HIS CRUEL FIANCÉE SLAPPED HIM IN FRONT OF THIRTY GUESTS TO PROVE HE WAS POWERLESS—UNTIL HIS SILENT NURSE CAUGHT HER WRIST AND EXPOSED THE DEADLY TRUTH BEHIND HIS LOCKED BEDROOM DOOR

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By 3:00 PM that afternoon, the Alfieri estate had undergone a total cleansing.

Edna Hollis had been escorted off the grounds by Rocco’s security team with nothing more than her handbag, weeping in terror as she was driven toward the federal courthouse to face accessory charges. Marco’s corrupt guards had been stripped of their weapons and replaced by thirty of Nico’s most disciplined, battle-hardened veterans from the southern shipping terminals.

The house was ours.

Yet, one loose, venomous thread still dangled: Dr. Arthur Vance.

Vance didn't know the house had fallen. He didn't know Marco was currently sitting in a federal holding cell at the Dirksen Building downtown, or that Camille was being processed through the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

According to Vance’s original schedule, he was due to arrive at the estate at 4:30 PM to collect his second installment of "consulting fees" from Marco and administer Nico’s final sedative dose before the planned conservatorship transfer.

I stood in the ground-floor dispensary room, checking the seals on three sterile glass vials containing the authentic methylcobalamin solution.

Nico was seated beside the examination table, wearing a crisp black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. Rocco—a six-foot-four wall of muscle and scarred knuckles—stood silently in the corner shadows behind the door, a suppressed 9mm pistol tucked into his tailored shoulder holster.

At 4:28 PM, the gravel crunched outside the side entrance.

Footsteps echoed down the tiled corridor. Dr. Vance walked into the room carrying his signature brown leather medical bag, whistling a breezy, cheerful tune under his breath.

"Afternoon, everyone!" Vance said, stepping inside and hanging his cashmere scarf on the brass coat rack. "I saw a few unfamiliar security cars at the gate. Is Marco downstairs? We have some administrative paperwork to finalize before—"

He stopped dead in his tracks.

He saw Rocco standing behind the door. He saw the cold, predatory calm on Nico’s face. And he saw me, holding a printed stack of bank transaction records bearing his name, his clinic’s tax ID, and the offshore routing numbers from Antigua.

Vance’s smile vanished like smoke in a windstorm. His face turned an ash-gray color, and his hand froze halfway to his medical bag.

"Nico..." Vance stammered, his voice climbing an octave. "What... what is the meaning of this? Why is Rocco in the examination room?"

"Set the bag on the counter, Arthur," Nico said softly.

Vance swallowed hard, his throat clicking. "Nico, I am your physician. I have cared for you since you had measles as a boy. I demand—"

"I said set the bag down," Nico rumbled, his voice dropping into that terrifying, subterranean bass that brooked zero defiance.

Vance’s knees shook as he placed the brown leather bag onto the stainless-steel counter.

I stepped forward, unzipped the bag, and pulled out the contents: two sealed boxes of unauthorized European neuro-suppressants, a prescription pad pre-signed with fraudulent diagnostic codes for "severe traumatic cognitive regression," and an envelope containing twenty-five thousand dollars in crisp hundred-dollar bills—Camille’s weekly payoff.

I laid them out on the counter like evidence in a homicide trial.

"Dr. Vance," I said, looking him dead in the eyes. "Flunitrazepam combined with high-affinity central nervous system blockers. You’ve been administering this compound to Mr. Alfieri for nearly six months under the guise of peripheral nerve stimulation."

"That's an experimental protocol!" Vance shouted frantically, sweat breaking out across his receding hairline and dripping down his expensive wire-rimmed glasses. "It’s off-label! It’s designed to quiet spinal spasms! You’re an RN, Marsh—you don't understand the complex neuro-chemistry of chronic spinal cord lesions!"

"I understand medical murder, Arthur," Nico said, leaning forward in his chair.

Vance backed up against the wall, his hands splayed against the tiles. "Nico, listen to me! They forced me! Marco... Marco bought my clinic’s debt! He told me that if I didn't cooperate, he would have my daughter expelled from Northwestern Medical School! He said he’d have my private practice burned to the ground! I had no choice!"

"You always had a choice," Nico said coldly. "You could have come to me. You could have told me that my cousin was trying to kill me. Instead, you took Camille’s envelopes. You took twenty-five grand a week to turn my brain into mush while my fiancée slapped me across the face in front of thirty people."

Nico looked at Rocco.

"Rocco."

"Yes, Boss?"

"Dr. Vance has spent forty years practicing medicine in the state of Illinois," Nico said, his eyes drilling into the trembling physician. "It would be a tragedy if the State Medical Board didn't receive a complete, unredacted record of his offshore gambling accounts, his prescription fraud, and his medical malpractice history by 5:00 PM."

Vance gasped, falling to his knees on the linoleum floor. "No... please, Nico! Not my license! My entire life... my family’s reputation—"

"You should have thought about your reputation before you tried to bury me alive, Arthur," Nico spat. "Be grateful I’m handing you over to the State Medical Board and the Department of Justice instead of letting Rocco take you for a boat ride on the lake."

Nico nodded toward the door.

Rocco stepped forward, hauled Vance to his feet by the collar of his thousand-dollar blazer like a sack of dirty laundry, and dragged him out of the room. Vance’s hysterical pleading echoed down the hallway until the heavy exterior door slammed shut, cutting off the noise forever.

Silence descended upon the dispensary.

I leaned back against the counter, letting out a long, ragged sigh. My hands were still steady, but the emotional exhaustion of the last seventy-two hours was beginning to pool in my limbs like lead.

"That's the last of them," I murmured.

"No," Nico said softly.

I looked over at him. He was staring down at his legs, his expression unreadable.

"The traitors are gone, Adeline," he whispered. "The empire is safe. But I am still trapped in this chair."

I walked over to him, kneeling down beside his right knee so we were at eye level.

"Nico," I said, placing my hand gently on his forearm. "For eight months, your nerves have been under chemical siege. Vance wasn't treating your spine—he was suffocating it. The human nervous system is remarkably resilient, but it takes time to wash the poison out of the synapses."

I reached into my scrub pocket, pulled out a small neurological reflex hammer with a rubberized triangular head, and looked up into his dark eyes.

"May I?" I asked.