Chapter 2 - THE GHOSTS IN THE WARD
The clinical smell of antiseptic and ozone always reminded Iris of the smell of a winter morning before the snow had melted. Pure. Sterile. Unforgiving.
She stood at the nursing station on the fourth floor of Saint Jude’s pediatric wing, reviewing charts while the digital clock blinked 11:42 PM. The hallway was quiet, save for the hum of the central air and the occasional rhythmic beep of an IV pump down in room 412.
Room 412.
Gia Mancini.
Iris closed the heavy paper file, her fingers lingering against the cardboard. Since that morning in the examination room, when she had noticed those silvery, deliberate scars hidden beneath the small of the child’s ribs, she hadn't been able to clear her head. Surgeons saw scars every day—surgical interventions, accidental trauma, the cruel fingerprints of an imperfect world. But those particular marks didn't belong to a scalpel. They were jagged, deep, and arranged with a chilling irregularity that spoke of violence, not medicine.
And Salvatore’s voice—heavy, cracked, and stripped of all its terrifying power—echoed in her mind.
She didn’t fall. And it wasn’t me.
If not him, then who? A man like Salvatore Mancini ruled the docks, the shadows, and the underground veins of New Orleans. He had enemies who bled rivers. To target a child—to leave those marks on a seven-year-old girl—meant the war had already crossed lines that even monsters usually respected.
A soft click at the end of the corridor drew her eyes up.
Out of the shadows stepped Marco Greco. He wore no suit jacket today, just a dark wool coat over a charcoal shirt, his broad shoulders filling the narrow hallway. He looked less like a corporate executive and more like what he truly was: a predator who knew how to walk quietly in civilized places.
He stopped two paces away from the nurse's station, keeping his hands empty and visible.
“Dr. Delaqua,” Marco said quietly. His voice was a gravelly baritone that barely disturbed the silence.
“Visiting hours ended two hours ago, Mr. Greco,” Iris said without looking up, signing her name across a discharge summary with sharp, deliberate strokes.
“Mr. Mancini sent me to deliver an updated medical history from her pediatrician in Rome. Before they moved here three years ago.” Marco placed a sealed manila envelope on the counter. He didn't push it closer to her; he left it in neutral territory.
Iris finally raised her eyes, meeting Marco’s steady, hardened gaze. There was no menace in the man, only a tired, grinding loyalty that she recognized. It was the same kind of loyalty soldiers had for a general who was losing his mind.
“Why didn't he bring it himself?” Iris asked.
“Because every time he looks at her right now, he remembers what he couldn't stop,” Marco replied flatly. “And because he knows you're watching him.”
Iris set her pen down. She folded her hands over the chart. “I told him that if I see any sign of abuse or ongoing danger, I will bypass the police and go straight to federal authorities. I don't care how many judges he owns.”
Marco gave a slow, humorless nod. “I know. And if you didn't say that, Mr. Mancini wouldn't have trusted you to touch her heart. A man who surrounds himself with liars respects a woman who looks him in the eye and tells him the truth.”
“Flattery doesn't work on me, Mr. Greco.”
“It’s not flattery. It’s inventory.” Marco turned to leave, then paused, looking down the quiet hall toward room 412. “The scars... they happened before she came to New Orleans. Before Salvatore brought her into his world to keep her safe from hers.”
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Iris frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Ask him yourself,” Marco said, stepping back into the shadows of the stairwell. “He’s sitting in his car down in the third-level parking garage. He’s been there since four o'clock this afternoon. He hasn't turned the engine on once.”
