Chapter36
Bianca
A needle stung in the back of my hand. Fuzziness clamored my head. I had no idea where I was and why my mouth was so dry.
Pain poked at the edges of my awareness, faint, nothing grave. A beeping sound came into play, and I looked around to see it was a hospital machine. I was in a hospital bed, a white and blue gown covering me. The stinging needle was that of an IV.
My eyes shifted to the other side. Cosimo… Enzio was in a chair next to my cot, gazing at me. He held my hand, without a word, his face made of stone.
His eyes sparkled for a second, as if he was happy I woke up. Then my eyes traveled to his hand around mine, and he dropped it like I was contagious.
“God I hate déjà vus,” I slurred.
He squinted at me in confusion. “What? You still hallucinating from the fever?” The back of his hand touched my forehead.
I wasn’t. This scene was way too similar to the day I woke up after Cosimo’s staged kidnapping. Enzio even had the same look Cosimo had.
The look that changed everything and erased all logic from my head. The look that turned my life upside down and brought me to my end so many times.
The look that could ruin my plan and awake my stupid, reckless and impulsive to play.
“What the hell happened this time? Mario?” I stirred, looking around, my stomach hurt as if it was flipped empty and shoved back inside my abdomen. “Where’s my son?”
“Hey, he’s right outside with the new nanny.”
“New nanny? Where the hell is Lucy?”
“Marta was poisoned, and so were you,” he seethed. “You could have been dead if the doctor hadn’t arrived in time.”
“What?” My heart did something painful in my chest. “And you think she poisoned us? C’mon, Lucy would never…” Panic took over me. “What did you do to her?”
“I have her. Alive. For now.”
A temporary relief washed over me. I’d have never forgiven myself if something happened to my best friend’s sister who trusted me enough to come help when I needed it.
“What about Marta? Is she all right?”
The slightest tension tightened the corners of his mouth, his eyes dark. “My mother didn’t make it. Marta is dead.”
My hand flew to my mouth as I gasped. However, coolness slid over my heart, smothering the fire in it since Cosimo’s murder. It was awful to feel like that now, in front of him when he’d lost both his parents in the same week, but I couldn’t help it. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. If I didn’t give her that tea…”
“She’d have been dead a week or two later tops.”
“What?”
“The toxicology reports came this morning. Her tea was also poisoned. A different kind from the one in yours. Slower. Untraceable. That’s why she’d been sick. She’d been dying for days, and no one knew. Even the doctor wouldn’t have known. If it wasn’t for the poison in yours, they wouldn’t have checked hers or found out.”
“That’s horrible. Who would…” I mused. “How long had it been happening?”
“Two to three weeks.”
“So it can’t be Lucy, Enzio. She wasn’t working for me then. Besides, she would never try to poison me.”
His jaws hardened, his eyes almost black. “I know.”
