Chapter 12 - The Poison in the Silver Spoon
Nora waited until the sound of the locking mechanism clicked shut behind Vivienne before she dared to exhale. Her hands shook violently. A sister. Ethan had spoken of a sister, yet the nursery held only Lily, an infant Vivienne treated like an offensive chore. Who was the woman weeping behind the keypad? And why was the mistress of the house personally delivering medication behind closed doors while keeping the master of the house completely in the dark?
Returning to the nursery, Nora found Ethan standing by the bassinet. His face was pale under the dim ceiling lights, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the acrylic crib. He looked up, his eyes darting to Nora’s face, reading the terror written there.
"You went down the hall," he said, not as an accusation, but with grim certainty.
"Ethan, who is in that room?" Nora whispered, closing the nursery door behind her. "I heard a woman. She was asking about Lily."
The sixteen-year-old pulled his phone from his pocket, his thumb hovering over an encrypted folder. "My mother calls her a tragedy. She tells my father that Claire had a nervous breakdown after giving birth, that she's dangerous, that she can't be trusted with her own daughter. But that's a lie. Claire didn't lose her mind. My mother took it from her, piece by piece."
He unlocked the screen and showed Nora a timestamped video file. On the small display, Nora saw Vivienne standing over a glass tumbler in the kitchen, measuring clear liquid from an amber bottle with terrifying precision. "She's been slipping sedatives into Claire's tea for six months," Ethan whispered, his voice cracking with suppressed fury. "Claire was Richard's pride—his daughter from his first marriage, the sole heir to the Ashford maritime trust. When Claire got pregnant, she was going to claim her inheritance and push Vivienne out of the estate. Vivienne couldn't let that happen. If Claire is declared legally incompetent, Vivienne becomes Lily’s guardian—and controls the entire family fortune."
Before Nora could process the monstrous scale of the betrayal, the nursery door swung open. Vivienne stood on the threshold, her cold gaze sweeping from Ethan’s pale face to the smartphone in his hand, and finally settling on Nora with surgical, lethal precision.
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"A touching family tableau," Vivienne said, her voice dropping into a register that made the air in the room drop several degrees. "I don't recall paying you to socialize with my stepson, Miss Ellis. Nor do I recall asking you to neglect your duties."
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