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Chapter 3 - The Secret Poison

At 2:00 AM, the hospital was dead silent.

Rebecca was asleep on the small cot in the adjoining room, her breathing deep and even. Robert stood up from his armchair. He looked at Lily, then walked out of the room, telling the guard at the door he was going to get a cup of coffee.

Instead, Robert took the elevator down to the basement parking garage, where his private driver was waiting.

"Drive to my house," Robert commanded. "Now."

Thirty minutes later, Robert was standing in Lily’s preserved bedroom. It smelled of lavender and old books. He walked over to her desk, where her pink school backpack sat exactly where she had left it three months ago.

His heart hammered against his ribs as he unzipped the main compartment. He searched the front pocket. Nothing. The side pockets. Nothing.

Then, he felt the lining of the bottom of the bag. There was a small, intentional tear in the fabric. Robert slid his fingers inside and felt something hard and cylindrical.

He pulled it out.

It was a small, amber glass vial with no label. Inside were half a dozen small, white, unmarked tablets.

May you like

Robert's breath hitched. He immediately took out his phone and dialed a private number.

"Marcus," Robert said when his personal investigator answered on the second ring. "I need you to contact Dr. Aris Thorne. He’s the head of toxicology at Harvard. Tell him I’m coming to his private lab right now, and I’m paying him one million dollars to analyze a pill. It has to be done tonight. No paper trail. No one can know."

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