Chapter 7: Moretti Eyes

She was never supposed to survive. The man's voice died in the recorder's static, but it stayed inside my skull like a bullet that had missed its bone. Bianca had helped ruin Elena at our wedding. I had known that much for minutes. Someone else had wanted her dead. I watched the compliance officer take Bianca away from the family alcove. My instinct was to have my men find the voice before its owner could breathe again. Then Elena looked at me over Noah's open door. Not grateful. Not frightened of me. Waiting to see whether I would turn another room into mine. "Call the police," I told my security chief. "Not Moretti security. Preserve the recorder, the folder, and the hallway footage. Ms. Vale gets the same copy I do." He hesitated. My mother had spent thirty years teaching men like him that Moretti problems never left the family. "Now," I said. Inside, Noah was awake. His eyes found Elena first. His fingers had twisted the blanket's frayed edge around his thumb, once, twice, three times. I had done the same thing at his age until my father slapped my hand away at a dinner table. "Mom," Noah whispered. "Is the white lady gone?" Elena bent over him. "She cannot come in here." His gaze slid to me, careful and direct. My eyes, every instinct in me said. But he was not a mirror. He was a five-year-old boy watching a stranger decide whether to be dangerous. Dr. Hall entered with a nurse carrying a small sealed kit. "The court petition makes the formal parentage test more urgent," she said. "The treatment team already has what it needs for tonight. This is for the hearing and for any decision outside this room." Elena stood between the kit and Noah's bed. "One swab," she said. "With me here. Dante does not touch him unless Noah says yes. The sample goes to an independent lab, not a Moretti one. And no result gets used to move Noah, change his care, or call him anybody's property." Every word was a door she had built because I had broken the old ones. "Agreed," I said. Noah tightened the blanket around his thumb. I did not step closer. "It is your mouth, kid. You can say no." His brow pulled together. "Will it hurt?" "Like a soft toothbrush on your cheek," the nurse said. "Will it tell who my dad is?" The room went still. Elena's face did not change, but her hand closed around the bedrail. I had no right to fill that silence with a claim. "It can answer one question," I told him. "It cannot decide who gets to love you or where you live. Your mom decides that with you." Elena looked at me then. Not forgiveness. Not even trust. But she did not tell me to leave. Noah considered the nurse as if she were offering him a bad trade. Then he nodded once. The swab took two seconds. He flinched anyway, and his free hand reached sideways without looking. I almost took it. Elena did first. Good, I told myself. It had to be good. The nurse sealed the sample under Elena's eyes and carried it out. At the doorway, the compliance officer returned, pale without Bianca beside him. "Ms. De Luca's counsel has asked that the donor packet be treated as evidence against Ms. Vale until the hearing," he said. Elena's chin lifted. "After that recording?" "Hospital policy requires—" "Then follow policy." I kept my voice low. "But you will not question Elena again without her advocate present, and you will not interrupt Noah's infusion for a family accusation." The officer looked ready to argue. Elena turned to him before I could finish him. "Put that in writing for the advocate. Every word." He looked down at Bianca's recorder, then at the blue packet. "Ms. Vale will not be questioned again. The packet is evidence that someone tried to frame her." He nodded and left. Noah watched the door until it clicked shut. Then he reached for the cup beside his bed, missed it by an inch, and frowned at his own shaking hand. I moved the cup closer but stopped before the bedrail. "May I?" I asked. He looked at Elena. She gave him a small nod. He held out the cup. It was nothing. A paper cup of water. It felt heavier than every gun my father had ever put in my hand. "Thanks," Noah said after one sip. The word landed harder than it should have. Hours later, the infusion had steadied into a quiet drip. Elena had not slept. Neither had I. We sat on opposite sides of Noah's bed with every old wound between us. When the knock came, neither of us moved at first. Dr. Hall stepped in holding a narrow white envelope with a red legal-lab seal across its flap. "The expedited report is here," she said. She placed it in my hand. Elena's eyes stayed on the seal. My security chief's radio cracked at the door. "Mrs. Moretti's lawyer is downstairs. She says the report makes the boy a family emergency and wants him moved before it is opened." Elena stepped between Noah's bed and the hall. "Then she can say it to my face. Noah stays here."