Chapter 4 - The Scent of Poison
By ten o'clock the following morning, the estate had returned to its deceptive veneer of aristocratic tranquility.
The autumn sun poured through the two-story leaded glass windows of Teresa Moretti’s private sitting room, illuminating the dust motes dancing above the Persian rugs. Outside, landscapers were already clearing away the temporary marquee from the previous night's gala.
Teresa sat in her high-backed chair, wrapped in a plush cashmere shawl, working a needlepoint canvas with slow, deliberate precision. I sat opposite her on the velvet settee, holding an open copy of a historical biography with my left hand, reading aloud in a steady, measured rhythm.
My splinted right arm rested on a silk throw pillow. The dull throb had subsided slightly, replaced by an itch beneath the fiberglass that drove me half-mad.
“Put the book down, child,” Teresa said suddenly, without looking up from her stitching.
I paused mid-sentence. “Is my reading boring you, Mrs. Moretti?”
“Your reading is lovely. Your anxiety is giving me a migraine,” the old woman said with a dry chuckle. She tied off a thread with practiced ease and laid the brass needle into her velvet-lined basket. She looked at me over the gold rims of her half-moon spectacles. “You’ve checked the grandfather clock seven times in the last twenty minutes. What are you waiting for?”
“The eleven o'clock medication,” I confessed, glancing toward the heavy mahogany door. “Maria is supposed to bring it up. But... Maria doesn't know your schedule the way I do.”
Teresa’s expression softened, the sharp lines around her mouth relaxing into something resembling maternal warmth. “Maria has been working for this family since before Luca was born, Emma. She knows how to hand an old lady two capsules and a cup of lukewarm water.”
“I know,” I murmured. “I just... I like to be sure.”
The truth was, ever since yesterday afternoon, an uneasy knot had formed in the pit of my stomach.
Why had Isabella been in Teresa's bedroom in the first place?
Isabella avoided Teresa like the plague. She called the matriarch’s suite 'the hospice wing' behind her back. She despised the smell of lavender oil and menthol rub. In the four months I had worked at the Lake Forest estate, Isabella had never voluntarily stepped foot into Teresa’s private chambers without Luca by her side to witness her performative affection.
Yet yesterday, she had been standing right beside the dresser.
She had waited until Teresa went into the en-suite bathroom.
And she had specifically intervened when I reached for the weekly pill organizer.
*“You seem to enjoy being needed,”* Isabella had sneered before slamming the heavy oak drawer shut onto my fingers.
A knock at the door broke my train of thought.
Maria, a stout woman in her late fifties with grey curls tucked into a neat hairnet, entered pushing a small silver tray. On it was a porcelain cup of chamomile tea and a small crystal ramekin containing Teresa’s morning regimen: one tiny yellow diuretic, a white capsule for cholesterol, and a distinctive, oblong peach tablet—Digoxin, for her atrial fibrillation.
“Here you are, Donna Teresa,” Maria said warmly, setting the tray onto the side table. “Fresh chamomile from the greenhouse.”
“Thank you, Maria,” Teresa smiled. “Has my son left for the city yet?”
“Mr. Luca is in the courtyard, ma'am. Talking with Mr. Cassano. They look very serious.”
At the mention of Isabella’s father—Victor Cassano—my stomach gave a sharp, violent twist.
Maria bowed her head and stepped quietly out of the room, closing the double doors behind her.
Teresa reached out a spotted, wrinkled hand toward the crystal ramekin. “Let’s get this over with. That peach pill tastes like chalk.”
“Wait,” I blurted out.
Teresa stopped, her hand hovering over the silver tray. She looked at me, her eyebrows raised in mild surprise. “Emma?”
I stood up from the settee, my heart suddenly racing against my ribs. I walked over to the small table and stared down at the three pills inside the ramekin.
I had been administering Teresa’s medication twice a day for sixteen weeks. I knew the exact dimensions, markings, and texture of every single tablet. I knew that the manufacturer of her Digoxin used a scored line across the center with the imprint *LAN-05* stamped into the peach coating.
I reached out with my left hand, picking up the oblong peach tablet.
It looked identical at a glance. Same soft pastel hue. Same oblong shape.
But the imprint wasn't *LAN-05*.
It was faintly blurred, almost like a generic press, stamped with a microscopic *V-20*. And when I brought the pill closer to my nose, there was a faint, bitter almond scent clinging to the outer glaze—a sharp, chemical tang that didn't belong on a pharmaceutical binder.
My blood ran instantly cold.
“Mrs. Moretti,” I whispered, my voice shaking so hard the crystal ramekin rattled against the tea saucer. “Where did Maria get this pill from?”
“From the weekly organizer on my dresser, of course,” Teresa said, her tone shifting from playful to sharply alert. Her sharp blue eyes locked onto my pale face. “Emma. What is it?”
“Where is the rest of the prescription bottle?”
“In the top drawer of the mahogany dresser,” Teresa said, pointing toward the heavy antique furniture against the far wall. “The one with the brass handles.”
The exact drawer Isabella had slammed shut.
I walked over to the dresser, my knees feeling like lead. Using my splinted right forearm to brace the drawer while my left hand pulled the brass ring, I slid the heavy mahogany drawer open.
Inside, tucked neatly beneath a stack of silk scarves, lay Teresa’s amber prescription bottles.
I pulled out the bottle labeled *DIGOXIN 0.125 MG*.
The bottle was half-full. But when I tipped three pills into the palm of my left hand, the difference was undeniable. Two of them had the crisp, factory-pressed *LAN-05*.
The third was stamped with *V-20*.
Someone hadn't replaced the whole bottle. That would have raised suspicion if the pharmacy or Luca’s private doctor checked the inventory. Someone had swapped out individual tablets directly inside the weekly organizer—and salted three fake ones into the amber reserve.
If Teresa took this, an eighty-one-year-old woman with a history of cardiac arrhythmia would simply suffer another heart failure. The coroner would sign off on natural causes within twenty minutes.
And if I hadn’t noticed the imprint... she would be dead by lunch.
May you like
“Emma,” Teresa’s voice cut through the silence, no longer that of an elderly invalid, but of a woman who had survived three mob wars beside her husband. “Bring that here. Now.”
***
