Chapter 4 - Wolves in the Waiting Room
By 2:00 AM, the hospital waiting room on the fourth floor was entirely deserted, save for two Columbus police officers stationed by the elevators and a lone figure sitting in the corner plastic chairs.
Uncle Arthur.
He had been brought in for questioning by detectives earlier that evening after the search warrant was executed at the Moretti residence, but because formal charges were still pending the final lab results, he had been released on his own recognizance for the night—or so the local precinct thought.
Arthur looked entirely different from the confident patriarch who had smiled at the front door seven days ago. His expensive sports jacket was rumpled, his hair was disheveled, and he was nervously chewing on the cuticle of his thumb as he stared at the tile floor.
The elevator bell chimed softly.
The heavy brass doors slid open.
Arthur looked up, expecting to see a nurse or a police detective. Instead, out stepped Vincent Moretti.
Vincent wasn't wearing his dusty suit anymore. He had changed into a sharp, immaculate black turtleneck and a tailored charcoal wool coat. His posture was rigid, his face carved from granite. Behind him stepped two massive men in dark suits—Sal and another enforcer named Marcus—whose broad shoulders completely filled the width of the corridor.
Arthur scrambled backward in his chair, his eyes widening in sheer panic as he recognized the man he had spent the last week treating like a gullible, working-class chauffeur.
"V-Vincent?" Arthur stammered, standing up unsteadily. "What... what are you doing here? The cops said you were upstairs with Emily. Look, Vincent, let's be reasonable. It was a misunderstanding! Martha and I, we were just overwhelmed! Babies are hard, you know how it is—"
Vincent didn't speak. He walked slowly across the linoleum floor, his hard leather shoes clicking rhythmically in the empty hallway.
The two police officers at the end of the hall turned around, shouting, "Hey! You can't be—"
Before they could take two steps, Marcus stepped smoothly into their path, flashing a small, nondescript gold badge bearing the seal of the United States Federal Marshals Office, while Sal casually rested his hand inside his jacket, revealing the outline of a suppressed pistol. The cops froze, exchanging uneasy glances before slowly stepping back toward the service exit. Money and badges bought a lot of compliance in Columbus; federal credentials bought absolute silence.
Vincent stopped two feet away from Arthur.
Arthur’s breath hitched. He tried to puff out his chest, attempting a pathetic display of authority. "Listen to me, boy! I am still your elder! You can't just—"
Crack.
Vincent’s open hand struck Arthur across the face with the force of a speeding truck. The older man spun sideways, crashing violently against the plastic chairs before tumbling onto the floor with a groan, clutching his bleeding lip.
"Boy?" Vincent murmured, his voice dropping into a cold, terrifying register as he stepped over Arthur’s twitching body and crouched down until their eyes were level. "You called me 'boy' while you and your wife poisoned my wife and left my newborn son to die in a crib?"
"I—I didn't—we needed money, Vincent!" Arthur sobbed, spitting blood onto the clean hospital floor. "The gambling debts... the loansharks in Cincinnati were going to break my legs! We thought if we looked after Emily and the baby, you’d be grateful, you’d hand over some cash—we didn't mean for them to get that sick!"
Vincent stared at him. The sheer, pathetic greed of the man made him sick to his stomach.
"Gambling debts," Vincent repeated softly. "You put my wife and my seven-day-old son through hell because you couldn't stop playing cards."
"Please, Vincent," Arthur whimpered, grabbing the hem of Vincent’s charcoal coat. "We're family! Emily would want you to show mercy—"
"Family," Vincent whispered, a dark, humorless smile touching the corners of his mouth. "You forfeited the right to that word the moment you walked into my house."
Vincent stood up, looking down at the groveling wreck beneath him. He didn't kick him again. He didn't have to.
"Sal," Vincent said without looking back.
"Yeah, Boss?"
"Take him outside. Put him in the trunk of the sedan. Drive him down to the warehouse on the riverfront. Lock him in a holding cell with his wife. Let them spend the night thinking about what happens when you steal from the wrong man."
"Consider it done," Sal grinned, grabbing Arthur by the collar of his ruined sports jacket and lifting the screaming man off the floor as if he weighed nothing at all.
As Arthur’s terrified screams echoed down the hallway and faded into the elevator shaft, Vincent turned his gaze back toward the intensive care unit.
The cleanup had begun. But the real target wasn't Arthur and Martha.
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According to Sal’s preliminary tablet briefing delivered just five minutes ago, Arthur’s Cincinnati loansharks weren't operating independently. They were backed by a mid-level syndicate enforcer named Marcus Vance—the exact same name as the traitor Vincent had flown to Chicago to eliminate earlier that week.
The web was connected. And Vincent Moretti was going to pull every single thread until the entire thing unraveled.
