Chapter 2 - THE NAME IN THE SILVER
The fluorescent lights of the private clinic hummed like an angry hornet.
My heart hammered against my ribs as I stared down at the dying king of Chicago. Vincent Hale looked smaller than he had hours ago, his massive frame swallowed by the sterile white sheets. But it was his right hand that commanded my full, terrified attention.
The fingers were curled into a death grip around the small, unlabelled silver bottle.
The same bottle Owen had seen. The same bottle Dr. Warren and Grant Mercer had sworn on their lives never existed.
With shaking fingers, I knelt beside the bed. I didn't care that Grant was standing in the doorway, watching me with those dead, calculating eyes. I gently pried Vincent’s cold fingers open, one by one.
The bottle slipped into my palm. It was freezing, coated in a light film of condensation. I turned it over, angling it toward the harsh light overhead to read the micro-engravings scratched into the dull metal.
It wasn't Grant’s name.
It wasn't even Dr. Warren’s.
Stamped in sharp, erratic cursive was a single name: ELEANOR.
My breath caught in my throat. Eleanor.
Eleanor was not a ruthless mafia enforcer. She wasn't a crooked doctor or a corrupted bodyguard.
Eleanor was Vincent’s gentle, soft-spoken, wheelchair-bound younger sister, who lived in the secluded east wing of the estate, entirely dependent on her brother for survival. Or so we had all been led to believe.
"Fascinating, isn't it?"
Grant’s voice sliced through the heavy silence of the room. He didn't sound panicked. He didn't sound caught. He sounded like a chess player watching his opponent walk directly into a trap.
I stood up slowly, clutching the silver bottle behind my back. "She did this," I whispered, the horror dawning on me. "Eleanor has been poisoning him."
Grant stepped closer, his tailored suit shifting with a faint rustle of expensive fabric. He offered a slow, patronizing smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Eleanor is a sweet, fragile girl, Claire," Grant murmured, his voice dropping to a dangerous, conspiratorial octave. "She spends her days painting watercolors and listening to classical music. Why would a fragile girl want to kill the brother who protects her?"
"Because she’s not fragile," I shot back, my anger momentarily overriding my terror. "Vincent signed over his empire. Not to you, Grant. To her. Or... someone using her name as proxy."
Grant didn't blink. Instead, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a heavy legal document bound in dark blue cardstock. He dropped it onto Vincent’s unmoving chest with a soft thud.
"The boss made his final will and testament three days ago," Grant said smoothly. "Before the fever took his mind. And you are entirely correct, Claire. The entire empire—the docks, the shipping routes, the numbered bank accounts in Zurich—doesn't go to me. And it certainly doesn't go to my rivals. It goes to Eleanor. And as her primary legal custodian and caretaker..."
Grant paused, letting a sickening grin spread across his face.
"...I control Eleanor."
The pieces slammed together with the force of a freight train. Grant hadn't acted alone. He hadn't bypassed Vincent's security; he was the security. He had used Eleanor as a puppet, feeding her the slow-acting toxin while manipulating the medical reports with Dr. Warren’s complicity. And when they needed a scapegoat to take the fall for the eventual murder of Vincent Hale, they scoured the applicant pool for a desperate, financially ruined former medical aide with a young son.
Me.
"And Owen?" I spat, stepping between Grant and the bed, my maternal instincts flaring into a white-hot rage. "Where does my son fit into this master plan, Grant? Did you plan to frame a four-year-old for murder too?"
Grant’s smile vanished. His eyes darkened into chips of obsidian.
"Your son," Grant whispered, leaning in so close I could smell the expensive mints on his breath, "was a severe calculation error. He saw what he shouldn't have seen. And children who see too much in this house... tend to disappear into the Chicago river."
Before I could lunge at him, the heart monitor beside the bed let out a long, uninterrupted, high-pitched scream.
May you like
Vincent Hale’s eyes flickered open one last time. He didn't look at Grant. He looked past him, staring straight at the doorway behind us where a small shadow in dinosaur pajamas was peeking around the frame.
"Mommy," Owen’s small voice echoed down the corridor. "The lady in the wheelchair is in the hallway. And she brought her own medicine."
