Chapter 3
Elias stared.
“Administered?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
The word came out flat, stupid, useless.
Dr. Miller continued gently.
“The substances appear consistent with a heavy-duty industrial cleaning agent. Her lungs and heart have been under severe strain. Whoever did this did not give her one large dose. It was slow. Repeated. Deliberate.”
Elias heard a ringing in his ears.
The mansion.
The kitchen.
The milk.
The evening water.
The carefully controlled meals.
Vivian.
His current wife.
She had asked to manage the kitchen after their marriage, insisting Maisie needed a more carefully planned diet. Organic milk. Special vitamins. Imported supplements. The “best nutrition,” she had called it.
Elias had approved without reading the details.
He was busy.
He had always been busy.
Vivian Hawthorne Vance was beautiful, polished, distant. She had entered his life two years after Maisie’s mother died, arriving with soft perfume, perfect manners, and a talent for making grief look untidy. She never struck Elias as warm, exactly, but she was efficient. Controlled. Socially impeccable. He had told himself warmth would come later.
Then there was Serafina.
His elder sister.
Blood.
Family.
The woman who had helped raise him after their parents’ deaths. The woman who called him “little brother” even now, though he ran an empire. The woman he had trusted to oversee Maisie’s emotional life when he was away because, unlike hired staff, Serafina was family.
Family did not betray.
That was what Elias believed.
So when the doctor said someone had slowly harmed Maisie, Elias’s mind turned toward the person who was not blood.
Vivian.
The wicked stepmother from every cruel story.
The beautiful woman who wanted the fortune.
Maisie was the sole heir to the Vance legacy. If anything happened to her, legal complications would shift enormous influence toward Elias’s spouse. Vivian had every motive.
Elias’s fist slammed into the hospital wall.
The pain barely registered.
He called Marcus, head of his private security.
“Secure the estate. No one touches the kitchen, Maisie’s room, or her belongings. Detain Vivian in the living room. She is not to leave.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If she attempts to come near the hospital, stop her.”
Marcus paused.
“Understood.”
Elias hung up and looked through the glass toward Maisie’s room.
She lay small and pale among wires and monitors.
“I brought a predator into your home,” he whispered.
Then Marcus called.
“Mr. Vance, Mrs. Vivian has arrived at the hospital. She’s at the main entrance. She’s trying to get inside.”
Elias’s jaw tightened.
He walked toward the entrance with the purple stain still on his shirt.
Vivian stood under the harsh hospital lights in a silk coat, hair disheveled, face pale. Two guards blocked her path. In her hands, she held Maisie’s old teddy bear, worn at one ear.
“Elias,” she said, voice shaking. “Please. Let me see her. I brought Bear-Bear. She can’t sleep without him.”
The sight should have moved him.
It did not.
He snatched the teddy bear from her hands and threw it onto the pavement.
Vivian flinched as if he had struck her.
“You think a toy erases poison?”
Her face drained.
“What?”
“I know what you did.”
“I did nothing to Maisie.”
“You managed her food. Her drinks. Her supplements.”
“I tried to protect her.”
“By slowly making her sick?”
Vivian’s eyes filled, but she did not plead. She looked at him with something deeper than fear.
Disappointment.
“I cared for her more than you ever bothered to notice,” she said quietly.
Before Elias could answer, a taxi pulled to the curb.
Serafina Vance rushed out in a long wool coat, tears streaking her carefully made face.
“Elias!”
She ran into his arms, shaking.
“How is Maisie? I came as fast as I could. I should never have left her alone. I am such a terrible aunt.”
Elias held her by the shoulders.
“It isn’t your fault.”
Serafina looked past him toward Vivian.
A flicker of fear crossed her face.
Then she pulled Elias aside and whispered near his ear.
“I have to tell you something. Last night, I saw Vivian in the kitchen. She put a strange powder into Maisie’s milk. I wanted to ask, but she looked at me so coldly. I was afraid you would not believe me.”
The final lock clicked into place inside Elias’s mind.
He turned on Vivian.
“My sister saw you.”
Vivian looked at Serafina.
May you like
For one second, her face revealed something Elias misread as guilt.
It was horror.
