Chapter 4 - Traces of Nightshade
Sophia didn't turn around immediately. When she finally did, her eyes were wide with genuine fear—not of me, but of something else.
“Mr. Moretti, I am just a housekeeper,” she said, her voice shaking. “I clean the rooms, I wash the linens, and I make sure Lily stays out of your path.”
“You’re dodging the question.”
“Two weeks ago,” she whispered, looking toward the open door to make sure we were alone, “I was cleaning the pantry in the lower kitchen. Mr. Marco was here visiting you. He went into the tea cabinet when he thought everyone was at the docks.”
My posture went completely rigid. “Marco?”
“He had a small brown glass vial,” she continued, her voice dropping so low I had to lean forward to hear. “He poured tiny drops into the tin of imported leaves he brings you every month. He saw me in the glass reflection of the cabinet door. He turned around, handed me a hundred-dollar bill, and told me it was a special vitamin supplement to help your heart.”
“And you believed him?”
“No!” Sophia tears filled her eyes. “I knew what it looked like! But Mr. Marco told me... he told me if I said a word to you, or if I stopped bringing that tray up when Mrs. Ricci asked, he would have child protective services take Lily away from me. He said he had friends in the city government who could make me disappear.”
The air in the kitchen instantly turned ice cold.
Marco Moretti was my first cousin. We had grown up together on the docks of Red Hook. When my brother Julian died three years ago, Marco had been the one holding my shoulder at the funeral, telling me to take control of the family firm before the Valentis moved in. He was my second-in-command, running our legal real estate holdings while I managed the maritime distribution networks.
I stood up from the stool slowly.
“Where is the tin of tea right now?” I asked.
“In your study pantry,” Sophia said, wiping her face with her apron. “I... I tried to dump half of it down the sink last week so you would drink less of it, but Mrs. Ricci keeps ordering more through Marco’s supplier.”
I walked out of the kitchen without another word and headed straight for my private study on the second floor.
I opened the antique wooden tea chest sitting beside my desk. Inside was the silver tin of Calabrian herbs Marco brought me every three weeks like clockwork.
I took the tin, pulled out my phone, and dialed Dr. Nathan Vance—a toxicologist at Columbia University who owed his department’s entire research wing to Moretti family funding.
“Dominic?” Vance answered on the second ring. “It’s early.”
“I’m sending my driver to your lab with a sample,” I said, staring at the green dried leaves inside the silver container. “I need a full chemical screening. Fast.”
“What am I looking for?”
May you like
“Slow toxins,” I said coldly. “Something that doesn't kill you outright, but keeps your central nervous system stuck in perpetual fight-or-flight. Something that destroys sleep.”
Vance was quiet for two seconds. “I’ll run the mass spectrometer myself. Give me three hours.”
