Chapter 11 - A Crown Without a KingSix weeks after Sicily, Chicago entered winter.
Snow covered the Moretti estate.
Leo and Gabriel built a fort beside the fountain while Alessia stood nearby giving instructions with the seriousness of a military engineer.
“No, the wall needs to be thicker.”
Leo frowned.
“It’s snow.”
“It’s defensive architecture.”
Gabriel looked toward Sarah.
“She talks like Uncle Dominic.”
Dominic heard him.
“I do not.”
Sarah sipped coffee.
“You absolutely do.”
Marco walked across the terrace carrying two folders.
“Bad news.”
Dominic sighed.
“You always arrive with bad news.”
“I brought wine yesterday.”
“It was French.”
“It was excellent.”
“It was French.”
Sarah held out her hand.
“Folders.”
Marco gave them to her.
Inside were records recovered from Antonio Moretti’s old accounts.
The crown symbol appeared repeatedly.
Beside it was a phrase.
I Dodici.
The Twelve.
Alessia entered, cheeks red from the cold.
“The Twelve were investors.”
Every adult looked at her.
Dominic frowned.
“How do you know?”
“Isabella talked about them.”
Sarah pulled out a chair.
“Sit.”
Alessia obeyed.
“What did she say?”
“That the White Table managed cities. The Twelve managed countries.”
Silence.
Marco looked at Dominic.
“Still want the quiet life?”
“Yes.”
Alessia continued.
“They don’t like publicity.”
Sarah smiled faintly.
“Then they probably hate us.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
Alessia thought.
“A lot.”
Dominic rubbed his face.
“Wonderful.”
The Twelve had apparently financed political campaigns, private intelligence firms, energy companies, military contractors, and media groups.
Unlike the White Table, they left almost no direct records.
Antonio had spent years investigating them.
His final notebook contained one repeated warning:
Never allow the crown to control the lions.
Sarah looked at Dominic.
“Lions.”
“The Morettis.”
Marco leaned against the desk.
“Or our children.”
Dominic’s expression darkened.
“Nobody controls them.”
Sarah looked toward the window.
Leo had just thrown a snowball at a security guard.
“That may already be impossible.”
Mateo entered.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“You have a visitor.”
“No visitors.”
“He says you’ll want to see him.”
“Name?”
Mateo paused.
“Dr. Alistair Sterling.”
Sarah almost dropped her coffee.
Dominic stared.
“You’re joking.”
“No.”
Five minutes later, Sterling entered the library.
He looked ten years older.
The arrogance was gone.
His hands trembled.
When he saw Sarah, he swallowed.
“Mrs. Moretti.”
“Doctor.”
Dominic remained seated.
“You have thirty seconds.”
Sterling placed a medical file on the desk.
“I need protection.”
Dominic laughed.
“Twenty-five.”
“The White Table contacted me before Leonardo was born.”
Sarah stopped.
Sterling’s eyes filled with shame.
“They paid me.”
Dominic stood.
Sterling backed away.
“I didn’t know they intended to hurt him.”
“How much?”
“Dominic,” Sarah warned.
“How much did they pay you to experiment on my son?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
Dominic moved.
Sarah stepped in front of him.
“Not yet.”
His eyes burned.
Sarah turned to Sterling.
“Why are you here now?”
“Because they contacted me again.”
“The Twelve?”
Sterling nodded.
“They have a child.”
Sarah felt cold.
“What child?”
“I don’t know.”
“They want you to treat the child?”
“They want me to perform a procedure.”
“What procedure?”
Sterling opened the file.
Genetic editing.
Experimental immune suppression.
Sarah stared.
“This is illegal.”
“Yes.”
“Who is the patient?”
Sterling shook his head.
“Code name only.”
He pointed to the page.
CROWN LION.
Dominic looked at Sarah.
Marco entered from the hallway and read over her shoulder.
“Could be one of our children.”
Dominic was already reaching for his phone.
Sarah shook her head.
“No. Leo, Gabriel, Alessia are outside.”
“Then who?”
Sterling handed them a photograph.
A newborn baby.
Sarah stared.
The infant wore a hospital bracelet.
The name was partially hidden.
But the surname was visible.
MORETTI.
Marco went pale.
Dominic stared.
Sarah flipped the photograph.
A date.
Three days ago.
“Another Moretti baby,” she whispered.
Marco shook his head.
“There aren’t any.”
Dominic looked at him.
“That we know.”
A number was written beneath the photograph.
Sterling said, “They told me to call at noon.”
“When?”
“Today.”
Sarah checked the clock.
11:57.
Dominic immediately ordered signal tracing equipment.
Mateo connected the phone.
At exactly noon, it rang.
Sterling answered on speaker.
A male voice spoke.
“Doctor.”
“Yes.”
“Have you reconsidered?”
Sterling looked at Sarah.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Where is the patient?”
“You will receive instructions.”
Sarah wrote a question on paper.
Sterling read it.
“What happens if I refuse?”
The caller paused.
“The Moretti child dies.”
Dominic’s fists tightened.
Sterling continued.
“What is wrong with the baby?”
“Nothing.”
Sarah frowned.
Nothing?
“Then why the procedure?”
The voice answered.
“Because biology is unreliable.”
The call ended.
Mateo looked at the trace.
“Got it.”
“Where?”
He stared at the screen.
“St. Jude’s Hospital.”
Sarah felt the past hit her like a physical force.
The same hospital.
The same place where everything began.
Dominic looked at her.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Sarah.”
“That baby is there.”
“It’s bait.”
“So was Gabriel.”
“That nearly killed us.”
“But we saved him.”
Marco picked up a weapon.
“I’m coming.”
Dominic glared.
Marco shrugged.
“Family tradition.”
An hour later, Sarah walked into St. Jude’s Hospital for the first time in five years.
The lobby looked almost unchanged.
Same polished floors.
Same elevator.
Same faint smell of antiseptic.
She remembered being invisible there.
A nurse nobody noticed.
Now every security camera turned toward her.
Dominic walked beside her.
Sterling guided them toward the old VIP wing.
Suite 404.
Sarah stopped outside.
“Of course.”
Dominic looked at the number.
“They have a sense of humor.”
Inside, an incubator waited.
A baby slept peacefully.
Sarah approached.
No obvious distress.
She checked the bracelet.
MATTEO MORETTI.
Dominic stared.
“We don’t have a Matteo.”
Mateo, standing behind them, looked personally offended.
“Not mine.”
Sarah examined the infant.
Male.
Approximately three days old.
Healthy weight.
No surgical scars.
She looked beneath the bassinet.
A folder.
Birth certificate.
Father:
ANTONIO MORETTI JR.
Mother:
UNKNOWN.
Dominic frowned.
“My father was Antonio.”
Marco stepped closer.
“Junior?”
Sarah opened another document.
Frozen embryo inventory.
Collection date:
Dominic went pale.
Marco stared.
Sarah understood.
“Oh my God.”
Before his death, Antonio Moretti had preserved genetic material.
Someone had used it forty years later.
“This baby is your brother,” Sarah whispered.
Dominic looked at the infant.
Marco sank into a chair.
Nobody spoke.
The Twelve had not found another heir.
They had manufactured one.
A monitor on the wall activated.
A man appeared.
His face concealed in shadow.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Moretti.”
Sarah looked directly at the camera.
“Who are you?”
“Someone your husband’s father failed to defeat.”
Dominic stepped forward.
“Show your face.”
“In time.”
Sarah placed one hand on the incubator.
“What do you want?”
“To restore order.”
“Through a baby?”
“Through an heir raised correctly.”
Marco laughed bitterly.
“You people really have one idea.”
The man ignored him.
“Dominic rejected the crown. Marco never possessed the discipline. Leonardo and Gabriel have been contaminated by attachment.”
Sarah’s jaw tightened.
“And this child?”
“Will be educated without weakness.”
Sarah looked down at the sleeping baby.
Tiny fingers curled beside his face.
“In other words, without love.”
“Precisely.”
Sarah’s anger became cold.
“Then you already lost.”
The man paused.
“You misunderstand.”
“No.”
Sarah lifted the baby.
Dominic watched her.
“This child is a Moretti.”
“Yes.”
“Then he belongs with his family.”
The man’s voice hardened.
“He belongs to us.”
Sarah smiled.
“No.”
Alarms suddenly activated.
Security doors began closing.
Mateo shouted.
“Gas!”
Sarah saw vapor entering through the ventilation vents.
Dominic tore off his jacket and covered the baby’s face.
“OUT!”
Marco fired at the door control.
Locked.
Sarah remembered.
Five years ago.
Machines.
Tubing.
A baby.
Experts staring at monitors while she looked at the environment.
“Ventilation.”
Dominic turned.
“What?”
“They want us unconscious, not dead.”
Sarah looked at the oxygen port.
“Emergency oxygen line.”
She grabbed tubing.
“Mateo, break that panel!”
He smashed it.
Sarah connected the hospital oxygen supply to a manual mask.
“Baby first.”
Dominic held it over the infant.
Sarah looked toward the ceiling.
Gas moved downward.
Heavy compound.
“Floor is worse.”
“Up.”
They climbed onto counters.
Marco smashed the ceiling tile.
Maintenance crawl space.
Mateo boosted Sarah first.
She held the baby.
Dominic followed.
Then Marco.
They crawled through darkness as gas filled Suite 404 beneath them.
Sarah looked at the infant.
His eyes opened.
Dark brown.
Moretti eyes.
The baby made a quiet sound.
Dominic touched his cheek.
“What do we call him?”
Sarah looked at the name on the bracelet.
“Matteo?”
Behind them, their head of security said, “Absolutely not.”
Marco laughed.
Even Dominic smiled.
Sarah looked at the child.
“Antonio.”
Dominic’s expression changed.
After their father.
Marco nodded.
“Antonio.”
The baby yawned.
Sarah held him closer.
Another Moretti had entered the family.
Not through violence.
Not through succession.
Through rescue.
They escaped the hospital ten minutes later.
Police and fire crews surrounded the building.
The mysterious caller was gone.
But the baby remained.
Dominic stood beside Sarah on the sidewalk.
Snow began falling.
Five years earlier, she had left this hospital carrying Leonardo.
Tonight, she was leaving with another Moretti child in her arms.
Dominic looked at her.
“You realize this keeps happening.”
“What?”
“You enter hospitals and leave with members of my family.”
Sarah smiled.
“Maybe stop having such a complicated family.”
Marco joined them.
“Impossible.”
Sarah looked at the newborn.
Antonio Moretti.
A child created to become a weapon.
She kissed his forehead.
“No.”
Dominic looked at her.
“What?”
Sarah held the baby tighter.
“They wanted to raise him without weakness.”
Her eyes moved to Dominic.
Then Marco.
Then the snow-covered city beyond them.
“They’re never getting him back.”
Dominic placed one arm around her.
The crown wanted a lion without love.
May you like
Instead, it had delivered another child directly into the arms of Sarah Moretti.
And that was the mistake that would destroy it.
