The word made me want to vomit.
I drank the cup into my mouth, then pretended I’d forgotten my glasses. Left alone in the pantry, my hands shaking, I poured a few sips into the bottle and poured the rest down the sink, letting the water run to drown out the noise.
I repeated the same charade for three nights.
On the fourth night, Elias asked me to meet him at…
A deserted parking lot behind the train station. He handed me a sheet of paper folded in four.
A lab report.
In the center of the page was a word, as if written in flames:
ARSENIC
Low doses. Administered regularly. Progressive liver and kidney damage. Death possible within months.
I doubled over, not from weakness, but from the weight of betrayal.
Then Elias took me to an old friend of my late husband’s: Étienne Caron, a former police chief who had been retired for three years. He was a tall, silent man with tired eyes that nevertheless seemed to see everything.
He listened without interrupting.
Then he simply said,
“We’ll take her down without a problem.”
