Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN IN WHITE
Layla tested the restraints before she opened her mouth.
Leather straps held both wrists to the rails. Another crossed her hips loosely enough to protect the babies but tightly enough to prevent escape. The room smelled of bleach and warm plastic.
A cardiac monitor beeped near her shoulder.
The fetal monitor spoke faster.
Two heartbeats.
Still two.
The sound anchored Layla while memory returned in broken flashes: Dominic shielding her beneath the counter, the pressure of his palm when the babies kicked, and white smoke swallowing his face. She wondered whether he had been taken too.
Part of her wanted him outside the room with an army. Another part remembered his cold eyes in the penthouse and warned that rescue from Dominic often came with a locked door of its own.
She forced herself to study the room instead. There was no window, but the wall behind the monitor vibrated faintly every thirty seconds. An elevator shaft. The air vent carried the smell of diesel and lake water. They were below ground, probably near freight tunnels.
A paper bracelet circled her wrist with the false name Anna Doyle. Patrick's surname.
Seraphina had not chosen it accidentally. She wanted any body discovered here connected to a dead Callahan courier, not to Gallow Tower.
Layla flexed her fingers against the restraints. Fear became information. Information became time. And time, she had learned, was the first weapon available to someone everyone else considered powerless.
Seraphina sat with one leg crossed over the other, perfectly composed beneath the harsh hospital light.
"Where am I?"
"Somewhere Dominic will never search until I tell him to."
"You attacked the diner."
"No. The Callahans attacked the diner. I arranged for Dominic to survive it."
"People were inside."
"People are always inside places when history changes."
Layla pulled against the straps.
"What are you going to do?"
Seraphina glanced at the fetal monitor.
"That depends on how useful you become."
"The men in the garage said you wanted us dead."
"The men in the garage were supposed to frighten you, not shoot Patrick Doyle in front of a security camera. Incompetence is expensive."
Layla's skin prickled.
"You admit it."
"To you? Certainly. No court will ever hear this room."
Seraphina rose and adjusted the fluid line connected to Layla's arm.
"Dominic has spent four months turning Chicago upside down because you disappeared. Warehouses burned. Judges were threatened. Two Callahan captains vanished. He tells himself it is about the attack in his building. Men like Dominic require noble explanations for obsessive behavior."
"He is marrying you."
"He is merging with me. Marriage is merely the ribbon around the transaction."
"Your father wants his docks."
Seraphina smiled.
"You learn quickly when someone finally stops making beds."
Layla stared at the white liquid dripping into the tube.
"What are you giving me?"
"Saline. A mild sedative. Nothing that should harm the children."
"Should?"
"Medicine is full of uncertainty. That makes it useful."
Seraphina walked to a stainless-steel tray and picked up a syringe.
"One twin will appear distressed. The heart rate will fall. Dominic will be told an emergency procedure is necessary. He will arrive just in time to hear that a child could not be saved."
Layla's breath came faster.
"There are two heartbeats on the monitor."
"For now."
"You cannot fake a dead baby."
"I do not need to fake death forever. Only long enough to move one child somewhere else."
The meaning entered slowly.
"You want to steal one of them."
"My father wants insurance against Dominic. I want something better."
"What?"
"An heir."
Layla felt sick.
Seraphina turned the syringe between her fingers.
"Dominic cannot have children."
"That is a lie."
"It is what his doctors told him after he was shot nine years ago. The damage was considered permanent."
Layla remembered the way Dominic's face changed when the babies moved under his hand.
Not merely surprise.
Disbelief.
"Then he will know they are not his."
"He already knows they might be. That is the problem."
Seraphina leaned closer.
"A Gallow heir changes every agreement in this city. Men who tolerate Dominic because they expect his empire to fracture after his death will suddenly imagine thirty more years of bloodline. My father will lose leverage. His rivals will choose sides. And I will become the woman he married too late."
"So you will pretend one child is yours?"
"Not immediately. Children are easiest to shape when no one knows they exist."
"Dominic will find out."
"Dominic believes what evidence allows him to believe. I learned that the day he fired you."
The words cut because they were true.
A door opened behind Seraphina.
A doctor entered wearing green surgical scrubs. He was in his late fifties, with silver hair and trembling hands.
"Ms. Vale, we have a complication."
"What kind?"
"The sedative is not producing the expected response. Her blood pressure is rising."
"Then increase it."
"With twins at twenty-eight weeks, that could trigger labor."
"That is why you were paid."
The doctor's mouth tightened.
"I was paid to simulate fetal distress, not kill three people."
Seraphina's expression did not change.
"Your daughter is still in federal custody, Doctor. Her appeal depends on my father's attorney."
The doctor looked at Layla.
Shame crossed his face.
"Prepare the second dose," Seraphina said.
He moved toward the tray.
Layla's pulse climbed.
"Please."
The doctor paused.
"They are innocent."
Seraphina's voice sharpened.
"Do it."
The monitor alarm sounded.
One heartbeat suddenly dropped.
Layla twisted toward the screen.
"What's happening?"
The doctor checked the sensor belt.
"It may have shifted."
The number fell again.
Seraphina stepped back.
"Is that you?"
"No."
The doctor pressed a stethoscope to Layla's abdomen.
"Turn her on her left side. Now."
Seraphina did not move.
The doctor released Layla's hip restraint and rolled her carefully. The slower heartbeat climbed, then stabilized.
He exhaled.
"Cord compression. Temporary."
Layla began to cry without sound.
The doctor met her eyes.
"Both babies are alive."
Seraphina looked irritated rather than relieved.
A muffled impact sounded beyond the door.
Then another.
The doctor froze.
Seraphina reached beneath her dress and removed a small pistol from a thigh holster.
The lights went out.
Red emergency lamps illuminated the room.
Somewhere in the corridor, a man shouted.
Gunfire answered.
Seraphina moved beside the door.
"Doctor, finish it."
"In the dark?"
"You have sixty seconds."
The door burst inward.
Dominic entered through smoke with blood on his collar and a pistol in each hand.
He fired once.
Seraphina's weapon flew from her fingers.
She struck the wall and dropped.
Dominic crossed the room in two strides and aimed at her forehead.
"Give me one reason."
Seraphina looked up at him.
"Because your child is dying."
Dominic turned toward the monitor.
Both heartbeats remained steady.
That instant of distraction was enough.
Seraphina pulled a scalpel from the tray and lunged toward Layla.
The doctor caught her wrist.
She drove the blade into his chest.
Dominic grabbed Seraphina by the throat and slammed her against the wall.
"Who owns this clinic?"
She smiled despite his hand around her neck.
"You do."
His grip loosened.
"What?"
"Through three shell companies. The papers are in your legal office. Every needle, every strap, every camera belongs to Gallow Development."
Layla watched shock become calculation.
Seraphina laughed softly.
"Do you understand now? Even when I use your buildings to torture your women, the city sees only your signature."
Dominic's face went blank.
That frightened Layla more than rage would have.
He released Seraphina.
"Vincent."
The security chief appeared in the doorway, alive and armed.
Layla stared at him.
"You disappeared."
"I was busy finding the woman in white."
Dominic pointed at Seraphina.
"Take her downstairs."
Vincent hesitated.
"Her father has men surrounding the block."
"Then use the basement tunnel."
Seraphina rubbed her throat.
"Dominic, if you move me, my father releases everything."
"Let him."
"Photographs from the library. The staff schedule. The mask she wore. Proof that you slept with an employee who could not safely refuse you."
Layla felt the room contract.
Dominic looked at her.
The old shame returned, but it was no longer simple. She had wanted him that night. She had said yes. Yet she had also hidden her identity because the power between them terrified her.
Seraphina continued.
"The newspapers will not call it romance. Your board will not call it romance. Federal prosecutors certainly will not call it romance after they learn the same employee carried envelopes to the Callahans."
"She did not know Doyle worked for them," Dominic said.
"Can you prove that?"
His jaw tightened.
Seraphina smiled at Layla.
"Proof matters more than truth. Isn't that what he taught you?"
Dominic picked up the fallen pistol and pressed it beneath Seraphina's chin.
"Say another word to her."
"And what? You will kill your fiancée inside a clinic you own while cameras record everything?"
Vincent glanced toward the ceiling.
A red indicator light blinked above the door.
Dominic fired.
The camera shattered.
Seraphina flinched.
"You have confused patience with weakness," he said. "I will correct that mistake."
He handed the pistol to Vincent.
"Move her."
Vincent pulled Seraphina into the corridor.
Her voice echoed back.
"Ask Layla who her mother was!"
Layla went still.
Dominic turned.
"What does that mean?"
She reached beneath her coat, then remembered the envelope had been taken.
"Patrick gave me a photograph before he died. My father was standing beside a woman wearing my locket. On the back, someone wrote that he had to protect me from the Gallow family."
Dominic's expression changed.
"What locket?"
Layla touched the silver bird at her throat.
He crossed the room and took it gently between two fingers.
His face lost color.
"Where did you get this?"
"My father said it belonged to my mother."
"What was her name?"
"He never told me."
Dominic opened the locket.
Inside was a tiny painted bird and a nearly invisible engraving beneath one wing.
He read it.
Then he let go as though the metal had burned him.
"What does it say?"
He did not answer.
The wounded doctor coughed from the floor.
Dominic knelt beside him.
"Tell me."
Blood filled the doctor's mouth.
"The woman... in the photograph... was Elena Gallow."
Layla stared at Dominic.
"Your sister?"
"My father's sister," he said.
The doctor seized Dominic's sleeve.
"She did not die in the car accident."
"Who killed her?"
The doctor's eyes moved toward Layla.
"Samuel Bennett saved the baby."
His grip loosened.
The monitor beside him flattened into one continuous tone.
Layla could hear nothing except the twins' heartbeats.
Dominic stood very slowly.
"If Elena was your mother," he said, "then you are a Gallow."
Layla looked at the man whose children she carried.
For one horrifying moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Vincent returned with blood on his hands.
"Seraphina escaped."
Dominic turned.
"How?"
"Someone opened the tunnel from the outside."
"Who knew the route?"
May you like
Vincent's eyes moved to Layla.
"Only family."
