Hattie looked at him.
“Excuse me?”
“Whoever ordered this knows you’re involved now.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
“That’s not your decision.”
“They photographed your apartment five years ago. They threatened Lorraine with your life.”
His voice softened.
“You’re in this whether you like it or not.”
Hattie hated that he was right.
Within an hour, Lorraine was transferred to a private secure facility operated through one of Alessandro’s legitimate companies.
Hattie, Isabella, and Alessandro were driven to another Ventresca property outside the city.
It was less a house than a fortress disguised as a lakeside estate.
No staff except four trusted security people.
No deliveries.
No outside contact.
Isabella hated it.
“I’m not hiding.”
“Yes, you are,” Alessandro said.
“I’m twenty-one.”
“And alive.”
“I have friends.”
“You have a contract on your head.”
She slammed her fist against the kitchen island.
“This is exactly why Mom didn’t trust you!”
Alessandro went still.
Hattie closed her eyes.
Wrong sentence.
Isabella realized it too late.
Her father walked out.
That evening, Hattie found him sitting alone on the dock.
The lake was black beneath the moon.
“You know,” she said, “for a terrifying criminal mastermind, you sulk impressively.”
He looked at her.
“Did you come here to insult me?”
“Mostly.”
She sat beside him.
For a while neither spoke.
Then Alessandro said, “I failed Elena.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have.”
“That again?”
“I controlled security. I controlled the businesses. I controlled the people around us.”
“And yet you couldn’t control your wife.”
His eyes narrowed.
“She wasn’t property.”
“Exactly.”
Hattie looked across the lake.
“She made decisions without telling you.”
“Decisions that got her killed.”
“Maybe she thought telling you would get you killed too.”
That possibility stopped him.
Hattie continued.
“People keep secrets for complicated reasons.”
“Do you?”
She smiled faintly.
“Everybody does.”
“What’s yours?”
“Nice try.”
A quiet laugh escaped him.
Inside the house, Isabella watched them through the window.
For reasons she didn’t understand, seeing Hattie make her father laugh bothered her.
Maybe because Elena had been the last person capable of doing it.
Maybe because Hattie was becoming important too quickly.
The following morning, they traveled under heavy security to the Newark storage facility.
The code from Elena’s pendant opened Unit 317.
Inside sat an old leather suitcase.
Nothing else.
Alessandro opened it.
Documents.
Photographs.
Financial ledgers.
A flash drive.
And a sealed envelope addressed to Isabella.
Her hands shook as she opened it.
My darling Bella,
If you are reading this, then I failed to come home.
Isabella stopped.
“I can’t.”
Hattie took her hand.
“You don’t have to read it now.”
“Yes, I do.”
She continued.
Never believe that your father stopped loving us. His world is dangerous, but his love for you is not. I kept these secrets because there were people close to him I could not identify, and I was afraid warning him too soon would expose what I had discovered.
Alessandro turned away.
Isabella’s voice trembled.
If fear makes you hard, fight it. If grief makes you cruel, fight that too. Pain can explain what we become, sweetheart, but it cannot excuse everything we do.
Isabella began crying.
Hattie squeezed her hand.
The final lines were worse.
There may come a day when someone kind enters your life and you want to push them away because losing people has taught you that love is dangerous.
Do not make my mistake.
Trust carefully.
But do not stop trusting completely.
Love,
Mom.
Isabella lowered the letter.
Nobody spoke.
Then Marco, who had been examining the financial records, swore under his breath.
Alessandro looked at him.
“What?”
Marco held up a document.
“Vincent wasn’t working alone.”
“Who?”
Marco’s face looked sick.
“The accounts are co-signed.”
“By whom?”
Marco turned the page.
The name printed there belonged to someone who had been inside the Ventresca family since before Isabella was born.
Someone Alessandro had trusted with his wife.
His daughter.
His entire home.
Marco whispered the name.
“Dr. Elias Vane.”
Isabella went pale.
Her personal physician.
The man who had treated her allergies since childhood.
The man who had been standing beside her hospital bed after the first attack.
May you like
And suddenly Hattie understood something that made her blood run cold.
“The doctor knew exactly what could kill her.”
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