Chapter 6 - The Boy with the Red Inhaler
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For a long moment, Marin could only stare at the live video feed of her son swinging his legs at the cottage counter, safe and completely oblivious to the monsters circling outside his world. The crushing terror that had held her chest in a vise for the past forty minutes broke all at once, and a quiet sob escaped her throat.
"Sit down," Dominic said, pulling the upholstered wingback chair closer to the bed and guiding her gently into it by her uninjured shoulder. Instead of ringing for a maid, the head of the Varelli syndicate walked into the adjoining bathroom himself, wrapped a handful of ice cubes in a clean linen hand towel, and knelt on one knee beside Marin’s chair to press the cold pack gently against her swollen wrist.
"You heard the phone call," Marin whispered, staring down at the dark crown of his head as he held the ice in place.
"Every word from the moment you told her my mother did not bless the marriage," Dominic replied, looking up into her eyes. "You risked your livelihood and stood between my mother and a woman who holds half the state senate in her family’s pocket."
"She’s helpless in that bed, Mr. Varelli," Marin said softly, glancing toward Isabella. "I couldn't let someone put words in her mouth just because she can't shout back."
From the pillow, Isabella reached out with her right hand and weakly brushed her fingertips against Marin’s sleeve in gratitude. Then, the older woman tapped twice against the mattress.
Yes.
Dominic stood and pulled a fresh, unblemished acrylic letter board from the top drawer of the dresser, holding it steadily within his mother’s reach.
"Tell me what else she’s been doing when I’m at the port, Mama," Dominic said quietly.
Isabella’s frail right index finger moved slowly across the grid of letters, pausing on each square while Marin automatically spoke the letters aloud as she had done every day for two years.
D - R - O - P - S.
Dominic frowned. "Eye drops?"
Tap. No.
Isabella pointed toward the locked mahogany medicine cabinet mounted near the hallway door, then spelled out three more letters.
T - E - A.
Marin’s eyes widened as the pieces clicked together in her memory.
"Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for the past month, Miss Morrow has insisted on bringing Mrs. Varelli a cup of chamomile tea from the downstairs kitchen while sending me down to the laundry room to fetch fresh sheets," Marin said rapidly, her voice tightening. "And every Tuesday and Thursday night, your mother has been so lethargic she could barely lift her finger to tap the board, and her heart rate dropped into the forties on the monitor."
May you like
Dominic’s blood turned to liquid nitrogen. He walked straight to the mahogany wastebasket tucked behind the silk drapes near the terrace doors—the corner where Vivien always stood when she visited. Reaching inside with a clean handkerchief, Dominic pulled out a damp, unsteeped chamomile tea bag and a tiny, crushed glass ampoule no larger than a fingernail that had been wrapped inside a cocktail napkin.
"She wasn't just trying to force a blessing out of you tomorrow night," Dominic said, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper as he stared at the crushed glass vial. "Once you announced in front of two hundred witnesses that my mother approved the marriage and the trust revision, my mother was supposed to suffer a second, fatal stroke in her sleep before Monday."
