Chapter 4 - The Web of VenomEmily slid down the glass wall until she hit the floor, her emerald silk dress pooling around her like spilled bile. The mask was completely gone now. The sophisticated society queen was gone, replaced by a cornered predator realizing the trap had snapped shut.
"You can't prove that," she whispered, her voice shaking violently. "That pharmacy log is ancient history. Nicole is dead, Julian! She died of a pulmonary embolism three years ago! She can't testify against me!"
"She doesn't need to," a cool, mechanical voice echoed from the smart-home speaker system near the foyer.
I hadn't turned the speaker on, but Marcus Vance had patched himself through my encrypted comm-link.
"Who is that?" Emily shrieked, clutching her head.
"That is Marcus Vance," I said, standing over her. "A private investigator who found something even more interesting when he dug into your background, Emily. You weren't just Nicole's best friend. You were obsessed with me since our undergraduate days at Northwestern. When Nicole married me, you realized the only way to get into this penthouse—the only way to inherit the Moretti empire when my father died—was to clear the board."
"That's insane!" Emily sobbed, though the panic in her eyes betrayed every syllable. "I loved you!"
"You loved the bank account," I corrected her, tapping my tablet. "And you made one fatal mistake, Emily. When you married me five years ago, you assumed I was broken. You assumed that because Nicole couldn't get pregnant, I must have been the sterile one. So you didn't bother poisoning me."
I knelt down, bringing my face inches from hers.
"Which means," I whispered, "when we got married, you stopped taking your own birth control precautions, expecting that without Nicole around, you would finally give me an heir and lock down the trust fund forever. But you didn't get pregnant, did you?"
Emily stared at me, trembling uncontrollably.
"Do you want to know why you didn't get pregnant, Emily?" I smiled, a cold, humorless expression that didn't reach my eyes. "Because the doctor in New York ran a comprehensive toxicological screen on my old medical records from my marriage to Nicole. Residue, Emily. Traces of the exact same long-term endocrine disruptor you fed Nicole were found in my morning coffee every single day of our marriage."
She stopped shaking. Her breath caught in her throat.
"You thought you were poisoning Nicole all those years ago," I said softly. "But you were actually dosing us both, keeping my sperm count suppressed just enough to ensure failure while you played the grieving, supportive confidante. But biology is a stubborn thing, Emily. The moment we married, your dosage changed. You thought you were safe. But you didn't realize that my baseline constitution was strong enough to eventually overpower your little chemical cocktail."
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"Julian... please," she wept, reaching out to grab my sleeve. "I did it because I couldn't bear the thought of sharing you! I was mad—mad with love!"
"No," I stood up, looking down at her with absolute disgust. "You were mad with greed. And tomorrow morning, the police, the District Attorney—who happens to be dining at Lumière right now—and every major media outlet in the country are going to get a copy of this file."
