CHAPTER 242: DOCKSIDE VIGIL

CHAPTER 242: DOCKSIDE VIGIL
"Oh, just looking for the cafeteria," Maria lied smoothly, pasting a confused look on her face.

"Ground floor, to the left," the nurse replied, turning back to her screen.

"Thank you!"

Maria hurried down the stairs to the ground-floor cafeteria, found a quiet corner table, and opened her laptop. The hardware bridge was active. She was inside Saint Jude’s private medical database.

She ran a search for high-level trauma admissions over the past week, filtering by chemical burns and gunshot wounds.

Nothing. The query returned zero results.

"Nothing?" Maria whispered in utter frustration, leaning her head back against the wall. "No admission logs? No surgical files?" She glared at the screen, running a hand over her face. "This is the fucking problem with billionaires and mobsters. They hide everything behind private wings and off-the-books records."

Realizing her digital tools had reached a dead end, Maria closed her laptop. Time for mouth-to-mouth investigation.

She sat in the cafeteria for forty minutes, carefully observing the hospital staff coming and going. Her eyes locked onto a young, chattier-looking night-shift nurse sitting alone at a booth, sipping an iced coffee while scrolling on her phone.

Maria picked up her bottle of water, walked over, and offered a friendly, nervous smile. "Hi... do you mind if I sit here? Everywhere else is packed."

The nurse looked up, smiling warmly. "Sure, go ahead!"

Maria sat down, setting her water on the table. "You look exhausted. Long shift?"

"You have no idea," the nurse laughed, rolling her eyes. "Twelve hours on my feet."

"I totally get it," Maria said, leaning in with an eager, conspiratorial grin. "Honestly, I'm a freelance writer doing a piece on local hospital staff. You guys are literal heroes. I don't suppose I could ask you a couple of quick questions? I can even feature your name in the article if you'd like!"

The nurse’s eyes lit up instantly. "Really? My name in a published article? My mom would lose her mind!"

"Of course!" Maria smiled, pulling a notepad from her purse. "So, have there been any crazy, high-profile cases coming through here lately? Anything intense?"

The nurse lowered her voice, leaning across the table. "Oh, honey... you have no idea. About a week ago, this super wealthy guy, the insanely hot one who's been all over the news lately, came rushing in."

Maria’s chest tightened. "De Soto?"

"Yes! That hot CEO!" the nurse whispered excitedly. "He came in with blood all over his hands and clothes. He brought in two women, an older lady with terrible chemical burns on her hand, and a young girl. Oh, God, the young girl was in awful shape."

Maria felt the air leave her lungs. "The young girl... did you see her? What did she look like?"

"I couldn't get close," the nurse admitted, shaking her head. "His private security locked down the entire sub-level wing. Only the chief surgeons were allowed inside. But I heard the nurses talking... they said she was young, incredibly pretty, but she had a gunshot wound to the back. She flatlined right in the trauma room."

Maria’s heart shattered against her ribs. Her breath hitched in her throat. "Flatlined...?"

"Yeah, but they got her heart back," the nurse continued casually, taking a sip of her coffee. "She went straight into a massive four-hour surgery. But guess what? Even when they discharged her a few days ago, she still wasn't awake. She was in a full medically induced coma."

A coma.

The world tilted violently on its axis. Maria’s hand jerked on instinct, knocking her water bottle off the edge of the table. It crashed onto the linoleum floor, spilling cold water everywhere.

The nurse jumped slightly. "Oh! Are you okay?"

Maria sat frozen, her skin turning ghost-white. Her vision blurred as a wave of suffocating, blinding panic washed over her. Bella is in a coma. She was shot in the back. She took a bullet for Alexandro's mother.

"Miss?" The nurse leaned forward, looking at her with genuine concern. "Hey, you look really pale. Are you all right?"

"I... I..." Maria stammered, stumbling out of the booth. Her knees felt like lead. "My... my blood sugar just dropped. I need... I need to go."

"Wait, let me call a medic—"

"No! I'm fine!" Maria gasped out, backing away hurriedly before turning on her heel and sprinting out of the cafeteria, leaving the nurse staring after her in total confusion.

Maria burst through the hospital doors, stumbled into her car, and locked the doors. She collapsed against the steering wheel, gasping for air as a full-blown panic attack seized her chest. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she clutched her heart, trying desperately to regulate her ragged breathing.

She's in a coma. She was discharged while still unconscious. There's only one place Alexandro would take her, his private penthouse.

Maria wiped the tears from her face, her panic slowly hardening into a cold, fierce determination. She couldn't call Alexandro. He had blocked every external line, and his corporate security was an impenetrable fortress. She had no way of knowing if Alexandro was keeping Bella safe, or if he was holding her captive out of anger for her past betrayal.

Is this some sick form of revenge? What the hell happened in that warehouse?!

She needed a way to get to Alexandro. And there was only one person in this entire damned city who could bridge that gap.

Giovanni.

Maria opened her laptop once more, wiping her eyes as she logged directly into the dark web forums monitoring Citernera's local underground. The forums were buzzing with chaotic chatter. The Ombra syndicate had completely crushed Enzo’s territory. Ombra was taking over the streets, and Giovanni, the man known as Ghost, was personally overseeing the transition.

She dug through the latest street chatter until she spotted a recent post from twenty minutes ago: Ghost was just spotted clearing out Enzo’s old racket at the southern harbor docks.

Maria closed her laptop, started the engine, and jammed her foot onto the accelerator.

Half an hour later, Maria arrived at the grimy, desolate southern harbor. The area was surrounded by rusted shipping containers, dark warehouses, and the smell of saltwater and oil. This was the dark underbelly of the city, the kind of dangerous, lawless territory Maria had grown up in before she ever picked up a computer.

She stepped out of her car, her small figure looking hopelessly out of place amidst the looming, dangerous shadows of the docks.

She walked past group after group of hardened street enforcers and syndicate guards. She asked questions, showing them a general description, but every man gave her the same cold, threatening glare. Nobody was going to give up the location of the supreme enforcer of Ombra to a random girl in glasses.

After an hour of fruitless searching, exhausted, terrified, and drained of every drop of energy, Maria walked to the edge of the concrete pier.

She sat down on the cold edge, her legs dangling over the dark, churning water below. She pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin on her arms as she stared out at the ocean. She felt so small, so helpless, and so utterly terrified for her best friend.

"Please be okay, Bella," she whispered into the salty wind, tears welling in her eyes again. "Please... just hold on."

A quiet, heavy footstep sounded on the concrete behind her.

A tall shadow fell over her, blocking out the dim harbor light.

Maria didn't even have time to gasp before a massive figure casually sat down on the concrete pier right beside her.

She snapped her head around.

It was Giovanni.

He was wearing his dark leather vest, his sleeves rolled up to reveal his tattooed arms, a faint smear of grease along his jawline. His cold, dark eyes looked at her, and instantly, that familiar, electric spike of undeniable chemistry flared through Maria's chest, taking her breath away.

Giovanni looked at her, a low, smooth smirk touching his lips.

"Well," Giovanni said softly, his voice rich and deep in the quiet harbor air. "I heard a tiny, weird woman was walking around my docks asking questions about me. How can I help you, Maria?"

Maria swallowed the lump of raw emotion rising in her throat, forcing down the sudden, chaotic fluttering in her chest. She hardened her posture, pulled herself up straight, and glared at him with pure, unadulterated fire.

"Where is Bella?" Maria demanded, her voice trembling with lethal intensity. "Where the fuck are you keeping her?!"