Chapter 7 - The Inheritance of Fear
That night, while the boys were watching an animated movie in the media room, I didn't sleep. I took the small brown glass bottle to an late-night chemical testing laboratory in downtown Chicago, paying two hundred dollars of my own meager savings to rush an analysis.
The result came back at two in the morning via encrypted email: High concentration of synthetic scopolamine blended with heavy sedatives.
Scopolamine. The "Zombie Drug." In micro-doses, it causes severe confusion, violent mood swings, extreme memory loss, and heightened paranoia.
It wasn't that the triplets were born broken. It wasn't just grief over their mother's death.
They were being actively poisoned.
I drove back to the estate, the steering wheel slipping under my sweating palms, my blood boiling with a cold, righteous rage. Someone was deliberately driving three six-year-old boys into psychosis. Why?
“I am the trustee of the boys' inheritance trust,” Victoria’s voice echoed in my head.
If the boys were declared mentally unfit or institutionalized as dangerous psychopaths before their seventh birthday—which was only two weeks away—the terms of Eleanor’s will stated that control of the multi-billion-dollar trust fund would revert entirely to the sole surviving adult trustee: Victoria Vance.
She hadn't just watched her sister die; she was actively destroying her sister's children for a check.
I slammed the brakes as I pulled into the dark driveway of the estate. The mansion was completely silent, bathed in the pale light of the full moon. I slipped through the side entrance, moving silently up the service stairs toward Julian’s private study. I needed to show him the lab report. I needed to wake him up before his sister-in-law finished what she started.
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As I reached the top of the stairs, I heard voices coming from the sealed West Wing.
The heavy oak doors were cracked open. A dim light was shining from inside Eleanor’s long-forgotten studio.
