Chapter 3 - THE PRICE OF A HEART
Table of Contents 6
Adrian wanted Lucy moved immediately.
For once, I didn’t argue.
Within twenty minutes, hospital security quietly transferred her to another floor under a different patient name. Two detectives remained outside while Adrian positioned his own men near every entrance.
Lucy hated it.
“I’m not a package,” she snapped when she realized what was happening.
“No,” I told her. “You’re my sister.”
“And you’re planning to do something stupid.”
She knew me too well.
I squeezed her hand.
“I’m planning to keep you alive.”
After she fell asleep, I found Adrian standing alone beside a window.
“I'm going to the warehouse.”
“No.”
“They asked for me.”
“That’s why you’re not going.”
“Then what do you suggest? We wait until whoever did this tries again?”
His jaw tightened.
“I suggest letting people trained for this handle it.”
I almost laughed.
“People trained for this? Like the guards who let your seven-month-old daughter get drugged and dumped outside?”
The words hit him hard.
I regretted them immediately.
But Adrian didn’t become angry.
He simply looked toward the floor.
“You’re right.”
That was the first moment I understood how deeply Emma’s kidnapping had damaged him.
The feared crime boss disappeared for a second.
What remained was a father who knew his daughter had nearly died inside his own home.
“I trusted the wrong people,” he said quietly. “And you paid for it.”
“So did Emma.”
“Yes.”
His voice cracked on her name.
Then he looked at me.
“We go together.”
At eleven that night, police tactical teams surrounded the abandoned warehouse from several blocks away. Santos had reluctantly agreed to the operation after receiving authorization to use me as part of a controlled contact.
I wore a transmitter beneath my shirt.
Adrian refused one.
“Of course you do,” Santos muttered.
The warehouse smelled of rust and stagnant water.
My footsteps echoed across concrete as Adrian walked several feet behind me.
Then lights snapped on.
Karen stood on an elevated platform.
Beside her was an older man.
Vincenzo Valente.
He looked enough like Adrian that the relationship was unmistakable.
“You should have stayed in jail,” Karen called down.
“You should have let Emma die?” I shouted.
Her expression remained empty.
“She was never supposed to survive.”
Adrian moved forward.
Vincenzo raised a gun.
“Another step and Anna dies.”
Adrian stopped.
Vincenzo smiled.
“Still emotional. Your father had the same weakness.”
“Leave her out of this.”
“She was never out of it.”
Vincenzo explained everything with the arrogance of a man who believed he had already won.
He had discovered Thomas was alive years earlier but couldn’t locate the evidence Thomas had hidden against him. When Karen found my employment application at a cleaning agency, she recognized my surname.
She arranged for me to work inside Adrian’s estate.
Then they built the perfect plan.
Drug Emma.
Disable the cameras.
Place her where I would find her during my nightly trash run.
Let me save her.
Then accuse me of trying to kill her.
My father would surface to protect me.
And once he did, Vincenzo could finally find him.
“You used a baby as bait,” I whispered.
Vincenzo shrugged.
“Everyone is useful for something.”
Adrian’s entire body tightened.
But Karen suddenly looked nervous.
Not at Adrian.
At Vincenzo.
“You said Emma wouldn’t be harmed permanently.”
He turned toward her.
“You drugged her.”
“You told me the dose was safe.”
A terrible realization crossed her face.
Karen had betrayed a child.
But even she had not understood the full plan.
Vincenzo smiled.
“You were useful too.”
Then he raised his gun toward Karen.
A shot exploded.
I screamed.
But Karen didn’t fall.
Vincenzo did.
The bullet had struck his shoulder.
Santos’s tactical team poured through the side entrances.
Everything became shouting, boots, commands, and flashing lights.
Karen dropped to her knees.
Vincenzo reached for his weapon again.
Adrian kicked it away before he could fire.
For one terrifying second, Adrian stood above his uncle with enough fury in his eyes to end everything.
Vincenzo laughed.
“Do it.”
Adrian’s fist tightened.
Then he looked at me.
Maybe he remembered the slap.
Maybe he remembered Emma freezing in my arms.
Whatever he saw made him step backward.
“No.”
Vincenzo’s smile disappeared.
Adrian looked toward Santos.
“Arrest him.”
That decision saved more than Vincenzo’s life.
It saved Adrian from becoming exactly what everyone believed him to be.
Hours later, Karen agreed to cooperate.
She gave detectives financial records, messages, account numbers, and evidence connecting Vincenzo to years of crimes.
But when dawn arrived, none of that mattered to me.
My phone rang.
Lucy’s doctor.
I answered immediately.
“Anna, your sister has deteriorated overnight.”
My knees weakened.
“How bad?”
A pause.
Then the words I had feared for five years finally came.
“Without surgery very soon, I don’t believe she has much time.”
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