Chapter 4 - The Shadow in the Archives
Down in the hospital’s subterranean records department, beneath the hum of industrial boilers and fluorescent backup generators, the night shift was usually a quiet affair. But tonight, hospital administrator Arthur Pendelton was knee-deep in an urgent audit requested by the state health board regarding emergency blood reserves.
Pendelton sat at his metal desk, a cup of lukewarm tea beside a stack of requisition forms. Next to his computer terminal sat the routine intake paperwork from the night's emergency admissions, including the donor registry log from Trauma Bay Four.
"Mancini, L.," the intake form read under the donor signature line. Blood type: AB Negative.
Pendelton frowned, tapping his pen against the desk. He had lived in Chicago long enough to know what the name Mancini meant. It meant control of the docks, ownership of half the financial district, and rumors of violence that the police department chose to ignore. But more than that, Pendelton’s mind drifted back to a confidential medical file tucked away in a secure, offline server in the hospital’s historical archives—a file he had sworn under oath to keep sealed twelve years ago.
Curiosity, sharp and forbidden, gnawed at the back of his mind.
He clicked open the hospital's internal database, bypassing the standard firewalls with his administrator credentials, and pulled up the archived birth records from the winter of fourteen years prior. His fingers flew across the keyboard, typing in a name he hadn't spoken aloud in over a decade: Elena Vasquez.
A digital folder popped up on the screen.
Pendelton opened it, his eyes scanning the digitized PDF of an old hospital intake sheet from St. Jude’s maternity ward. The mother: Clara Vasquez, admitted in critical condition, hemorrhage following premature delivery. The child: female, surviving.
Then his eyes dropped to the supplemental notes added by the attending physician at the time—a doctor who had since retired and moved out of the country.
Father unknown per mother’s statement. However, genetic markers requested by maternal aunt note rare blood type combination (AB negative) matching biological father’s reported profile on file from confidential emergency donor registry.
Pendelton’s breath hitched in his throat. He scrolled down further, clicking on the confidential paternity cross-reference link that had been flagged and locked away in 2014 after a high-profile corporate donation agreement involving the Mancini family estate.
The name attached to the genetic profile code matched the donor signature upstairs.
Luca Mancini.
Pendelton stood up so fast his metal chair screeched loudly against the linoleum floor. The room suddenly felt suffocatingly hot. He stared at the glowing monitor, his hands trembling as the terrifying reality of what he was looking at settled over him.
The man the city feared most—the ruthless, untouchable mafia boss who believed his bloodline was completely extinct—had just walked into the emergency room through a freak snowstorm and pumped his own blood directly into the veins of his secret, living daughter.
Before Pendelton could even reach for his phone to figure out what protocol to follow, the heavy metal door of the archives room hissed open.
A shadow fell across the desk.
Marco Vitali, Luca’s head of security, stepped into the room. His face was like carved granite, his dark suit jacket unbuttoned to reveal the shoulder holster beneath.
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"Mr. Pendelton," Marco said, his voice terrifyingly calm in the empty basement. "The Boss wants to know why you're looking up patient files from fourteen years ago at three in the morning."
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