Chapter 7 - Midnight Intruder
"Lock down all exits!" Luca roared into the phone. "Nobody leaves that building alive if they touch Sofía’s records!"
"I'm coming with you," I said, jumping to my feet.
"No, Emily, you stay here and protect Sofía," Luca said, grabbing his jacket.
"Mr. Moretti, Sofía is safe here—there are four armed guards outside this door and Marcus is in the lobby," I insisted. "The medical suite at the penthouse has the original compounding bottles from the Swiss pharmacy. If Vanessa’s accomplice destroys those bottles, you lose the physical evidence connecting the neurotoxin directly to her supplier! I know where she hid them behind the hydrotherapy bath!"
Luca looked at me for a split second, seeing the steel in my eyes, and nodded once. "Let's go."
We sprinted through the hospital corridors and jumped into Luca’s private black sedan. His driver threw on the red emergency flashers, tearing through the rain-slicked midnight streets of Manhattan like a missile. Within seven minutes, the vehicle screeched to a halt outside the ultra-luxury glass skyscraper overlooking Central Park.
Two security guards lay groaning on the polished granite steps of the private residential lobby, clutching their ribs.
"Taser," Luca muttered, examining the spent wire darts on the floor. "They were professional."
We took the high-speed private elevator directly to the top-floor penthouse. The elevator doors slid open into total darkness. The smell of burning paper and ozone hung thick in the air.
"Stay behind me," Luca whispered, reaching into the waistband of his trousers and drawing a sleek, concealed semi-automatic pistol.
We moved silently across the wide foyer. The double doors to Sofía’s rehabilitation wing were ajar. A faint, flickering glow emanated from within.
Luca kicked the door open, raising his weapon. "Don't move!"
A figure clad in black tactical gear and a balaclava turned around by the chemical disposal sink, holding a metal canister of lighter fluid and a blowtorch. On the counter lay three glass amber bottles labeled with a Zurich pharmaceutical crest.
The intruder didn't raise his hands. Instead, he whipped a stun baton from his belt and hurled a heavy metal weight directly at Luca’s head.
Luca ducked, the iron weight shattering the mirror behind him. In that fraction of a second, the intruder lunged, attempting to sweep Luca's legs out from under him. The two men collided in a brutal, bone-cracking grapple, crashing into the parallel rehabilitation bars.
The blowtorch tumbled to the floor, its blue flame licking dangerously close to the curtains.
I didn't think. I grabbed the thirty-pound chrome rehabilitation kettlebell from the equipment rack and swung it with all the momentum my body could muster.
The heavy iron struck the intruder squarely between the shoulder blades with a sickening, hollow thud.
The man cried out in agony, his knees buckling beneath him. Luca immediately capitalized, driving his elbow into the intruder's jaw and pinning him face-down against the tile floor, twisting his arm behind his back until the joint popped.
"Don't move, you bastard," Luca breathed heavily, ripping the balaclava off the man’s face.
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Luca froze. "Julian?"
It was Julian Sterling—Vanessa’s younger brother, the disgraced former biomedical researcher who had been kicked out of Johns Hopkins three years ago for unethical clinical trials.
