FIFTEEN DOCTORS WATCHED THE MAFIA BOSS’S NEWBORN NEPHEW DIE

The machines had screamed, the doctors had shouted, and then the monitor had become one endless, merciless tone.

Dr. Alistair Sterling, head of pediatric surgery and a man who charged more for one consultation than most people made in a year, trembled beneath Dominic’s gun.

“Mr. Moretti,” he stammered. “We did everything possible.”

Dominic’s eyes were dark and dead.

“I didn’t ask what you did,” he said. “I told you to bring him back.”

Around the room stood specialists flown in from Boston, Zurich, Los Angeles, Houston, and New York. Pediatric cardiologists. Neonatal surgeons. Infectious disease experts. Men and women with degrees framed in mahogany, reputations polished by television interviews, and egos large enough to fill the entire fourth floor.

Dominic had paid for all of them.

He had cleared out the hospital wing, posted armed guards at every elevator, and turned a recovery suite into a war room.

And all fifteen of them had failed.

“His blood pressure collapsed,” another doctor said weakly. “His oxygen saturation wouldn’t respond. We couldn’t place the line for bypass support. The reaction was too fast.”

Dominic did not look away from Sterling.

“You said this hospital could save him.”

“It should have,” Sterling whispered.

“It should have,” Dominic repeated.

The gun clicked.

In the back of the room, half-hidden behind a stainless steel supply cart, Claire Bennett clutched a stack of sterile towels against her chest.

She was twenty-five years old, exhausted, and so broke that she had eaten crackers from the nurses’ lounge for dinner three nights in a row.

Nobody had invited her into Suite 404.

Nobody wanted her there.