Chapter 2 - The Cracked Screen
The shattered glass of the phone screen dug into my thumb, but I couldn’t feel the pain.
I stared at the glowing blue text bubbles, the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital corridor reflecting off the broken surface. Mateo stood beside me, silent as a grave, his massive frame blocking the view of the passing nurses. He didn't speak because he didn't have to. The evidence of my absolute failure was right there in my hands.
The text thread was between Clara and a number saved simply as S.
I didn't need to guess who S was. I recognized the last four digits. I paid the phone bill for that number.
S: I know about the baby, Clara. Dominic told me everything.
Clara: Leave him out of this. You want the South Side logistics routes? You meet me in person.
S: 54th and Racine. Midnight. Come alone, or I tell Lorenzo Moretti exactly where your husband sleeps on Tuesdays.
My lungs stopped working. The air in the sterile hallway suddenly felt thick, like pouring concrete.
Serena.
The twenty-four-year-old girl who had spent the last three hours weeping against my shoulder, claiming she was suffering from dehydration and anxiety, had orchestrated my wife’s attempted murder. She hadn't just lured Clara to the South Side; she had weaponized a secret I didn't even know existed.
I know about the baby.
My hands began to shake. I scrolled frantically up the text thread, ignoring the shards of glass biting into my skin. There was an image attachment sent three days ago. A photograph of a sonogram. Clara’s name was printed in the top right corner.
Twenty-two weeks.
Clara was pregnant. My wife, the woman who had cried in my arms three years ago when the doctors told us the scarring from her endometriosis would make conception a medical miracle, was carrying my child.
And she hadn't told me.
She had hidden it because she knew about Serena. She had hidden it because the man she married, the man who swore on his father’s grave to protect her, was spending his Tuesdays in a penthouse with a woman half his age.
“Dom,” Mateo’s rough voice broke through the ringing in my ears. “You need to breathe.”
“She knew,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “Clara knew everything. And she went to Moretti territory to protect me. She went to trade our legitimate logistics routes to keep Serena quiet.”
Mateo’s jaw tightened. He looked down the hallway toward the private suite where Serena was resting, sipping ginger ale and playing the victim. “Give the word, Dom. I’ll walk in there right now and she won’t walk out.”
The violent, primal part of my soul screamed to say yes. It demanded blood. But a colder, darker realization settled over me. Serena was twenty-four. She was a beautiful, manipulative opportunist, but she didn't have the leverage or the tactical mind to negotiate shipping routes with the Moretti crime family.
She wasn't the architect of this trap. She was the bait.
“No,” I said, my voice dropping to a lethal, quiet register. “If we kill her now, we lose the thread. Whoever gave her the authority to negotiate South Side routes is the real threat. Serena is going to lead me right to them.”
Before Mateo could reply, the heavy double doors of the surgical wing swung open.
The lead trauma surgeon stepped out. He was still wearing his blood-spattered scrubs, his surgical mask pulled down beneath his chin. He looked exhausted, the kind of bone-deep weary that only comes from fighting death and losing.
I shoved the phone into my pocket and sprinted across the linoleum floor.
“My wife,” I demanded, grabbing the doctor by the shoulders. “Where is my wife?”
The surgeon didn't flinch. He looked me dead in the eyes. “Mr. Valente, your wife suffered massive internal hemorrhaging. The blunt force trauma from the crash ruptured her spleen, and she sustained three fractured ribs and a severe concussion.”
“Is she alive?” I roared, the polished veneer of the Chicago syndicate boss completely shattering.
“We stabilized her,” the doctor said, holding up a steadying hand. “She is in a medically induced coma to allow the swelling in her brain to recede. But Mr. Valente... the trauma triggered placental abruption. We had to perform an emergency cesarean section to save her life.”
The world tilted on its axis.
“The baby,” I choked out, the word feeling foreign on my tongue.
“A girl,” the doctor said softly. “Born at twenty-two weeks. She weighs barely over a pound. She is currently in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, on a ventilator. It is going to be a very long, very difficult fight, Mr. Valente. I won't lie to you. The next forty-eight hours are critical for both of them.”
A daughter. I had a daughter. And she was fighting for her life in a plastic box because I had been too blind by my own arrogance to see the knife being driven into my back.
The surgeon reached into the pocket of his scrubs.
“Your wife was clutching this when the paramedics pulled her from the wreckage,” he said, extending his hand. “Her grip was so tight they had to pry her fingers open in the trauma bay. I thought you should have it.”
I held out my hand, my fingers trembling violently.
The doctor dropped a small, heavy object into my palm.
May you like
It was a delicate gold locket, dented and smeared with Clara’s dried blood. It was the locket I had given her on our first anniversary, back when my hands were clean and my promises meant something.
I stared at the blood-stained gold, the crushing weight of my betrayal finally bringing me to my knees right there in the sterile hospital corridor.
