Chương 3
Elena closed her eyes.
Vanessa said, “That is not a threat.”
“No,” Elena replied. “It is how you threaten someone when you want to pretend you didn’t.”
Adrian’s mouth moved slightly. It was not a smile.
“And the first bottle?” he asked Lily.
“She took it from the box later.”
“You saw her?”
“I was under the piano.”
Elena stared at her daughter. “You were where?”
“The little space behind the pedals.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want her to find me.”
The answer reduced Elena’s anger to something heavier.
Lily continued. “She went into here. I waited. Then I heard her open the drawer. I came to the door and saw the money on the bed. She had the blanket up. She was putting it under. Then she poured from the bottle into the tea.”
Vanessa shook her head. “No.”
“She did,” Lily said.
“There was no child in this room.”
“You didn’t look.”
“You expect him to believe you hid beneath a grand piano, followed me through the hall, and watched me poison him?”
Lily’s face tightened. “I didn’t know it was poison.”
“Then why are you calling it poison?”
“I’m not. He is.”
She pointed at Dr. Harris.
For the first time, the physician looked uncomfortable under a child’s attention.
Lily said, “I thought it was medicine. But she put it in the tea and stirred it with her finger.”
Vanessa’s composure cracked again.
Only for a moment.
Dr. Harris looked toward the porcelain cup.
“Has he drunk from that?”
“No,” Lily said. “I knocked the tray.”
Everyone turned to her.
A faint brown stain darkened the edge of the rug near the bedside table. Elena had noticed it earlier and assumed someone had spilled coffee. The cup on the table had been refilled.
Vanessa’s voice hardened. “She ran into me. That is all.”
Lily looked up at Adrian. “She made another cup.”
Dr. Harris stepped toward the table. He wrapped a second sterile cloth around the tea cup and lifted it from its saucer.
Adrian’s breathing had grown shallow.
Elena saw his eyes lose focus, then return. He pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum.
Dr. Harris noticed. “You need a hospital.”
“No.”
“Adrian.”
“No police. No ambulance. Run whatever you need here.”
“I cannot run a toxicology laboratory from your bedroom.”
“You’ve been treating me here for twelve days.”
“For an infection that no longer makes sense.”
Vanessa looked at him sharply.
Dr. Harris kept his attention on Adrian. “Your symptoms have fluctuated too quickly. Your fever is low-grade, but the weakness, the slowed pulse, the confusion—”
“You told me it was viral.”
“I told you that because the standard tests were negative and because you refused admission.”
“And now?”
“Now there are two unmarked bottles, a contaminated drink, and an accusation by a child who knew where the second bottle was.”
Vanessa said, “You are not a toxicologist.”
“No. Which is why he needs a hospital.”
Adrian looked toward the doors. “Call Sal.”
Elena had heard the name before. Everyone in the mansion had. Salvatore Moretti was Adrian’s uncle, his father’s younger brother, and the man who had kept the family’s legitimate construction businesses alive during the years Adrian’s father spent under federal indictment. He attended church twice a week, tipped valets in hundred-dollar bills, and remembered the birthdays of people he intended to use.
Cole reached for his phone.
Dr. Harris said, “Call emergency services first.”
Adrian’s gaze went to him.
“You may have been repeatedly poisoned,” the doctor continued. “You are showing cardiac symptoms. I will not help you conceal that.”
The words surprised everyone, including Dr. Harris.
Adrian studied him. “You’ve helped conceal worse.”
The physician’s face changed.
Elena had never known what Dr. Harris had been paid to ignore. She did not need details to understand the accusation.
“This is not the same,” he said.
“It’s always different when you become afraid.”
Dr. Harris flinched.
Vanessa saw it and stepped into the opening. “Listen to him. If you go to a hospital, this becomes public before midnight. Reporters will be outside before they finish drawing blood. The police will seize the room. Your enemies will know you are weak.”
“His enemies may already know,” Elena said.
Vanessa turned. “Nobody asked you.”
“No,” Elena said. “They never do.”
A small silence followed.
Lily leaned closer to her mother. Adrian’s eyes remained on Elena, not Vanessa.
It was not gratitude in his expression. Adrian Moretti did not surrender that easily. It was reassessment.
He had known Elena as a quiet woman who moved through rooms without changing them. She knew how he liked his shirts hung, how much lemon to put in his water, when not to enter the office. She had never asked for a favor beyond a change in schedule when her mother had surgery.
Now she had contradicted his fiancée twice and stood over him as though his name did not frighten her enough.
He looked at Lily again.
The resemblance was worse from that angle.
Elena saw recognition begin and wanted to stop it.
Adrian’s hand slid toward the edge of the mattress as if he meant to stand.
Dr. Harris caught his shoulder. “Do not.”
“I’m not staying in this bed while people debate whether I can survive an ambulance.”
“You will not survive the stairs if your pressure drops again.”
Adrian shoved his hand away.
The movement cost him. His face drained of what little color remained. He bent forward, breath catching, one hand clamped around the sheet.
The monitor alarm began.
Vanessa took a step toward him.
Elena blocked her.
For one strange second, they looked at each other across the edge of the bed. Vanessa’s eyes held a plea that might have been genuine. Elena almost moved.
Then she remembered Lily hiding under the piano.
Dr. Harris lowered Adrian onto the pillows and reached for the IV controls. “Call an ambulance.”
Nobody obeyed.
May you like
The guards waited for Adrian.
Adrian’s eyes were open but unfocused. His lips moved without sound.
