Chapter 4 - The Betrayal of Blood(Focus: Lorenzo discovers his own brother-in-law and the family doctor were behind the car bomb; Hunter becomes Leo's full-time protector.)
The revelation was a physical blow. Dr. Julian Halloran wasn't just my family physician; he was my late wife Sophia’s maternal cousin. He was the man who had sat at our wedding, the man who had held Sophia’s hand when she thought she couldn't carry the pregnancy, and the man I had trusted implicitly with the medical care of my only child.
"Julian," I whispered, the name tasting like ash in my mouth.
"Lorenzo," Marco’s voice came through the encrypted audio link on the laptop. "It goes deeper. Halloran didn't act alone. We traced his personal offshore bank accounts. Three days before the car explosion, a transfer of five million dollars was executed from a shell corporation registered in the Cayman Islands. The beneficial owner of that corporation is Victor Rossi."
Victor. My younger brother. The man who had spent his entire life living in my shadow, running our family's secondary logistics operations in the ports of Newark, constantly begging for a seat at the main executive table.
"Victor wanted the empire," I said, my voice dead, flat, and entirely devoid of human emotion.
"If you and Leo died, Victor would have inherited the entire Rossi syndicate under the old family pact," Marco confirmed. "Sophia’s death was supposed to include you, Lorenzo. You survived the blast by some miracle. So Victor changed the strategy. He used Halloran and Nurse Brenda to slowly terminate the baby through chemical starvation, ensuring that the bloodline ended with you. Once Leo was dead, they would have taken care of you through a staged suicide or a grief-induced overdose."
I closed the laptop smoothly. The fury inside me had transcended standard anger; it had become something structural, a cold, crystalline purpose that clear-headed my thoughts and sharpened my vision.
I turned to look at Hunter. She was watching me, her face pale, having heard every word of the conversation.
"They killed your wife," she whispered. "And they killed my baby... Marcus didn't just throw me down the stairs because of a random fight, did he? He was being paid by them to stay quiet and disappear."
"Marcus was a loose end, Hunter," I said, walking over to her, standing tall before her rocking chair. "He knew too much about the car bomb modifications. They likely ordered him to eliminate anyone connected to him before they cleaned the slate. Your daughter’s death was a casualty of my brother’s greed."
Hunter stood up, her small stature looking tiny against mine, but her eyes blazed with a fierce, motherly defiance. She walked over to Leo’s crib, looking down at my sleeping son.
"What are we going to do, Mr. Rossi?" she asked.
"I am going back to the city to finish this," I said, checking the magazine of my weapon. "But I cannot leave my son alone. My houses are compromised. My security detail is broken. The only person in this world who has proven they can keep Leo alive is you."
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Hunter looked from me to the baby, then reached into the crib, gently pressing her hand against Leo’s tiny chest, feeling the steady, strong thump of his heart.
"I won't leave him, Lorenzo," she said, using my first name for the very first time, her voice steady and binding. "Go fix the world. I'll make sure our son is waiting for you when you get back."
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