A 4-Year-Old Girl Fell From a Million-Dollar Mansion’s Balcony Into an Infinity Pool! After the Servant Saved Her, She Kept Pointing Upstairs… But When He Saw Who Was Closing the Curtains, His Blood Ran Cold! / Chapter 6 / 60

Chapter 6 - Poison in the Silverware

Gabriel didn't take the stairs. He moved through the estate with the lethal, silent efficiency of a phantom, sprinting up the hidden service access shafts built into the mansion’s core.

He reached the third-floor corridor within forty-five seconds.

He didn't knock. Gabriel turned the brass handle and shoved the door open.

Inside, the nursery was dimly lit by a porcelain nightlight shaped like a crescent moon. Victoria stood beside Nora’s bed. She held a silver spoon filled with a clear, viscous liquid, inches away from the little girl’s trembling mouth. Nora had her head pressed back into the headboard, her eyes wide with terror, her hands desperately clutching her blanket.

"Open your mouth, darling," Victoria was saying, her voice a purr of sick maternal warmth. "It’s just your pediatric sedative. It will help the bad dreams go away. You want to see Mommy, don't you?"

"Get away from her," Gabriel’s voice cracked through the silence like a gunshot.

Victoria froze. Her hand did not shake. She slowly turned her head, looking at Gabriel with an expression of cold, disdainful disgust.

"You are intruding on a family medical routine, Gabriel," she said smoothly, not lowering the spoon. "Margaret stepped out to get warm water. The child needs her prescribed rest."

"That isn't a pediatric sedative," Gabriel said, closing the distance between them with slow, predatory intent. "A pediatric sedative doesn't come in an unlabelled amber vial with a compounding pharmacy seal from Tijuana."

A flash of genuine panic flickered across Victoria’s face, instantly replaced by vicious malice. "You insolent, low-class bastard. You don't know what you're talking about."

"Potassium chloride mixed with concentrated succinylcholine," Gabriel said, rattling off the chemical cocktail he had seen used in clandestine assassinations during his tours in Eastern Europe. "A paralytic. In a child her size, it takes twelve minutes to stop the diaphragm. By the time the ambulance gets here, the coroner calls it secondary cardiac arrest from pool-water pulmonary edema. A delayed tragedy from yesterday’s fall."

Victoria stared at him. The mask completely slipped. The elegant, high-society widow was gone; standing in her place was a cornered wolf, calculating whether to bite or run.

"No one will believe you," Victoria hissed, her voice dropping into a venomous whisper. "Who are you? A broken soldier who washes my floors. Arthur signs your checks. The police dine at my country club. If I say you broke into this nursery to assault this child, you will spend the rest of your miserable life in Pelican Bay."

"Try it," Gabriel said.

In one blindingly fast movement, Gabriel reached out, seized Victoria’s wrist, and twisted it downward with surgical precision. Victoria gasped in pain as the silver spoon dropped, clattering onto the Persian rug, the clear poison soaking into the wool fibers.

With his other hand, Gabriel snatched the amber vial straight from her manicured fingers.

"Gabriel!"

A voice boomed from the nursery doorway.

Arthur stood there, his hair disheveled, wearing a silk dressing gown. He looked between Gabriel holding Victoria’s twisted arm and his mother-in-law whimpering in theatrical agony.

"Arthur! Thank God!" Victoria shrieked, instantly collapsing into tears, clutching her wrist as Gabriel released her. "He attacked me! I came in to give Nora her vitamins, and he burst in! He’s insane, Arthur! He’s obsessed with the girl! He’s threatening to kill us all!"