Chapter 4 - THE POISON IN MY LOCKER
I did not sleep.
Not after Damian told me that my husband had been born Daniel Volkov.
Not after seeing the letter.
Not after realizing Viktor may have known Daniel before I ever did.
The next morning, Damian ordered every personnel record pulled.
Mine.
Daniel’s.
Viktor’s.
Anya Volkov’s.
Anything connected to Grayhaven going back thirty years.
I sat in the library with Lila while rain tapped against the windows.
Damian joined us in a wheelchair.
Dr. Kessler had forbidden him from walking farther than the bathroom.
He ignored her twice.
The third time, she threatened to sedate him.
That was the first person I had ever seen threaten Damian Volkov and survive.
“What do you know about Daniel’s childhood?” Damian asked.
“Not much.”
“Adoption?”
“He said his mother raised him alone.”
“Where?”
“Virginia. Then Pennsylvania.”
“Father?”
“He never knew him.”
Damian looked toward the fire.
“Anya was eighteen when she left.”
“Why?”
His jaw tightened.
“My father arranged a marriage.”
“That still happens?”
“In families like mine, many bad traditions continue long after they should have died.”
“And she ran.”
“Yes.”
“Were you close?”
“She was sixteen years younger than me.”
His eyes softened.
“I taught her to ride a bicycle.”
That image felt impossible.
Damian Volkov.
Baltimore’s feared crime boss.
Running beside a little girl on a bicycle.
“She loved music,” he continued. “Then an illness damaged her hearing when she was nine.”
I looked at Lila.
“Daniel never told me.”
“He may not have known much.”
Lila was born profoundly deaf.
Doctors called it congenital hearing loss.
We never discovered a specific cause.
Now I wondered whether it belonged to a story larger than us.
Damian turned toward Lila.
“She has Anya’s eyes.”
I almost told him not to say things like that.
Then I looked.
Maybe he was right.
The library door opened.
A housekeeper entered.
“Ms. Mercer?”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Anton asked for you downstairs.”
I followed her.
The servants’ hallway was crowded.
Two guards stood outside my locker.
My stomach dropped.
“What happened?”
Anton looked grim.
“Open it.”
“It’s unlocked.”
He wore gloves.
He opened the metal door.
Inside, beneath my spare uniform, sat a small amber bottle.
Identical to the one found near Damian’s glass.
I stared.
“That isn’t mine.”
Nobody answered.
“I have never seen that.”
Anton picked it up with an evidence bag.
The label was missing.
One of the kitchen workers backed away from me.
“Anton.”
“I know.”
“You know what?”
“The camera shows someone entering this room last night.”
“Who?”
“The hallway camera was blocked.”
Of course it was.
Another camera failure.
Another perfect coincidence.
The housekeeper whispered, “She brought the child.”
I turned.
“What does that mean?”
“She shouldn’t have been here.”
I understood.
Someone had poisoned Damian.
My daughter discovered it.
Now poison appeared in my locker.
They were turning me into the story.
The poor maid.
The desperate widow.
The woman who had brought a child where she was forbidden.
It was almost too neat.
Damian arrived before Anton could say more.
He looked at the bottle.
Then at me.
“You put this here?”
“No.”
“Good.”
I blinked.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Anton frowned.
“Boss, we have to investigate.”
“Investigate.”
Damian pointed toward the bottle.
“But Elena didn’t put it there.”
“How can you know?”
“Because if she wanted me dead, she had thirteen minutes alone in this house with no reason to believe anyone would connect her daughter to me.”
He looked around at the staff.
“Instead, her child walked into my room and accidentally saved my life.”
Nobody spoke.
Damian continued.
“And whoever planted this bottle is insulting my intelligence.”
He turned toward me.
“Go back to Lila.”
I started walking.
Then I stopped.
“Wait.”
Everyone looked at me.
“The housekeeper who came for me.”
She stiffened.
“What?”
“She said Anton asked for me.”
Anton looked toward her.
“I didn’t.”
The woman went pale.
“I was told—”
“By whom?”
She looked toward the hallway.
Then she ran.
She made it ten feet.
One of the guards stopped her.
She screamed.
“I didn’t do anything!”
Damian’s voice remained calm.
“Then you can tell us who told you to lie.”
Within twenty minutes, she confessed.
Not to poisoning Damian.
To delivering a message.
Someone had slipped two hundred dollars beneath her apartment door that morning along with instructions:
Tell Elena that Anton needs her downstairs.
She never saw the person.
But the envelope contained something else.
A keycard.
One belonging to Dr. Harrow.
The missing physician.
Anton looked at Damian.
“He’s still inside.”
Grayhaven was searched room by room.
Basements.
Attics.
Servants’ passages.
Wine cellar.
Old storage rooms.
Nothing.
Then Lila noticed a door behind a curtain in the music room.
It led to an unused service staircase.
At the bottom was a locked medical storage room from the years Damian’s mother had been ill.
Inside, they found Harrow.
Alive.
Terrified.
His hands were bound in front of him.
He had been hidden there since the previous afternoon.
Damian stared.
“You didn’t run.”
Harrow shook his head violently.
“No.”
“Did you poison me?”
“No.”
Damian stepped closer.
“Careful.”
Harrow began crying.
“I changed your medication because Viktor ordered me to.”
Silence.
There it was.
Not innocence.
Not completely.
“What did he tell you?”
“That the doses were to control pain.”
“You believed him?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
“I knew something was wrong.”
Damian’s voice chilled.
“You continued.”
“He threatened my daughter.”
The room changed.
Harrow swallowed.
“Viktor has photographs of her school.”
I thought of Lila.
Suddenly I understood cowardice differently.
It did not excuse him.
But fear could make ordinary people do terrible things.
“Why hide you?” Damian asked.
“Because yesterday morning I told him I was done.”
“What happened?”
“He came to my office. Said we needed to talk. Then two men grabbed me.”
“Names.”
“I didn’t see them.”
“Was Viktor trying to kill me?”
Harrow closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer was incomplete.
Damian knew it too.
Harrow continued quickly.
“But he kept asking about your will.”
Damian’s face changed.
“What about it?”
“Whether you had changed the beneficiary.”
“I haven’t.”
“Who inherits?”
Damian did not answer.
Anton knew.
His expression told me.
The answer came later in the library.
Damian sat across from me.
“If I die without a child or living direct descendant, control of several legitimate family holdings passes temporarily to a management trust.”
“Controlled by Viktor?”
“Yes.”
My stomach turned.
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“Enough to kill you?”
He looked at me.
“For some men, ten dollars is enough.”
Then he glanced at Lila.
“But if Anya’s son was Daniel…”
He stopped.
“What?”
“And Daniel was your husband…”
My skin prickled.
“Say it.”
“Then Lila is Volkov blood.”
I stared.
“What does that change?”
“Everything.”
His voice was quiet.
“She would be my closest living family heir.”
I immediately stood.
“No.”
“Elena—”
“No.”
“I am not talking about giving her anything now.”
“I don’t care.”
“She is already connected whether we like it or not.”
“No one knows.”
“Viktor knew Daniel.”
Cold washed through me.
Yes.
Viktor knew.
He knew Daniel had discovered his mother’s identity.
Maybe he knew Daniel had a child.
Maybe that was why he reacted when he saw Lila.
Damian’s phone rang.
Anton answered first.
Then his face went hard.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“The lab finished the bottle from Elena’s locker.”
“And?”
“It contains the same compound found in your blood.”
Damian looked toward me.
That wasn’t the worst part.
Anton continued.
“There are fingerprints on the inside cap.”
“Whose?”
Anton stared directly at Damian.
“Daniel Mercer’s.”
My dead husband’s fingerprints were inside a bottle of the poison killing Damian Volkov.
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And suddenly, even I did not know what to believe.
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