Chapter 4 - The Poison in the Ledger
The chaos that erupted in the dining room following Victor’s collapse was immediate and violent.
“Call an ambulance!” Sophia screamed, jumping up from her chair and knocking her wine glass over in her panic.
“Don't touch him!” Claire commanded sharply, her voice cutting through the panic with absolute authority. She pressed her fingers against Victor’s carotid artery, checking his pulse, while swiftly unbuttoning his collar to clear his airway. “His blood pressure spiked from the emotional stress, but he’s breathing. He’s stable. Get him back to his bed immediately—do not move him haphazardly!”
Dominic was already out of his chair. He moved with terrifying speed, bypassing his hysterical sister, and knelt beside Claire. His face was an absolute mask of controlled panic, but his dark eyes were burning with a cold, analytical fire.
“Is he dying?” Dominic asked, his voice low, pitched so only Claire could hear.
“No,” Claire said, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs as the chilling memory of Victor’s whisper echoed in her brain: He’s the one who poisoned my tea.
She looked up, locking eyes with Dominic Moretti for the first time without her professional armor. Underneath the cold, intimidating aura of the crime syndicate boss, she saw something else—a deep, raw terror of losing the only pillar he had left in this brutal world.
“He’s exhausted, Mr. Moretti,” Claire said carefully, keeping her voice meticulously steady. “The argument pushed his heart past its current limit. But he’ll recover by morning if we get him upstairs and keep his environment completely calm.”
Dominic nodded tightly. He signaled two of his largest guards forward. “Carry him to the master suite. Now.”
As the guards carefully lifted Victor’s unconscious body and carried him up the grand staircase, Dominic lingered behind for a fraction of a second. He looked down at Claire, noticing the subtle tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers clenched slightly into fists.
“You handled that well,” Dominic said quietly.
“It’s my job,” Claire replied, standing up and brushing invisible dust from her uniform.
“My father doesn’t trust easily,” Dominic continued, his gaze piercing. “Yet he trusts you enough to whisper in your ear. What did he say to you when he fell?”
Claire’s blood ran cold. She forced a blank, professional mask over her features, lying with the practiced calm of an emergency room veteran. “He was disoriented, Mr. Moretti. He was mumbling about his late wife. Nothing of consequence.”
Dominic studied her face for a long, agonizing moment—searching for a micro-expression, a twitch, a hesitation. Then, without another word, he turned and walked away, following his father’s guards upstairs.
Thirty minutes later, the master suite was quiet again. Victor was resting comfortably under the heavy wool blanket, his breathing deep and even, heavily sedated by a mild heart stabilizer.
The security guards stationed outside the door were locked into their positions.
Claire stood alone by the tall window, staring out into the dark, churning ocean. Her mind was racing a million miles an hour. Dominic poisoned him? The dutiful son, the protector of the family empire, the man who watched every camera and controlled every asset? It didn't make sense. Why would Dominic slowly poison his own father, month by month, right under the noses of his own medical staff?
Unless... Victor wasn't the only target.
Quietly, with the stealth of a ghost, Claire left the master suite, walked down the carpeted hallway, and descended the grand staircase into the dark, silent depths of the mansion. Her destination wasn't her break room. It was the locked security monitoring room behind Dominic’s private study.
She knew Dominic was busy upstairs managing the panicked family members and debriefing Raymond DeLuca. She had maybe ten minutes before a patrol guard rounded the corner.
Arriving at the heavy oak door of the monitoring room, Claire reached into her medical bag, pulled out a specialized set of tension tools she had kept hidden since her ER days—tools picked up from an ex-boyfriend who worked digital forensics—and went to work on the high-end digital keypad lock.
Click.
The heavy steel-reinforced door swung inward silently.
Claire slipped inside, closing the door behind her and snapping on a small pen-light. The room was a fortress of technology, dominated by the massive wall of glowing security monitors displaying every corner of the estate.
She sat down at Dominic’s executive desk and began furiously tapping away at the master computer terminal. She didn't want live feeds; she wanted archival footage. Specifically, she wanted the kitchen logs from three weeks ago—the exact week Victor’s neurological decline had suddenly accelerated before she took the job.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, bypassing encrypted firewalls using a master administrative override code she had glimpsed on Dominic’s desk earlier that week.
Folders opened on the screen: Kitchen logs. Medical dispensations. Private visitor files.
She clicked on the kitchen video logs for a Tuesday night at 11:45 PM—three weeks prior.
The video feed flickered to life on the central monitor. The kitchen was dark, lit only by the pale glow of the moon through the skylight.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the side door opened silently.
A figure stepped into the frame.
Claire leaned closer to the screen, her breath catching in her throat. It wasn't Dominic. It wasn't Sophia, and it wasn't Raymond DeLuca.
It was Dr. Althaus—the family physician who prescribed Victor’s daily medications.
On the screen, Dr. Althaus walked calmly to the refrigerator, pulled out a small, unlabeled glass vial from his leather medical bag, and carefully measured ten amber drops into the private carafe of herbal tea labeled exclusively for Victor Moretti’s evening consumption.
As Althaus recapped the vial and turned to leave, another figure stepped out from the shadows of the pantry doorway, blocking his exit.
It was Dominic Moretti.
May you like
Claire’s heart stopped. On the screen, Dominic didn't draw a gun. He didn't yell. He simply crossed his arms, leaned against the marble island, and looked down at the physician with cold, dead eyes.
"You're two minutes late, Doctor," Dominic’s recorded voice whispered softly from the computer speakers. "The dosage has to be exact, or my father’s liver will shut down too fast for the autopsy report to look like natural causes."
