Chapter 3 - THE DOCTOR’S VERDICT
Dr. Michael Grant arrived seventeen minutes later, carrying a heavy leather medical bag that looked like it belonged in a nineteenth-century apothecary.
Michael had served as the personal physician to the Moretti family and their inner circle for nearly a decade. He had stitched up bullet wounds in basement clinics, administered emergency stabilizers to men bleeding out in luxury cars, and learned long ago never to ask unnecessary questions about why certain injuries happened or why certain people required absolute, graveyard-level discretion.
Tonight, however, there were no bullet holes or knife wounds to explain.
Michael knelt beside Claire on the wooden floor, his movements practiced and calm. He pulled out a manual sphygmomanometer, wrapped the cuff around her slender arm, and pumped it up. He checked her pupils with a penlight, listened to the rhythmic wheeze of her lungs through a stethoscope, and immediately popped open an IV bag, sliding a sterile needle into the vein of her forearm with practiced precision.
Lily watched every single movement with unblinking intensity, clutching her rabbit tighter to her chest.
“Does that needle hurt?” she whispered.
Michael glanced up, offering the child a warm, reassuring smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
“A little bit, yeah. Just a tiny pinch.”
“Will Mommy be mad?”
“Why would she be mad?”
“She doesn’t like needles.”
Michael chuckled softly. “Well, most people don’t. But this is just water and vitamins to help her wake up faster.”
Lily nodded solemnly, then looked over at Adrian, who stood guard near the door with his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze fixed on the hallway outside.
“Mr. Adrian says she’s going to wake up.”
Michael looked toward Adrian, catching the silent, heavy warning in the crime boss’s slate-gray eyes. The doctor didn't miss a beat.
“Then I’d say your mother has two very stubborn people making sure of it.”
Lily seemed entirely satisfied with that logic.
Twenty minutes later, under Michael and Adrian’s joint assistance, Claire had been carefully lifted off the floor and laid out properly on the narrow bed. The color in her cheeks was beginning to return from a ghostly white to a faint, healthy hue as the saline solution flooded her dehydrated veins.
Michael packed away his stethoscope, rose to his feet with a quiet groan of stiff joints, and motioned toward the hallway.
“Outside for a second, Adrian.”
Adrian followed him out into the service corridor, pulling the door nearly shut behind them so Lily wouldn't overhear.
“Talk to me, Michael,” Adrian commanded quietly.
“She collapsed from a combination of acute exhaustion, severe dehydration, and profound systemic depletion,” Michael reported, his voice dropping into a clinical murmur. “Her blood pressure was bottomed out. She hasn’t been eating properly, and she’s been running on adrenaline and little to no sleep for weeks.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. “Was it natural?”
Michael hesitated. Just for a fraction of a second. But in Adrian’s world, a doctor’s hesitation was worth more than a confession.
Adrian noticed instantly.
“What?”
“There’s something else in her system, Adrian.”
“What kind of something?”
“A sedative. A low dose of a synthetic benzodiazepine derivative. Not enough to kill her, but more than enough to knock someone out if they’re already this weak and depleted.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed until they were mere slits of gray ice.
“Prescription?”
“I checked her nightstand, her pockets, and her uniform locker upstairs,” Michael said, shaking his head. “I found no bottles, no blister packs, nothing. She didn’t take this voluntarily.”
“Could she have ingested it by accident?”
Michael gave him a dry, skeptical look. “People don't accidentally ingest tailored anti-anxiety compounding agents unless someone is slipping it into their food or drink.”
Adrian fell silent. The air in the narrow brick hallway felt suddenly heavy, charged with a sudden, violent realization.
“Could it have happened outside the estate?” Adrian asked.
“Unlikely,” Michael replied. “The dosage timing indicates she absorbed a significant concentration roughly two hours ago. Right around the time she would have finished her evening shift here on the grounds.”
Adrian turned his head slowly, his gaze drifting down the dark corridor toward the main body of the mansion.
Someone inside his house—someone who wore a uniform, someone who walked these halls, someone who had access to the staff quarters—had slipped a chemical compound into Claire Bennett’s system.
And if Victor Kane’s name was involved, the circle of suspects suddenly expanded far beyond the domestic staff.
“Is she going to wake up tonight?” Adrian asked, bringing the focus back to the immediate priority.
May you like
“Yes,” Michael nodded. “The IV is flushing the compound out of her bloodstream rapidly. She’ll regain consciousness within the hour. But when she does, Adrian... she’s going to need more than medical fluids. She’s terrified of something.”
“She’s about to find out,” Adrian said coldly, “that being terrified of me is a luxury she no longer has to afford.”
