12 Paramedics Couldn’t Save the Mafia Boss’s Baby — Until the Maid Did Something Unthinkable
The Gala Trap
At that moment, the door burst open again. It was Vanessa.
She was wearing a silk dressing gown, looking disheveled and frantic. But behind the panic, Arya saw a flash of pure calculation.
“Rocco!”
Vanessa cried, rushing to him.
“I heard you were in here with—with the help! What is going on? Why is she still here?”
Rocco put a protective arm around Vanessa, but Arya noticed his muscles didn’t relax. He was playing a role.
“Vanessa,”
Rocco said smoothly.
*”I have news. Annie isn’t just a maid. She’s a pediatric specialist I hired undercover to test our security protocols. And frankly, our security failed.”
Vanessa’s eyes went wide. She looked at Arya with a mixture of shock and dawning horror.
“A specialist?”
“Yes,”
Rocco lied effortlessly.
“And from now on, she is in charge of everything concerning Leo. Everything, including his diet.”
Vanessa paled. She took a half-step back.
“But Rocco, we don’t know her! She’s a stranger!”
“She saved his life, Nessie,”
Rocco said, his voice dropping to a chill.
“Which is more than I can say for anyone else in this house today.”
Vanessa glared at Arya. It was a look of pure hatred.
In that look, Arya saw the confirmation of her darkest suspicion. Vanessa wasn’t just a wicked stepmother; she was the threat.
“Welcome to the family, doctor,”
Vanessa hissed, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“I hope you survive the night.”
The Forensic Sweep
The transition from Annie the Maid to Dr. Vance was a seismic shift that rattled the very foundations of the Marchetti estate.
The staff, who had spent months ignoring Arya or barking orders at her, now averted their eyes as she walked down the corridors in a crisp navy blazer and slacks provided by Rocco’s personal stylist.
They didn’t know the full story, only that the boss had elevated the cleaning lady to a position of absolute authority, and that terrified them.
But Arya didn’t care about the whispers. She cared about the nursery.
For the next three days, Arya turned Leo’s room into a fortress. She threw out every bottle of formula, every jar of baby food, and every pacifier.
She installed a medical-grade refrigerator for his new supplies, which she personally sourced from a pharmacy across the city, escorted by two armed guards. Leo was recovering.
The swelling in his throat had subsided, leaving only a small red scar where Arya had inserted the cannula. He was back to his babbling self, clinging to Arya with a desperation that broke her heart.
He knew in his infant way that she was safety. But the threat was still in the house.
On the fourth afternoon, while Leo napped, Arya began her forensic sweep of the room. Rocco had given her free rein.
She put on latex gloves and began to sift through the items she had bagged for disposal.
If the oleander wasn’t in the formula, which the lab results had come back inconclusive on, it had to be transdermal—absorbed through the skin.
She picked up a bottle of soothing chamomile night lotion. It was a boutique brand imported from Paris.
The seal looked intact, but when Arya held it up to the light, she noticed a tiny pinprick near the neck of the bottle. She unscrewed the cap and squeezed a drop onto a pH test strip she had requested.
It didn’t turn the expected color. She brought it to her nose.
Beneath the heavy, cloying scent of artificial chamomile, there it was again—the faint, acrid whisper of bitter almonds.
“Concentrated oleandrin extract,”
She realized, her stomach churning.
“Mixed into the lotion. Every time they bathed him, they were slowly poisoning him. It wasn’t a sudden attack. It was an accumulation. They were murdering him by inches.”
“Found something?”
Arya jumped. Rocco was standing in the doorway.
He moved so silently for a man of his size. He looked tired.
The circles under his eyes were dark bruises, and his suit jacket was discarded on a chair. The war with the rival families was heating up, and the stress was radiating off him in waves.
“This,”
Arya said, holding up the bottle.
“It’s the lotion. It’s spiked with the toxin. Who bought this?”
Rocco walked over, taking the bottle with a gloved hand. His jaw tightened until a muscle feathered in his cheek.
“Vanessa. She gave it to the nanny last week. She said it was special for his dry skin.”
“There’s your proof,”
Arya said, her voice shaking with rage.
“Rocco, she’s not just a bad stepmother. She’s a sociopath. You have to arrest her, or whatever it is you do.”
Rocco looked at the bottle, then at Leo sleeping in the crib. He didn’t look angry.
He looked defeated.
“I can’t,”
He said softly. Arya stared at him.
“What do you mean you can’t? She tried to kill your son!”
“Vanessa is the daughter of Don Salvatore,”
Rocco explained, his voice devoid of emotion.
“The Salvatore family controls the ports in the south. We are in the middle of a fragile truce.”
“If I touch a hair on her head without absolute, undeniable proof that I can show to the Commission—proof that links her directly to the purchase of the poison—Salvatore will declare war. And in that war, thousands will die, including likely me and Leo.”
“So she gets away with it?”
Arya demanded, stepping closer to him.
“You’re going to let her walk around this house knowing she wants him dead?”
“No,”
Rocco said. He reached out his hand, cupping Arya’s cheek.
His thumb brushed over her skin, rough against smooth.
“That’s why you’re here. To be the shield I can’t be right now. I have to play the game, Arya. I have to pretend I don’t know. But you are my eyes. You are my hands.”
The intimacy of the moment stole the air from Arya’s lungs. She looked up into his dark, tortured eyes and saw a man who was trapped in a golden cage of his own making.
“I’m not a shield, Rocco,”
She whispered.
“I’m a target. If she knows I know, then she’ll come for me.”
“And when she does,”
Rocco finished.
“She’ll make a mistake, and I’ll be there to catch her.”
He leaned in. For a second, Arya thought he was going to kiss her.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She wanted him to.
