Chapter 2 - THE SHADOW OF SOFIA
The medical team surged around the bed like a machine springing to life after weeks of rust.
Shine a penlight. Check pupillary response. Increase saline drip. Monitor oxygen saturation.
Dr. Whitmore was shouting polite orders. Nurses were calling for neurological workups. But through the flurry of blue scrubs and white coats, Dario Kane’s eyes never unlocked from my daughter’s face.
“Sofia...” he rasped again, weaker this time, his chest heaving under the hospital gown.
I grabbed Lucia’s hand and pulled her three steps backward toward the corridor door. My heart was hammering against my ribs so violently I thought it would shatter.
He thinks she’s Sofia.
Lucia looked up at me with her wide brown eyes—Sofia’s brown eyes, framed by the exact same dark, natural curl in her hair. The same delicate structure of her cheekbones. At six years old, Lucia was a living phantom of the girl who had disappeared seven years ago after a fiery confrontation with the Kane family syndicate.
“Mrs. Reyes,” Marco’s heavy voice cut through my racing thoughts as he re-entered the room. He stood near the threshold, his posture broad and blocking the doorway. “Dr. Whitmore needs the room cleared. You and the kid need to go to the staff breakroom.”
It sounded like a routine request, but I knew Marco Bell. I had spent two years working Environmental Services on the fourth floor. Marco didn't talk to staff unless he was establishing perimeter.
“We’re leaving the hospital, Marco,” I said quietly, keeping Lucia firmly tucked behind my waist. “My shift ended ten minutes ago.”
“Mr. Kane’s brother, Vincent, is on his way up,” Marco said, dropping his voice into a dangerous, level tone. “Nobody leaves this floor until Vincent talks to everyone who was in the room when Mr. Kane woke up.”
A cold shudder ran down my spine. Vincent Kane.
If Dario was the cerebral, calculated architect of the Kane Maritime empire, Vincent was the blunt force. Vincent was the reason Sofia had fled seven years ago. Vincent was the one who had sent armed men to my apartment building when Sofia went missing, suspecting she had taken financial ledgers with her.
They had never found those ledgers. They had never found Sofia’s body either. All they knew was that seven years ago, a pregnant Sofia Reyes died in a rain-slicked highway crash three counties away—a crash I had kept hidden from the Kane empire by changing my own identity, taking my sister’s baby, and raising her as my own daughter.
“Get out of my way, Marco,” I said softly, stepping directly up to the giant security guard.
“I have orders—”
“You have orders to protect Dario,” I interrupted, staring into his dark eyes with an intensity that made him hesitate. “I scrub the blood off your floor when your guys come in with gunshot grazes. I know which doctors take bribes from Vincent. Get out of my way, or I start talking to the federal marshals sitting on the second floor.”
Marco’s eyes narrowed. He evaluated me in three seconds—measuring my bleach-stained tunic against the sheer, unyielding iron in my voice.
May you like
Slowly, he shifted six inches to the left.
I took Lucia’s hand and walked out into the corridor before the elevator doors could bring Vincent Kane to the fourth floor.
