Chapter 5 - The Snake in the Garden
Three hours later, I was sitting in my library with Lily.
She had come upstairs after her breakfast, completely ignoring the stern instructions her mother had undoubtedly given her. She sat on the large Persian rug near my desk, driving a small yellow wooden train around the leg of a leather armchair.
“The train is going to Brooklyn,” she announced to the wall.
“Is it?” I asked, looking down from my desk where two phones lay silent.
“Yes. To buy apples.”
“There are apples in the kitchen, Lily.”
“These are magical apples,” she said simply.
My mobile phone buzzed against the polished mahogany. I picked it up immediately.
“Dominic,” Dr. Vance’s voice came through the speaker, tight and professional. “I ran three panels on the herb sample.”
“And?”
“It’s laced with a synthetic derivative of Atropa belladonna mixed with a micro-dose of an organophosphate neurotoxin,” Vance said, his tone grim. “In small amounts, it won't cause organ failure or show up on standard blood panels. But taken daily over months or years? It completely suppresses REM sleep, drives your cortisol levels through the roof, and induces severe anxiety, chronic fatigue, and eventual psychological breakdown.”
My fingers tightened around the phone until the plastic casing groaned.
“How long would it take to break a man completely?” I asked softly.
“At the dosage in that tin? Three years,” Vance replied. “By year four, you’d suffer a massive fatal cardiac event or a psychotic break. It’s brilliant, Dominic. It looks entirely like natural, stress-induced insomnia caused by executive burnout.”
Three years.
Julian had died three years ago. The exact moment I took full control of the Moretti empire.
Marco hadn't been trying to kill me instantly. He had been slowly torturing my mind, draining my sanity day by day, waiting for me to make a catastrophic operational mistake that would force the Moretti board to remove me and place him in the boss’s chair.
He was waiting for me to break.
“Dominic?” Vance asked. “Should I notify the authorities?”
“No,” I said calmly. “I’ll handle the prescription myself.”
I hung up the phone.
I sat there in the quiet library. The rage inside me was a towering, roaring fire, but on the outside, my face remained perfectly calm—the mask of a man who had survived thirty years in the shadows of New York.
I looked down at the floor.
Lily had stopped playing with her train. She was looking up at me with those big, clear brown eyes, her dark curls tumbling over her forehead.
“Are you mad at the phone?” she asked.
I took a deep breath, letting the cold air clear my lungs. I slid out of my high leather chair and knelt on the rug beside her, meeting her at eye level.
“No, Lily,” I said gently. “I’m not mad at the phone.”
“You rumble when you’re mad,” she noted, pointing a tiny finger at my chest.
“I’m just thinking about a fox,” I said softly.
“A sneaky one?”
“The sneakiest one in the woods.”
Lily reached out, took her yellow toy train, and placed it directly into my palm. “Give him the train,” she said firmly. “Then he won't be sneaky anymore.”
May you like
I looked at the cheap wooden toy sitting in my hand, then looked at the girl who had unknowingly saved my life by walking into my room with a storybook.
“It’s going to take more than a train, little one,” I whispered.
