Chapter 2 - The Chromatography Report
The penthouse at Marconi Tower looked less like a home and more like an intelligence command center crossed with a minimalist art gallery. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a sweeping, panoramic view of Lake Michigan, though today the water was the color of slate, churned up by howling winds that battered the triple-paned glass.
Dr. Maya Chen stood over the glass-topped kitchen island, her silver-rimmed glasses pushed up on her forehead as she peered down at the digital readout of the portable gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer humming softly beside her laptop. Maya was thirty-four, a former toxicologist for the Centers for Disease Control who had left public health after realizing that corporate money could buy any conclusion she was asked to write—until Levi Marconi pulled her out of academic obscurity and funded her private lab with no strings attached, save for one: Never lie to me.
Levi stood a few feet away, leaning against the edge of the stone fireplace. He hadn't removed his coat. His arms were crossed over his chest, his dark eyes fixed on the back of Maya’s head with an unblinking intensity that could have melted lead.
Sal stood near the double doors, his arms folded, his face set in a grim line.
"Well?" Levi asked. The single word sounded like the cocking of a hammer.
Maya didn't answer immediately. She tapped a few keys on her laptop, zooming in on a complex spectral graph that looked like a jagged mountain range of green and red lines. She clicked a mouse, frowned, and ran a gloved hand through her short black hair.
"It’s not good, Levi," Maya said, her voice quiet. She turned to face him, her expression grim. "I ran the contents of the vial your security team intercepted from your private locker at Street Grace. The prescription bottle Dr. Whitmore handed you during your last quarterly visit—the one you were supposed to take this morning."
"Talk," Levi commanded.
"It's digitoxin," Maya said, her fingers tracing the edge of the screen. "A cardiac glycoside derived from the purple foxglove plant. It’s significantly more potent and faster-acting than digoxin. But that’s not the worst part."
She brought up a secondary window showing a molecular breakdown.
"Someone modified the compound. They added a synthetic stabilizing agent—a peptide chain that delays the drug's initial breakdown in the liver, allowing it to build up silently in the myocardial tissue over a period of seventy-two hours. By the time the patient feels the first symptoms—mild fatigue, a slight shortness of breath—the heart muscle is already undergoing irreversible calcium overload."
Sal let out a low curse, his hand dropping to his holster. "Son of a bitch. A slow-acting myocardial poison. It wouldn't show up on a standard post-mortem unless the coroner specifically ordered a specialized alkaloid screen for plant-based cardiac glycosides."
"Which," Maya added softly, "coroners almost never do when the patient has a documented family history of congenital heart failure."
The room went dead silent. The wind outside howled against the glass, but inside, the only sound was the rhythmic hum of the mass spectrometer.
Levi pushed off the fireplace mantel. His face was entirely expressionless, but the muscles along his jawline were bunched so tightly the skin looked white.
Eight years ago.
Antonio Marconi had collapsed in his private suite at Street Grace. Dr. Harold Whitmore had stood by his bedside, holding his hand, offering words of comfort.
Massive coronary event.
Levi walked over to the mahogany desk and looked down at the photograph of his father. For eight years, he had carried the guilt of survival—the belief that his father’s defective heart was a biological ticking time bomb that would eventually come for him too. He had lived every day braced for the inevitable, training his body like a weapon, building an empire because he thought he was running out of time.
It wasn't biology. It wasn't nature.
It was murder.
"Whitmore," Levi said, his voice dropping into a register so cold it seemed to lower the temperature in the room.
"Dr. Harold Whitmore signed the death certificate in twenty-eighteen," Maya confirmed, pulling up a scanned document on her monitor. "And according to hospital logs, Whitmore is the only physician with authorized access to the secure pharmaceutical vault where compounded cardiac glycosides are kept under lock and key."
Sal stepped closer to Levi. "Boss, you want me to bring him in? We can have him sitting in the basement on 15th Street before lunch. By midnight, he’ll tell us who else is in on it."
"No," Levi said.
Sal blinked. "No? Boss, the man tried to kill you. He killed your old man."
"If we grab him now, the lawyers get involved, writs are filed, and whatever network he's plugged into goes dark," Levi said, his eyes narrowing as the cold calculation of a veteran strategist took over. "Whitmore thinks he won. He thinks his schedule is secure. He expects me to take that pill this morning, feel a little dizzy on Friday, and drop dead by the weekend."
Levi turned away from the desk, walking toward the floor-to-ceiling windows to look out over the grey expanse of Lake Michigan.
"We play his game," Levi said quietly. "We let him think the dose was taken. We let him watch the clock."
"And the little girl?" Sal asked, his voice softening just a fraction. "The one who tipped you off in the alley? If Whitmore or his associates realize someone overheard them—"
"They won't," Levi interrupted, a dangerous edge sharpening his tone. "Sal, I want a full security detail assigned to Claire and Natalie Foster. Move them out of that room over the laundromat immediately. Put them in the penthouse on the forty-fifth floor of the residential tower. Nobody touches them. Nobody even looks at them without my direct authorization."
"Already on it," Sal nodded. "What about Whitmore?"
May you like
Levi turned back around, the reflection of the city lights shimmering in the dark depths of his eyes.
"Keep him under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Every phone call, every visitor, every prescription he writes. I want to know every person he’s spoken to in the last eight years." Levi paused, a slow, grim smile touching the corner of his mouth. "Especially anyone from New York."
