Chapter 2 - SOMEONE POISONED HIM BEFORE THE FLIGHT
Antonio woke at 3:12 in the morning with two police officers outside his hospital room.
His first question was not about himself.
“Evelyn?”
Marco stood beside the window.
“Safe.”
Antonio looked at him.
“That was not an answer.”
“She is under protection.”
Antonio closed his eyes briefly.
The doctor had warned him not to speak too much.
Antonio ignored most warnings unless they came with evidence.
“What did they find?”
Marco placed a printed toxicology report on the bedside table.
The substance responsible for Antonio’s reaction had been introduced before departure.
Not on the plane.
Not in his coffee.
Not during dinner.
It had been mixed into a supplement capsule from his private medication case.
Antonio read the report.
His expression did not change.
But Marco knew him too well.
“Who prepared the case?” Antonio asked.
“Dr. Leone’s office.”
“Who physically packed it?”
“His nurse signed the inventory.”
“Name?”
“Carla DeSantis.”
Antonio looked toward the dark window.
Carla had worked for the family for eleven years.
Her brother managed one of Vitelli Group’s warehouses in Newark.
Her mother attended Christmas dinner at Antonio’s aunt’s house.
People liked to imagine betrayal came from strangers.
Antonio had learned otherwise.
“Where is Carla?”
Marco hesitated.
“Missing.”
Antonio’s eyes sharpened.
“Since when?”
“She failed to report to work yesterday morning.”
That meant she had disappeared before Antonio even boarded the plane.
Too clean.
Too planned.
Meanwhile, Evelyn had been moved to a small hotel twenty minutes from the airport under a different reservation.
Two airline colleagues stayed nearby, but neither knew the full story.
She should have slept.
Instead she sat beside the window with her laptop open and replayed the flight in her mind.
Antonio boarding.
Marco lifting the medication case.
The man in 3C asking to switch seats.
The woman in 1D complaining about the overhead bin.
A detail bothered her.
Before takeoff, someone had opened the compartment above Antonio’s row.
Not Marco.
Not Antonio.
A passenger.
Evelyn had assumed he was retrieving a coat.
She opened the passenger manifest she had access to through standard crew reporting.
Seat 3C.
Daniel Rusk.
American passport.
Age forty-four.
He had been seated across the aisle from Antonio.
And he had disappeared during the Shannon medical diversion before police began full interviews.
Evelyn called Marco.
“You need to find passenger 3C.”
Silence.
Then:
“Why?”
She told him.
Marco checked with airport police.
Daniel Rusk had not entered the terminal with the other passengers.
He had exited through a restricted service corridor using an airport contractor badge.
A badge issued to someone else.
Antonio listened from his hospital bed as Marco relayed the information.
Then he asked one question.
“Rusk.”
Marco nodded slowly.
Antonio knew the name.
Not personally.
From a confidential file he had read four months earlier.
Daniel Rusk was a financial investigator.
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And six months ago, he had been hired by Antonio’s younger brother.
Luca Vitelli.
