Chapter 4 - The Spider's Web
By the third day in the ICU, my body was a battleground.
The Prussian Blue treatment had begun, turning my digestive system upside down, while massive doses of methylprednisolone burned through my veins like liquid fire to reduce the swelling in my spinal cord.
I still couldn't feel my legs from the waist down.
Every morning, Dr. Lin would come in with her small metal instrument and run it across the soles of my feet. Every morning, I would stare at my motionless toes, begging them in my head to move even a millimeter. Every morning, nothing happened.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, my door opened, and my family law attorney, Rachel Vance—no relation to Freya’s sleazy corporate lawyer—stepped inside carrying two heavy boxes of documents.
Rachel was a sharp, uncompromising woman with iron-gray hair and eyes that could bore through solid steel. She had been my late grandfather's attorney for twenty years.
"Judith," Rachel said, placing a warm hand on my shoulder before dumping the boxes onto the visitor’s table. "Leo’s defense attorney tried to file an emergency motion for bail this morning. The judge threw it out. He’s being held at the county jail without bond on charges of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated poisoning, and grand larceny."
"What about Freya?" I asked, my voice weak but steady. "She brought the tea from the market. She was there every weekend."
Rachel’s eyes turned cold. "Freya was arrested two hours ago at her home in West Palm Beach."
I gasped. "Freya?"
"Detective Miller executed a financial audit on Freya’s accounts yesterday," Rachel revealed, pulling a stack of bank statements from the box. "Three months ago, Freya took out a two-million-dollar secondary insurance policy on your life, listing herself as the primary beneficiary. She was in on it from the very beginning, Judith. Leo was poisoning you, and his mother was financing the operation and preparing the payout infrastructure."
A cold, terrifying chill ran down my spine. The white capri pants. The wedge sandals. The way she had clacked across the driveway holding a paper napkin, telling me young women today had no stamina while I lay paralyzed in the heat.
She hadn't been annoyed because I was ruining her son's birthday party. She had been annoyed because I was taking too long to die.
"They thought you were weak, Judith," Rachel said gently, sitting beside my bed and taking my pale hand into hers. "They thought because you were quiet, because you loved them, because you trusted them, you would lie down in that driveway and let them sweep you away into a grave. But you spoke up. You told that paramedic about the tea."
"Paramedic Eastman," I whispered, tears pricking my eyes. "She saved my life."
"She did," Rachel agreed. "And now, we are going to burn their world to the ground. I have already frozen all of Leo’s joint accounts, placed a lien on your marital home, and filed for an emergency dissolution of marriage on the grounds of attempted murder."
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"What happens to the farm?" I asked.
Rachel smiled—a genuine, fierce smile. "The farm is safe, Judith. It’s registered entirely under your maiden name. Leo never touched a single cent of it. And by the time I'm finished with him in civil court, he won't even own the shirt on his back."
