Chapter 4 - The Bottle Behind the Books
They found the bottle in the nursery exactly where Clara remembered.
The label read ETHAN BLACKWOOD. The pharmacy name was real. The prescribing physician was not.
Dr. Cole held it up beneath the lamp.
“This label is fake.”
Victor looked like he had been struck.
“What’s inside?”
“I won’t guess. We send it to the lab.”
Serena laughed once, too loudly. “You’re all acting like I poisoned him.”
“No one used that word,” Clara said.
Serena’s eyes snapped toward her.
Victor noticed.
At the hospital, Ethan’s shoulder was reduced under sedation and the fracture ruled minor. Blood tests, however, showed a sedative in his system that Dr. Cole had never ordered.
Victor stood beside the bed with one hand on the rail.
“How long?” he asked.
Cole looked at the chart. “Impossible to say from one test. But this wasn’t a tiny accidental exposure.”
Clara sat across the room, holding an ice pack to the bruise on her stomach. A nurse had examined her and found no serious internal injury.
Victor finally looked at her.
“I owe you an apology.”
Clara’s face remained still.
“You owe Ethan the truth first.”
He absorbed that without argument.
Back at the mansion, Marcus searched Serena’s rooms.
He found expensive clothes, jewelry, two phones, and a folder marked FAMILY MEDICAL.
Inside were reports about Ethan.
Repeated notes described him as unstable, aggressive, developmentally delayed, and unsafe without Serena present.
Every report carried Clara’s typed name at the bottom.
Victor called her immediately.
“Did you write any of these?”
Clara read one page and felt cold.
“No.”
The report claimed she had seen Ethan strike his own head against the nursery wall.
“He’s never done that.”
Marcus turned to the last page.
Attached was a draft petition asking the court to appoint a temporary guardian if Victor became unavailable.
The proposed guardian was Serena Vale.
Victor said nothing for several seconds.
Then Marcus found the second attachment.
It was a life insurance policy on Victor.
May you like
The beneficiary had been changed six weeks earlier.
To Serena.
