I sat up in bed, the blood draining from my face.
“What are you talking about?” Beatrice snapped, though her hand lowered slightly.
“The sedative,” Elena said, stepping into the sliver of moonlight cutting across the room. “The Benzodiazepine solution you’ve been dosing Leo with to make him appear ‘ill.’ To induce the seizures. I found the vial hidden in your vanity yesterday. You’ve been poisoning him to prove Alistair is incompetent.”
The silence in the nursery was deafening. The silence in my bedroom was worse.
My sister-in-law—the woman who ate at my table, who claimed to love these children—had been systematically poisoning my son. The “colic.” The rigidity. The rolling eyes. It wasn’t genetic. It was murder in slow motion.
“You little fool,” Beatrice snarled on the screen, her composure shattering. She took a step toward Elena. “You’re nothing but hired help. Who do you think Alistair will believe? Me? The grieving aunt trying to save her sister’s legacy? Or the transient nanny with three jobs and no history?”
Beatrice laughed, a low, cruel sound. “Once he’s ruled unfit—which he will be, given his mental state—I get custody. I get the estate. I get everything. And you? You disappear back to the gutter you crawled out of.”
“I’m not just hired help,” Elena replied.
She shifted Leo to one arm and reached into her apron pocket with her free hand. She pulled out an old, worn locket. Even on the black-and-white screen, I recognized the shape.
“I was the nursing student on duty the night Seraphina died,” Elena said, tears finally spilling down her cheeks. “I was the last person she spoke to while you were out in the hallway arguing with the doctors about her life insurance policy.”
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
“She told me,” Elena continued, her voice cracking. “She told me she saw you tamper with her IV drip. She knew. She knew you wanted the Thorne name. She knew you wanted the life she had.”
Beatrice went pale.
“She was delirious,” Beatrice spat.
“She was lucid,” Elena countered. “And before she passed, she made me swear. She gave me this locket and made me promise that if she didn’t survive, I would find her sons. She begged me to protect them from you.”
Elena took a breath, holding the locket up like a shield. “I spent two years changing my name, dying my hair, and working through your agency just to get into this house. I didn’t come for the money. I came to keep a promise to a dying mother.”
Beatrice’s face contorted with pure, unadulterated rage.
“You lying bitch!”
Beatrice raised her hand, the heavy silver dropper clenched in her fist like a weapon, and lunged toward Elena and my son.
I didn’t wait to see what happened next.
I was out of bed in a fraction of a second. I didn’t think. I didn’t feel the cold floor beneath my bare feet. I ran.
I sprinted down the long, glass-lined hallway, my breath tearing through my lungs, rage burning through my veins like molten lead.
I burst through the nursery door just as Beatrice’s arm was descending.
I didn’t yell. I didn’t scream.
I crossed the room in two strides and grabbed Beatrice’s wrist in mid-air. I squeezed. I squeezed until I felt the bones grind together, until the silver bottle dropped from her hand and rolled across the carpet.
Beatrice gasped, looking up at me in shock. She opened her mouth to speak, to spin a web of lies, to act the victim.
“Alistair! Thank God! This girl, she—”
“Don’t,” I said.
