“She handles poisonous plants all the time,” I say. “She knows the risks.”
“Maybe she was careless. You said she was distraught last night, right?” I close my eyes and nod.
“It could’ve been an accident. Or… would she poison herself?” I start to shake my head but stop. Why would Bella knowingly ingest poison? “Maybe she did, thinking she was immune.”
“Is there anyone who would want to incapacitate her? An enemy?”
The only enemies are the Vesuvios, and they prefer brute force to anything subtle like poisons. But there is someone with a knowledge of poisons she visited only yesterday. Someone who might want to drug her, to make sure she’s obedient to his will.
Benjiro Bosco. The Poisoner.
I’m out the door before Jaeger can shout for me to wait.
I drive at breakneck speed back to New Rome. Jaeger follows me in his car, but I use every maneuver I can to outpace him. By the time I pull up to the Bosco residence, he’s too far behind to stop me.
This place is a fortress, with bars over the window and layers of security, but there’s a side door that isn’t secure. I kick it in and sprint through the house, bursting into her father’s lab. “What did you do to her?”
The Poisoner looks up at me, surprised. “What do you mean?” I stalk toward him, every muscle taut and ready to fight. “Bella’s sick. Poisoned. She’s in a coma.” I loom over him. “Did you do it? Did you poison her?”
“I would never do anything to harm my daughter.”
“You did something. Or… you upset her… and she did something.” I grab him by the throat. He’s petite, like his daughter. It would take nothing to crush his throat like a soda can.
“Take your hands off me,” he says. His gaze is steely, but he sounds calm. There are shouts from the rooms upstairs. My brother has come, and he has reinforcements. They thunder down the stairs. Jaeger appears at the door with Asmodeus at his back.
“Kaiser, no,” Jaeger calls. “You can’t kill him.”
“Can’t I?” I squeeze until fear flickers in my future father-in-law’s eyes. The predator in me is roaring, dying to taste his blood.
“Atticus says we need him alive,” Jaeger says. “If she dies, you can kill him, alright?”
I release the Poisoner before he turns beet red. He bends over, heaving, and Jaeger and Asmodeus insert themselves between me and him. The Poisoner rubs his neck where I started to choke him. He swallows a few times and rasps, “What are her symptoms?”
“Here.” Jaeger holds up a phone. On the other end of the line, Atticus rattles off a bunch of information, including Bella’s vital signs. “Her temperature is also elevated. One hundred and one and rising. Her body is fighting something.”
The Poisoner sighs and straightens his shirt. He doesn’t seem too concerned about his daughter. Fucking father of the year. “It sounds like poison. But she likely did it to herself.”
“What?” Why would she poison herself?
“What do we do?” Atticus is asking.
“Nothing. This will probably pass,” the Poisoner says.
I’m still too stunned to speak. Why would Bella do this? She was broken up over Livia’s death, but I never thought it would come to this.
I think back over last night. Bella cried over Livia’s ashes. A woman she never knew but mourned like she was mourning her own mother. It was almost like she blamed herself for Livia’s death.
Is this her way of punishing herself?
I rub a hand over my face. Jaeger touches my shoulder briefly, bringing me back.
Atticus is asking the Poisoner to explain.
The Poisoner sighs and takes a seat on a nearby stool. “Since she was little, she’s always been fascinated with poisons. She was exposed to many of them at a young age. When she was three, she crawled through a dog door and into the woods. She was lost for half an hour. We searched everywhere and found her playing in a patch of poison ivy. Her mother was horrified, but we monitored Bella, and she never had symptoms.
“When she was four, she figured out how to unlock the door to the greenhouse. She found a bucket of yew berries and ate as many as she could. Her skin turned red, and she fell into a fever, but after a long night, she woke up and was fine. Her body seems to process things differently.”
“Why wasn’t this in her medical records?” Atticus asks.
