The Black Diamond

Chapter 4 The Hollow Crown

The bolt closed across the cistern door. I waited in the corridor for Siena to scream. Water shifted behind the iron, but she made no sound.

The water was already at Siena's knees. Her silence irritated me more than begging would have.

Fine. The cold would make her cooperate.

"Don Moretti!"

Luca, my underboss, stopped at the top of the stairs with one hand on the wall. I had last seen that look during the Bratva convoy ambush.

"What happened?"

"The accounts. Aegis, the offshore funds, all of them. They're gone."

"A transfer was signed."

Luca held up his phone. Every account showed the same lock notice. "Her signature triggered a full shutdown. Funds are frozen or encrypted. The ports, warehouses, and armories are sealed under her biometric profile. We cannot access one dollar."

He swiped through notices from the West End warehouses, then the docks. Every port, warehouse, and armory displayed the same biometric lock.

I took the phone and tried my own code. The screen rejected it.

"Get Siena. Bring her to the terminal and make her fix it."

Luca glanced at the cistern door. "Every recovery key belongs to her. She built Aegis around her own identity. We are locked out, Don."

I entered the code again. The same red notice appeared.

For five years, every crisis had ended with Siena taking a terminal, asking two questions, and handing me the answer. I searched Luca's screen for a recovery option. Every one required Siena.

The accounts could wait. Chloe's son would carry my name even if Aegis took days to recover.

"Get the car. We're going to the hospital."

At the emergency wing, my guards pushed past two orderlies. "Chloe Rostova. Where is she? How is my son?"

Nurses backed against the walls as we crossed the ward. I had sent Chloe here after the boardroom and expected to find doctors fighting to save the Moretti heir.

A doctor stepped between me and the treatment rooms. Sweat had soaked the collar of his scrubs.

"Don Moretti, we examined Miss Rostova."

I grabbed his scrubs. "My son."

"There was no fetus."

I loosened my grip. "Say that again."

"Miss Rostova shows signs of pseudocyesis, a phantom pregnancy. We found no fetus and no evidence of miscarriage."

He turned the examination screen toward me. The uterus was empty. There was no sign of the fetus or miscarriage Chloe had claimed.

"I saw the tests. I heard the heartbeat."

"Images and audio recordings can be faked." The doctor signaled to a nurse. "There is another file you need to see."

The nurse brought a thin, yellowed folder from our premarital medical examination ten years ago. My name was typed across the tab.

I remembered Siena collecting both sealed files. She had smiled outside the clinic, tucked them under her coat, and said we had nothing to worry about.

The doctor opened to a highlighted line.

"Your sperm viability was extremely low. Conception would have been unlikely."

I read the percentage three times. Siena had taken this file from the doctor and told me our results were fine.

"Then how could anyone give me a child?"

He opened Siena's file. "Donna Siena has a rare hyper-fertile constitution. I have not encountered another case in my practice."

He set both reports side by side. "Given your condition, Siena may have been the only woman able to conceive your child."

The doctor tapped the dates and signatures. Both files were ten years old. Neither could have been created after Chloe arrived, and Siena had never used hers to shame me.

Chloe's empty scans lay beside Siena's report. Less than an hour earlier, I had called Siena barren and ordered her into the cistern.

No.

I shoved the doctor into a cabinet. "Siena paid you. She paid all of you to say this."

Tomorrow night, the Alliance Gala would put every rival family in one room. I could still present Chloe and announce the heir before anyone heard what this hospital claimed.

Canceling would invite questions. Arriving alone would confirm weakness. I would keep Chloe close until the announcement was finished, then make her explain the Russian call in private.

I went to Chloe's private room and stopped with my hand on the knob.

She was speaking fluent Russian. Her words came through the door clearly.

"The i***t swallowed it all. He's locked his little queen in the dungeon. The transfer is done. The Moretti empire is ours for the taking."