Chapter 1 - THE VOICE OUTSIDE THE NURSERY
“Maya.”
The whisper slipped beneath the locked nursery door.
Every muscle in my body turned to ice.
Only one person said my name that way.
Low.
Drawn out.
Like it belonged to him.
Derek.
My violent ex-boyfriend was supposed to be hiding from the men he owed money.
He should not have been inside Lorenzo Rossi’s mansion.
He definitely should not have known I was in the nursery.
Leo stopped nursing.
His tiny body stiffened against my chest.
Then his lips turned pale.
“Something’s wrong,” I whispered.
Lorenzo kept his gun pointed toward me, but his gaze dropped to his son.
The monitor beside the crib began sounding a weak, irregular alarm.
Leo tried to breathe.
His chest barely moved.
Lorenzo crossed the room in two steps.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
I adjusted Leo against my shoulder.
“He was swallowing normally.”
A faint hissing sound came from the air vent above the door.
A sweet chemical smell entered the room.
My eyes started burning.
Lorenzo noticed it too.
He aimed at the lock and fired.
The bullet tore through the metal plate.
The door remained closed.
Whoever had locked it had reinforced the outside latch.
“Maya,” Derek whispered again.
“I’m sorry.”
Lorenzo’s expression became deadly.
“You know him?”
“He’s my ex.”
“He shouldn’t be here.”
The hissing grew louder.
The night nurse remained unconscious in her chair.
The wineglass beside her trembled from the alarm.
Lorenzo dragged a blanket from the crib and pressed it over the vent.
I held Leo close beneath my open uniform.
His mouth searched weakly.
“Come on, sweetheart.”
“Please.”
He latched again.
One swallow.
Then nothing.
Lorenzo grabbed the sleeping nurse by the shoulders.
“Bianca.”
She did not respond.
He checked her pulse.
“She’s alive.”
His eyes moved toward the wineglass.
Then toward the bottles lined up beside the warmer.
Each bottle had been prepared for Leo.
Each one carried the same faint chemical odor leaking through the vent.
“He wasn’t refusing food,” I said.
“They were putting something in every bottle.”
Lorenzo’s face hardened.
A crash sounded outside the door.
Derek cursed.
Another man spoke behind him.
“You were told not to use her name.”
I recognized the second voice.
Victor Salvi.
He managed the mansion’s night security.
Lorenzo heard him too.
He lifted his gun.
“Move away from the door.”
“Mr. Rossi,” Victor called.
“There has been a misunderstanding.”
Lorenzo fired through the center of the lock.
Someone screamed.
A body struck the hallway floor.
The reinforced latch loosened.
Lorenzo kicked the door open.
Victor lay against the wall with blood spreading across his thigh.
Derek stood behind him wearing a Rossi security jacket.
He looked thinner than when I last saw him.
A scar crossed his jaw.
When he saw Leo in my arms, his face collapsed.
“They told me the baby would already be dead,” he whispered.
Lorenzo aimed at his head.
“Who told you?”
Derek looked toward the staircase.
Footsteps were approaching.
Many of them.
May you like
Then he looked back at me.
“The same woman who paid me to kill your daughter.”
