104 "Beyond the Glass and Blood: Where Corporate Greed Feeds a Deadly Conspiracy, a Risen Ghost Shatters a Fake Dynasty, and the Ultimate Vengeance Begins at Dawn"

The digital clock on the wall read 8:14 PM. In less than two hours, Nurse Henderson would start her rounds, and if Anthony’s contingency plan involved my IV bag, I wouldn't live to see midnight.

“Grace,” I said, lifting my right hand off the mattress and motioning her closer. “Listen to me very carefully. You want out of this cleaning job? You want enough money to pack up your daughter and leave this city forever?”

Grace hesitated, her eyes searching my face. “What are you asking me to do, Mr. Moretti? I’m just a maid. I don't know how to fight people like Mr. Anthony or Miss Hale.”

“You don't have to fight them. You just have to be invisible one more time,” I replied, reaching into the small pocket of my hospital gown where I had managed to stash a heavy brass key on my third day here—the key to the bedside security drawer that my private physician had overlooked during intake.

I slid the key across the mattress toward her.

“In the bottom of that cabinet, beneath the medical files, there is a secondary steel lockbox,” I instructed, keeping my eyes fixed on the door. “Use this key. Inside is a hard-copy ledger containing every transaction, payoff, and offshore routing number Anthony and Veronica have processed through Moretti Logistics over the last three years.”

Grace stared at the key as if it were coated in poison. “If I open that, and they catch me—they’ll kill us both, Mr. Moretti.”

“They’re already going to kill us, Grace,” I said softly, the brutal reality of my world settling over the room like a shroud. “The moment Henderson walked in and saw you standing by this bed, your name went on their list. The only difference is whether we die quietly in this hospital room or fight back.”

She stared at the key for a long, silent heartbeat. Then, her small, trembling hand shot out, snatching the brass key off the sheets.

She dropped to her knees beside the bedside cabinet, sliding the small drawer open with agonizing slowness. The metal tracks let out a faint, high-pitched squeak that made my skin crawl.

“I see the lockbox,” she whispered, her breathing shallow.

“Turn it twice to the left, once to the right. The combination is my mother’s birth year: 1952.”

Grace’s fingers dialed the small brass combination lock with practiced, nervous precision. Click. Click.

The heavy steel lid popped open.

Inside lay a thick, leather-bound ledger with gold-embossed lettering, along with a stack of signed wire-transfer authorizations bearing Veronica Hale’s signature and Anthony Moretti’s corporate seal.

“I have it,” Grace breathed, pulling the ledger out and pressing it against her chest beneath her cleaning smock.

Suddenly, heavy, muffled footsteps echoed down the tiled hallway outside. Not the soft, rubber-soled squeak of a nurse, but the hard, leather-shod tread of expensive men’s shoes.

Anthony.

“Hide!” I hissed, my eyes flashing with warning.