Chapter 8 - The Desperate Strike
We spent the next forty-eight hours wrapped in the fragile, miraculous bubble of new parenthood in Room 414. Mateo was a calm baby, possessing his father’s dark hair and solemn, observant eyes.
However, outside the protective walls of our hospital room, Victoria’s final desperation had reached its boiling point.
Deprived of bail and facing the certainty of spending the rest of her life in a maximum-security penitentiary, Victoria had cashed in a lifetime of social favors with corrupt institutional contacts. On the third night after Mateo’s birth, a woman dressed in standard hospital nursing scrubs pushed a rolling bassinet down the fourth-floor corridor.
She bypassed the central nursing station, moving with calculated stealth toward Room 414.
Inside, I was asleep, exhausted from nursing. Alejandro, however, was not. A decade of combat deployments had permanently rewired his nervous system; he never slept deeply, especially when protecting those he loved.
The door handle turned with a faint, oiled click.
The figure slipped inside, moving quickly toward the clear plastic bassinet where Mateo lay sleeping. She reached into her pocket, pulling out a small amber vial and an insulin syringe.
She reached toward the baby’s IV port.
Before her gloved fingers could touch the crib, an iron grip closed around her wrist.
Alejandro materialized from the shadows beside the bathroom door. With a single, fluid motion perfected in close-quarters combat, he twisted the woman’s wrist until the syringe clattered harmlessly onto the carpet, then slammed her against the wall, his forearm pressed firmly against her throat.
“Make a sound,” Alejandro whispered, his voice like dry leaves scraping over stone, “and it will be the last breath you ever draw.”
I bolted awake, my heart slamming against my ribs as I saw the struggle. “Alejandro!”
The woman let out a strangled wheeze. Alejandro reached up with his free hand and ripped off her surgical mask and hairnet.
It was Evelyn Vance—Victoria’s younger, sycophantic sister.
“Evelyn?” I gasped, pulling Mateo out of the bassinet and clutching him tightly against my chest.
Evelyn’s face was purple, her eyes bulging with terror as Alejandro maintained just enough pressure on her carotid artery to subdue her without crushing her windpipe.
“She… she told me to do it,” Evelyn gasped, tears of sheer panic streaming down her cheeks. “Victoria said… if the baby didn’t make it… you’d kill yourself, and Alejandro would have to come back to the family! She promised me the trust fund… she promised me the estate!”
Within sixty seconds, hospital security and armed Military Police—whom Alejandro had stationed discreetly in the lobby—swarmed the room. Evelyn was tackled, cuffed, and dragged out into the hallway, weeping and confessing to every single detail before she even reached the elevator.
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Victoria’s reach was finally, utterly severed. Her last minion had failed, and in doing so, had added conspiracy to commit infant homicide to Victoria’s growing mountain of unpardonable charges.
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