Chapter 6 - THE PILLS IN THE BLUE BOTTLE
The paper shook in my hands as the orange flames of the carriage house danced against the ink.
Induced bradycardia. Continue compound B-14 weekly until estate transfer is finalized.
"They were poisoning him," I whispered, the air vanishing from my lungs. "My dad has been taking two of those blue capsules every morning at seven o'clock. Yesterday the visiting nurse dropped off a brand-new bottle with double the dosage."
I looked up at the burning sky. It was past midnight. In less than সাত hours, my father would wake up in his little row house in South Philadelphia and swallow a dose meant to finish the job.
"Give me your phone!" I frantically patted Roman's scorched tuxedo jacket. "I have to call him!"
Roman groaned as he sat up, wincing as he pressed a hand to his burned shoulder. "My phone was crushed in the cellar. And look at the main house, Elena."
I looked back up the hill. The explosion at the carriage house had taken down the main utility pole by the driveway. The entire Moretti mansion was plunged into pitch darkness. The landlines were dead, and the cell tower relay on the estate ridge had gone dark with the grid.
Behind us, two of Roman's security guards ran down the slope, their weapons drawn. When they saw Arthur Moretti groaning on the grass, they immediately snapped heavy steel handcuffs around the old man's wrists.
Vincent limped down the hill with Clara leaning against his side and Leo riding securely on a third guard's shoulders.
"Roman," Vincent breathed, looking at the severe burn blistering across his brother's collarbone. "You need an ambulance."
"The ambulance can wait," Roman said, forcing himself to his feet with a grimace that made the veins in his neck stand out. He looked at me, saw the sheer terror in my eyes, and reached into his pocket, pulling out a set of heavy steel car keys. "My grandfather's sixty-eight Mustang is in the stone barn by the orchard. No computer chips, full tank, and a key to the back dirt road."
"Marcus and Cassandra are still in the woods, Boss," the lead guard warned. "And two of Vane's armed drivers were parked outside the south gate before the blast. If you leave the perimeter without the armored cars—"
"Keep the men here and protect Vincent, Clara, and Leo," Roman ordered, his voice leaving zero room for argument. "Lock them in the main panic room until the state police arrive. Elena and I are going to South Philly."
"You can barely move your right arm," I told him as we hurried through the damp apple orchard toward the stone barn.
"Then it's a good thing you're driving," Roman said, tossing me the keys before his knees nearly buckled.
I caught him around the waist, bracing his heavy frame against my shoulder as we pushed the barn doors open. Five minutes later, the vintage Mustang roared to life, tearing down the muddy logging trail that bypassed the locked main gates.
Once we hit the paved highway heading into Philadelphia, the silence inside the car grew heavy. The dashboard lights cast a dim green glow over Roman's soot-streaked face. He had wrapped an old flannel shirt from the trunk tightly around his burned shoulder, his jaw set hard against the pain.
"Why would Marcus Vane poison my father?" I asked, my knuckles white on the steering wheel as I pushed the speedometer past eighty. "You told me in the cellar that you bought my bakery's debt and raised my father's medication costs to bring me to the estate."
Roman leaned his head back against the leather headrest, closing his eyes for a brief second.
"I bought your bakery's foreclosure note from the bank so you wouldn't lose the building," Roman said quietly. "And when my investigator ran your background check eight months ago, I saw you were drowning in medical bills at St. Jude's Clinic. I offered you three times the standard nanny salary so you could pay them."
He turned his head to look at me, the raw honesty in his dark eyes stripping away every layer of the ruthless boss he pretended to be.
"I didn't raise the price of your father's pills, Elena. Down in the cellar, when Arthur threw that in my face, I let him think I knew about it so he wouldn't realize how badly he'd compromised my own household. Arthur and Marcus saw me hire you. They knew you were fiercely loyal to Leo. So six months ago, Marcus bought the clinic your father goes to and switched his prescription. They wanted a trigger they could pull the moment you got in their way."
A cold tear slipped down my cheek. "And tonight I stood in front of Marcus in the ballroom and protected Leo."
"And before he ran into the woods," Roman said grimly, "he had twenty minutes with a working cell phone to call his man in the city."
I pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor.
We tore into South Philadelphia just as the streetlamps were flickering in the pre-dawn gray. When I skidded to a halt in front of my father's narrow brick row house, my heart dropped into my stomach.
A dark blue sedan with tinted windows was parked across the street, its engine idling softly in the cold air. And my father's front porch light was off—he always left it on for the paperboy until sunrise.
Roman reached beneath the passenger seat of the Mustang and pulled out a heavy chrome revolver wrapped in oilcloth.
"Stay in the car, Elena," Roman whispered, reaching for the door handle with his good left hand.
"That's my dad in there," I said fiercely, pulling a heavy iron tire wrench from the floorboard behind my seat. "You can't even cock that hammer with one hand. We go together."
We slipped out of the car and crept up the concrete steps to the porch. The front door lock hadn't been forced, but the brass deadbolt was unlocked.
We stepped into the dark hallway. The small house smelled of old books, peppermint, and something else—the sharp, sterile scent of rubbing alcohol.
From the top of the narrow wooden stairs came the sound of my sixty-eight-year-old father's weak, raspy voice.
"I told you, I don't take my pills until seven. Who are you? Where's Elena?"
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"Drink the water, old man," a cold, familiar female voice snapped from the bedroom. "Your daughter made things very difficult tonight. Swallow all four capsules, or I'll make sure she goes through the same window you're about to."
It was Cassandra. She hadn't fled the state with Marcus. She had stolen a car and come straight for the only leverage I had left in the world.
