Chapter 4 - POISON IN THE TEA
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Before Vanessa could answer, Rosa suddenly gasped for air and gripped my wrist with astonishing strength.
Her chest heaved violently under her lavender dress.
Her pale lips turned a faint, alarming shade of blue.
“Claire...” Rosa choked out, her head falling back against the wheelchair headrest.
“My chest... it burns like fire.”
“I can’t... I can’t see anything.”
Panic seized my heart.
“Mr. Moretti!” I shouted, forgetting all protocol and decorum.
“Something is wrong with your mother!”
Luca forgot Vanessa in an instant.
He dropped to both knees in front of Rosa’s wheelchair, his massive hands gently framing his mother’s pale, sweat-slicked face.
“Ma!” he called out, genuine panic cracking through his hardened exterior.
“Ma, look at me!”
“Stay with me!”
“Call Dr. Rossi right now!” Luca roared at Marco.
“Get the medical team to the front entrance!”
Vanessa stood by the wedding cake, a twisted, venomous smirk touching the corners of her dark red lips.
“A heart attack, how convenient,” Vanessa murmured just loud enough for those nearby to hear.
“She is eighty-three years old, Luca.”
“Old hearts give out when they get overly excited.”
“Maybe you shouldn't have brought her down to a party she couldn't handle.”
Something inside my mind clicked together like gears in a clock.
I remembered the previous three afternoons in the mansion’s private sunroom.
Every day at precisely three o'clock, Vanessa had insisted on preparing Rosa’s special herbal tea herself.
She had forbidden me from entering the kitchen, claiming she wanted to bond with her future mother-in-law.
And after every single cup of that tea, Rosa had complained of dizziness, extreme nausea, and sudden black spots in her vision.
“You poisoned her,” I said aloud, my voice cutting through the rising murmurs of the panicked crowd.
Vanessa glared at me with pure murderous rage.
“Watch your filthy mouth, maid!”
“I am the lady of this house!”
“I’ll have your tongue cut out for slander!”
I didn't back down; the sight of Rosa gasping for breath gave me a surge of furious courage.
I reached into the pocket of my white apron and pulled out a small glass eyedropper bottle I had found in the kitchen trash can this morning.
I had retrieved it because it had an unfamiliar pharmaceutical label written in Cyrillic script.
“What is that, Claire?” Luca asked, his voice shaking with a terrifying intensity.
“I found this in the pantry trash behind the tea canisters this morning, Mr. Moretti,” I said, handing the small vial to him.
“Mrs. Moretti’s vision didn't fail from old age.”
“It started failing two weeks ago, right after Vanessa moved into the master suite.”
“Every afternoon, Vanessa brought her chamomile tea with honey.”
“And three days ago, when Rosa asked for her reading glasses to inspect the papers, Vanessa told her that her eyes were decaying from dementia.”
Luca gripped the glass bottle so tightly I thought the glass would shatter into his palm.
He read the faint chemical name printed on the label.
It was a potent cardiac glycoside derivative, an odorless, tasteless chemical used to induce arrhythmias and temporary optic nerve inflammation in high doses.
It was designed to mimic heart failure and sudden dementia in the elderly without leaving obvious traces in standard blood screenings.
Luca slowly rose from the floor, towering over the room like an angel of death.
His tuxedo was rumpled, but his presence was suffocating.
“You didn't just want her money,” Luca whispered, stepping toward Vanessa.
“You were slowly killing her in her own home.”
Vanessa’s smirk vanished entirely, replaced by raw, primal panic.
She looked toward the ballroom doors, but the armed guards stood shoulder to shoulder, their stone faces unmoving.
“It wasn't my idea!” Vanessa shrieked, backing away until she knocked over a crystal champagne tower.
Glasses shattered across the marble, sparkling wine splashing over her pristine white gown like spilled blood.
“Mia found the doctor online!”
“She said it would look completely natural!”
“We just needed her to sign the trust transfer before she passed away peacefully in her sleep!”
The entire room gasped in pure horror.
Even the most ruthless underworld capos in attendance recoiled at the cold-blooded confession.
A heavy metallic sound echoed as the grand doors burst open.
Dr. Rossi, the Moretti family’s private physician, rushed in carrying two heavy trauma cases, followed by two paramedics.
“Get her on the floor, flat on her back!” Dr. Rossi shouted, seeing Rosa’s deteriorating state.
Luca stepped aside, giving the doctor room to work, but his hand never left his mother’s trembling wrist.
“Save her, Antonio,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a desperate, broken plea.
“If she dies, there is nothing in this city that can keep my soul from burning everything to ashes.”
Dr. Rossi immediately ripped open an ampoule of antidote and jabbed the needle into Rosa’s arm.
For thirty agonizing seconds, the only sound in the ballroom was the rhythmic hiss of the portable oxygen mask.
Then, Rosa’s chest heaved with a deep, shuddering gasp.
Color slowly returned to her sunken cheeks.
Her fluttering eyelids opened, and she looked up through the haze at the man kneeling above her.
“Luca...” she whispered weakly through the plastic mask.
Luca buried his face against her frail hand, his shoulders shaking with silent, tearful relief.
“I’m here, Ma.”
“I’m right here.”
Then he stood up and turned back toward the woman in the wine-stained wedding dress.
“Marco,” Luca commanded, his voice freezing the very air in the room.
“Take my wife down to the wine cellar.”
May you like
“And tell the motorcade to start the engines.”
“We have a plane to catch.”
