Chapter 7 - The Visitor in Room 412
The back service hallway smelled of industrial bleach and floor wax. We slipped through the heavy fire door without setting off the silent alarms, our rubber-soled shoes moving in near-total silence across the industrial tile.
According to Luca’s quick digital search on the burner phone, Eleanor Moretti’s room was 412—situated in the secure memory-care wing on the top floor.
When we reached the fourth-floor nurses' station, it was entirely empty. A half-cup of cold coffee sat beside an open logbook, and a glowing computer monitor displayed the facility's master directory.
I stepped behind the counter and tapped the screen. My stomach clenched.
"Gabriel," I whispered, motioning for him to look at the screen. "Look at the visitor log for last night."
Gabriel stepped up beside me, his broad frame casting a shadow over the monitor. His jaw tightened so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek.
At 11:45 PM—just hours before Vincent visited the penthouse—an entry was logged under a visitor pass issued to Dr. Adrian Vale. Destination: Room 412. Duration: forty-five minutes.
"He didn't just poison Gabriel," Luca muttered, his fists clenching at his sides. "He went to see her right after."
"Not to hurt her," Gabriel said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register. "Vince knows that if my mother is coherent enough to sign a revocation of his power of attorney, his entire legal house of cards collapses. He went to make sure she couldn't talk."
We hurried down the dimly lit hallway, stopping in front of a heavy oak door marked with polished brass numbers: 412.
The door was unlocked, pushed open an inch by a rubber doorstop.
Inside, the room was quiet, bathed in the pale blue light of a streetlamp filtering through the heavy drapes. An elderly woman with silver hair cropped short lay peacefully beneath a floral quilt, her breathing slow and even. Sitting in the armchair beside the bed, holding a leather-bound family photo album, was a nurse’s aide who looked up in absolute terror as we pushed the door open.
"Who—who are you?" the young woman stammered, dropping the album onto the nightstand. "You can't be in here, visiting hours aren't—"
Gabriel stepped past me, his eyes fixed entirely on the elderly woman in the bed before turning slowly to the aide. His presence filled the small room like a physical weight, suffocating all sound.
"Relax," Gabriel said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "I'm her son."
The aide blinked, her eyes darting from Gabriel’s scarred knuckles to the pale, commanding lines of his face. Recognition flashed in her eyes, mixed with a sudden, overwhelming dread. "Mr. Moretti... the director said you were hospitalized, that you couldn't possibly—"
"The director takes orders from my cousin," Gabriel interrupted, stepping closer to the bed. He reached down, gently taking his mother’s frail, wrinkled hand in his own large, calloused palm. "Tell me what Dr. Vale did when he was in this room last night."
The aide swallowed hard, her shoulders shrinking inward. "He... he came with a special medical evaluation form. He said Mrs. Moretti’s cognitive decline had reached a critical threshold, and that she needed to be transferred to a specialized psychiatric facility upstate by morning."
"Did she sign it?" Gabriel asked, his voice dangerously soft.
"No," the aide whispered, glancing nervously at the bed. "She woke up while he was here. She... she didn't know who I was, and she called Dr. Vale by a different name. She called him Julian. She said, 'Julian, you always were a thief, just like your father.'"
I froze. Julian.
Gabriel slowly raised his head, looking up at me and Luca with a dark, profound realization dawning in his eyes.
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"Dr. Adrian Vale isn't an independent underground surgeon," Gabriel said, the pieces snapping together with terrifying clarity. "His father was Arthur Vale—the chief accountant for my father’s syndicates back in the nineties, the man who vanished with four million dollars the night my father took over the North Side."
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