Then Destroyed Me

Chapter 2 The Calm Before the Break

The doctor raised the scalpel into the overhead light. His hand shook, but fear of Alessio kept him beside my bed. My muscles locked against the mattress. With the blood loss and septicemia, I would not survive what he was about to do.

A pistol safety clicked behind him.

"Put it down," Carmen said.

My head of security stood at the door with her gun aimed at the doctor's forehead. Two of my guards flanked her, each covering a different side of the room. They had answered to me long before Alessio remembered their names.

Alessio spun toward her. "Stand down. That's an order."

Carmen kept her eyes on me. "My orders come from the Donna. Only the Donna."

"Eleanor." Alessio came to the side of the bed. "Call her off. Bianca is dying, and this jealous game has gone far enough."

He still thought I wanted his attention. Even with a scalpel over my body, he called it jealousy. The doctor lowered his arm by an inch, then stopped when Alessio noticed.

"I'm going to Bianca," he said. "When I return, this ends."

He walked out without waiting for an answer. His certainty was almost useful. He believed the room would stay exactly as he had left it.

Pain seized my side as soon as the door closed. I gripped the sheet until it passed enough for me to speak.

"Laptop, Carmen."

She had the encrypted machine ready. She raised the bed and set it across my legs. My fingers shook hard enough to hit the wrong key twice, but the passwords and backdoor commands were mine. I had built them into the foundation of Alessio's systems.

The western port went first. I rerouted its defense protocols, cleared the active guard schedule, and revoked every Moretti access code. His most protected distribution point became a collection of locked gates and useless terminals.

Next came the shadow ledgers. The Swiss reserves, Cayman funds, and every untraceable account Alessio believed he alone controlled moved into a network he could not reach. Each transfer cleared before I approved the next.

Then I opened the legal document I had prepared months ago: *The Moretti Family: Protocol for Disposal of Remains and Final Asset Liquidation.* My name headed the file.

I read the title once more, then put my thumb on the biometric scanner. The screen turned green.

AUTHORIZED.

On paper, Eleanor Moretti was ready to die. Her money and command keys were already gone. If Carmen got me out, the protocol would hide me. If she failed, it would still deny Alessio everything he had tried to take from my body.

The door opened as I lowered the screen.

Bianca walked in wearing an emerald silk gown. She had no hospital bed, no gray skin, and no trouble standing. The dress caught the clinical lights as she crossed the floor. My blood had left color in her cheeks, and she smiled when she saw that I had noticed.