Chapter 4 - The Safehouse in Brooklyn
The Moretti safehouse wasn't a dungeon or a gritty mob hideout; it was a sprawling, ultra-modern brownstone tucked away on a quiet, tree-lined street in Brooklyn Heights, fortified with bulletproof glass, biometric security, and an interior decorated like an architectural digest magazine.
Sal wheeled them through the double front doors into a sunlit atrium filled with tropical plants and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
“You can stay here as long as you need,” Dante said, walking ahead of them and tossing his suit jacket onto a designer leather sofa. “My men patrol the perimeter twenty-four hours a day. No one from Celeste’s payroll can touch you here.”
“I don't want to hide,” Esme said suddenly.
Dante stopped, turning around to look at her.
Esme was standing.
Her legs were shaking slightly, the titanium stabilizers locked firmly around her calves and thighs, humming with a low, subtle electric charge as the internal motors adjusted to her body weight. She gripped the back of a velvet armchair for balance, her knuckles white, but her head held high.
Dante’s tough, scarred expression softened into something almost paternal. He walked over slowly, standing two feet away without offering a hand. He knew better than to help her too soon.
Esme took a breath. She let go of the chair.
She took one step forward.
Her right leg wobbled, the motorized joint adjusting instantly to stabilize her weight. She took a second step. Then a third.
By the fourth step, she was walking across the hardwood floor under her own power, her eyes shining with hot, victorious tears.
“Your father had those built in Switzerland three weeks before he died,” Dante said quietly, watching her with a deep, aching pride in his eyes. “He knew you’d need them the day you decided you were done crawling.”
Ivy leaped out of her own wheelchair—she had already fitted her stabilizers in the car with Dante’s help—and ran across the room, throwing her arms around her twin sister as they both collapsed into each other’s arms, crying tears of rage, relief, and absolute liberation.
Dante turned away, walking over to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance. He pulled out a cigar, clipped the end, and lit it with a heavy silver Zippo lighter.
“Enjoy the moment, girls,” Dante said, blowing a thin ring of blue smoke toward the high ceiling. “Because tomorrow morning, your mother is going to hold a press conference at the Manhattan headquarters of Voss Bio-Tech, declaring us kidnappers and you two as mentally unstable minors in need of emergency psychiatric custody.”
Ivy looked up, wiping her eyes. Her voice was steady now, devoid of fear.
“Let her hold her press conference,” Ivy said, her dark eyes flashing with the exact same ruthless determination that made her father a brilliant scientist and her mother a corporate tyrant. “We have the micro SD card. We have the proof.”
“Proof doesn't mean a damn thing on Wall Street, Ivy,” Dante replied, turning around with a grim smile. “In New York, public opinion isn't won with truth. It’s won with power. And right now, Celeste still owns the board of directors, the media syndicates, and half the city council.”
May you like
He walked over to the mahogany desk in the corner of the room, tapping the edge of a thick stack of documents.
“If we want to destroy Celeste Voss,” Dante said, his voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register, “we aren't going to sue her. We’re going to take her company away from her, piece by piece, until she’s sitting right where you were tonight: alone in an empty ballroom with nothing left.”
