Chapter 2 - The Blood on the Memory CardThe silence in Halloway House was no longer uncomfortable; it was lethal.
The eight guests who had come to network and drink fifty-year-old champagne began to back away toward the grand entrance, their eyes darting nervously between August, Celeste, and the silent old man at the top of the stairs. Nobody wanted to be a witness when a Halloway dropped his velvet glove to reveal the iron beneath.
"August... darling, what are you talking about?" Celeste stuttered, her sweet, aristocratic voice fracturing at the edges. She took a step toward him, her hands trembling so violently that the emerald necklace clinked against her collarbone. "That’s impossible. My brother was in London six months ago! You know that! Someone is framing us. It’s her! She’s set this up!" She pointed a trembling, manicured finger at me.
I didn't move. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, but I kept my posture rigid. Six months ago, my mother, Rosalind, had been struck by a dark SUV on her way home from the pharmacy. The driver had fled the scene, leaving her bleeding on the icy pavement. She had survived for three weeks in the ICU—three weeks during which I spent every penny I had, sold my car, and ultimately signed a false confession regarding a missing bottle of narcotics at my hospital just to receive a secret payout from an 'anonymous donor' to cover her medical bills.
I thought the payout was mercy.
I didn't know it was hush money.
"Your brother wasn't in London, Celeste," August said coldly. He stepped forward, tossing the velvet box onto the marble table beside the half-empty champagne glass. "He was in a body shop in Newark, paying fifty thousand dollars in cash to have the front bumper of a black Range Rover replaced without a work order."
"That’s a lie!" Celeste shrieked. Her polished, icy demeanor completely shattered. "You can't prove that!"
"I don't need to prove it to a court," August said softly, stepping closer until he was towering over her. "I am not a prosecutor, Celeste. I am a Halloway. And you brought dirty blood into my father’s house."
At the top of the staircase, Thaddeus let out a harsh, rattling breath. His good hand tapped the armrest twice in rapid succession.
Tap. Tap.
No.
I looked up at the old man. I knew what those two taps meant. He wasn't telling August to stop punishing Celeste. He was warning his son about something else. Something in the room.
"August," I spoke up, my voice cutting through the tension. "Look at the pills."
August stopped. He frowned, looking down at me, then followed my gaze to the floor.
Twelve white tablets lay scattered across the marble. But they weren't all the same.
Thaddeus’s daily medication regimen consisted of thin, oblong anticoagulants and round, yellow nerve-pain tablets. But among the scattered pile, three of the tablets were brilliant, chalky white, and marked with a tiny cross—a shape that didn't belong to any drug prescribed to Thaddeus Halloway.
I knelt down carefully, supporting my pregnant belly with one hand, and picked up one of the chalky white pills. I held it up to the light coming through the high stained-glass windows.
"Potassium chloride," I whispered, the nurse inside me taking over. "Pure, highly concentrated potassium chloride. If crushed into his applesauce, it would cause fatal cardiac arrest within fifteen minutes. And because of his age and history of strokes, the coroner would have written it off as natural heart failure."
A sudden, sharp gasp tore from the throat of one of the female guests.
August’s eyes turned pitch black. He turned slowly toward Celeste. "You didn't just slap the tray," he whispered, a terrifyingly calm realization dawning on his face. "You were trying to destroy the evidence before she could give it to him."
"No! No!" Celeste backed away, her heels catching on the hem of her silk gown. She stumbled, falling back against the mahogany side table, knocking over the glass of champagne. It shattered on the marble, spraying liquid across her designer shoes. "It wasn't me! I didn't put those pills there! I swear on my life!"
"Then who did?" August demanded, his voice suddenly roaring through the mansion like thunder. "Who paid off the pharmacy?! Who has been feeding my father poison for the last three months?!"
"Ask your father!" Celeste screamed, her sanity fraying at the edges as she gestured wildly toward the top of the stairs. "Ask the old bastard! He knows! He’s known the whole time! He’s been playing all of us!"
Everyone’s eyes swung up toward the grand balcony.
Thaddeus Halloway sat frozen in his wheelchair, his chest heaving under his cashmere blanket. Slowly, agonizingly, his paralyzed right arm began to twitch.
The room gasped. For eight months, that arm had been dead wood.
May you like
With excruciating slowness, as if lifting a hundred pounds of lead, Thaddeus lifted his right hand. His fingers, stiff and crooked, pointed not at Celeste, not at August, and not at me.
He was pointing directly at the man standing quietly in the shadows by the front doors—August’s trusted personal attorney and lifelong advisor, Julian Vance.
