Chapter 3 - What My Blood Had Been SayingDr. Samuel Kent had known me for twelve years.
He was a cardiologist, not a toxicologist, but he was the first physician that night to stop asking whether stress could explain my symptoms.
“When did this begin?” he asked.
“Maybe seven months ago.”
Vanessa and I had been engaged for eight.
Sam wrote that down.
“What symptoms?”
“Headaches. Dizziness. Nausea. Sometimes ringing in my ears. Metallic taste. Weakness.”
“Anything with your vision?”
“Occasionally blurred.”
“Hands?”
I thought about it.
“Tingling. A few times.”
He looked up.
“Have you told your doctors all of this together?”
“Different symptoms at different visits.”
“And Vanessa attends those appointments?”
“Usually.”
Sam leaned back.
“Who handles your supplements?”
I stared at him.
“She does.”
“Prescription medication?”
“I take one blood-pressure pill.”
“Who fills the pill organizer?”
My answer came more slowly.
“Vanessa.”
Sam’s expression said what he didn’t.
“How stupid am I?” I whispered.
“You’re not stupid. Trust is normal.”
My phone rang.
Vanessa.
I rejected the call.
It rang again.
Then a message appeared.
Please stop. You’re frightening everyone. Come upstairs so we can talk privately.
The Hawthorne Club had a bridal suite on the second floor.
I typed nothing.
Another message followed.
Marcus left because you accused him in front of staff. He’s furious.
Interesting.
I hadn’t accused Marcus of anything.
Not explicitly.
“Screenshot those,” Sam said.
I did.
Maya and Lucy waited with us.
Lucy sat on the sofa drawing on a Hawthorne Club notepad while her stuffed rabbit watched.
I had apologized to Maya at least twice for pulling her into whatever nightmare my life had become.
Both times, she told me the same thing.
“My daughter did the right thing.”
She had.
At 10:14 p.m., police arrived.
Not because I had dramatic proof of attempted murder.
I didn’t.
But the venue manager had reported suspected food tampering and deleted security footage.
Two officers took statements while the party dissolved upstairs.
My mother called seven times.
Vanessa’s mother called eleven.
I answered neither.
The guests were told there had been a possible kitchen safety issue.
By midnight, I was at Northwestern Memorial having blood drawn.
The steak was sealed as evidence pending preliminary testing.
My engagement party ended without an engagement announcement.
Vanessa did not come to the hospital.
That hurt more than I expected.
Part of me still wanted her to burst through the doors, furious and innocent, demanding that everyone stop treating her like a criminal.
Instead, she sent one final message.
I can’t believe you did this to me.
At 1:40 a.m., Sam sat beside me in the examination room.
“You shouldn’t go home tonight.”
“My house is thirty minutes away.”
“Vanessa lives there.”
“She has her own condo.”
“Does she stay at your house?”
“Most nights.”
“Does she have keys?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t go there.”
The answer irritated me because it sounded paranoid.
Then I remembered the trembling champagne.
“Hotel?”
“Preferably somewhere she wouldn’t guess.”
Maya was still in the waiting room.
When I found her, Lucy was asleep against her chest.
“You didn’t have to stay.”
“I wanted to know you were okay.”
“I owe your daughter my life.”
“You don’t know that yet.”
“No. But I know she risked telling me.”
Maya brushed hair from Lucy’s forehead.
“She notices everything. People make the mistake of assuming that because she doesn’t hear them, she doesn’t understand what’s happening around her.”
I knew that mistake.
Rebecca had dealt with it her whole life.
I looked at Lucy and felt something inside me crack.
“My sister would have loved her.”
Maya smiled.
The preliminary hospital tests didn’t identify a toxin that night.
That was both reassuring and terrifying.
If the steak came back clean, had I destroyed my relationship over nothing?
I spent the night in a hotel under my middle name.
At 6:12 the next morning, I woke to pounding on the door.
I reached for my phone.
Fourteen missed calls.
Three from my company’s CFO.
Two from my mother.
Nine from Marcus.
I approached the door quietly.
“Who is it?”
“Ethan.”
Marcus.
I opened the door but left the security latch engaged.
He looked terrible.
No tie.
Shirt wrinkled.
Dark circles under his eyes.
“How did you find me?”
“Corporate credit card.”
I stared at him.
“I didn’t use the company card.”
He stopped.
That was his first mistake.
The hotel booking had been made on a personal card.
“Then how did you find me, Marcus?”
He looked away.
“Vanessa guessed.”
“She guessed the exact hotel?”
“Can we not play detective?”
“No. We absolutely can.”
He lowered his voice.
“You’re making this bigger than it is.”
“You were identified by a child who saw Vanessa tampering with my meal.”
“She saw two adults in a kitchen. She’s four.”
“And you disappeared.”
“I panicked.”
“Why?”
“Because you looked at me like I tried to kill you.”
“Did you?”
His face tightened.
“No.”
“Did Vanessa put something in my food?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see her do it?”
“No.”
“Did she ask you to delete security footage?”
His eyes snapped back to mine.
I hadn’t known whether Vanessa had anything to do with the deletion.
Marcus’s reaction told me the question had landed somewhere important.
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody.”
“Ethan—”
“What happened to the footage?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“I came here to help you.”
“Then tell me the truth.”
Marcus stepped close to the door.
“You want truth? Fine. Vanessa thinks you’re sick.”
“What?”
“She’s been worried for months.”
“She told you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because we run a company together. If something happens to you, I need to know.”
A strange coldness settled over me.
“What exactly did she say was wrong with me?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Neurological.”
“I’ve never been diagnosed with a neurological disease.”
“She said the doctors suspected one.”
“They don’t.”
He knew he had made another mistake.
I closed the door.
“Ethan.”
I walked away.
“Ethan!”
His fist hit the wood.
I called my attorney.
By 8:00 a.m., my company security director had been instructed to suspend Marcus’s access to financial systems until I personally reversed the order.
At 8:23, I received an email from our CFO.
You need to see this immediately.
Attached was a document.
A revised executive succession agreement.
It stated that if I became medically incapacitated, temporary voting control of Cole Meridian Logistics would transfer to Marcus Reed.
My electronic signature appeared at the bottom.
I had never seen the document.
I called our CFO.
“When was this signed?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“Where?”
“According to the authentication log, from your home IP address.”
Six weeks ago.
I remembered that night.
Vanessa had made dinner.
I had become dizzy halfway through.
She helped me upstairs.
The next morning, she told me I had fallen asleep while working.
“What else happened that night?” I asked.
The CFO went silent.
“There was another authorization.”
“For what?”
“A change to the beneficiary structure of your private investment trust.”
I sat down.
“Who became beneficiary?”
There was another pause.
“Vanessa.”
“How much?”
“Approximately eighteen million dollars.”
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak.
Then my attorney called on the other line.
“Ethan, the preliminary screening on the food just came in.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What did they find?”
“A sedative.”
I closed my eyes.
“How much?”
“Enough that, combined with alcohol and your blood-pressure medication, it could have caused a serious medical emergency.”
I thought of Vanessa insisting I eat.
The champagne.
The water.
Her hand grabbing my wrist.
“Is that all?”
“No.”
My attorney exhaled.
“The lab found something else.”
“What?”
“Trace amounts of the same compound were found in the supplement capsules you turned over from your travel bag.”
I stopped breathing.
Those capsules had been packed three days earlier.
By Vanessa.
May you like
This hadn’t started at the party.
It had been happening for months.
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