Chapter 3

I kicked the cart into Moreau's knee, sending a bright arc of liquid across the tile until less than half remained. “That is not a sedative. Ask him to name it.”

Dante tightened his grip. “Give her the minimum dose.” Minimum. He had found a gentler word for the needle, something he could live with afterward, but my stomach dropped before Moreau even moved. Dante had still said yes.

“You attacked my father's doctor.” If Dante began with my kick, he never had to look at the needle that caused it.

The sealed bottle lay on Moreau's cart beside his wrist. “Because he is hiding the evidence of who poisoned your father.”

“What are you trying to do?” I twisted until my shoulder burned as an old panic closed around me. After a man followed me home, Dante had promised no one would hold me again. Had that promise ever included him?

The needle settled against my skin. “Dante, please.” I hated the weakness in my voice, but hated more that I still believed it might reach him when reason had failed.

“Hold still.” His gentle voice did not match the hand pressing over my pulse. “This ends when you stop fighting.”

“You promised no one would hold me down again.” His pressure loosened. Valentina looked at his hand, then at Vittorio. “Vittorio is dying while she makes a scene.” His fingers closed around me again.

“Get her out.” I held his eyes despite the needle.

“She stays where I can see her.” His nod to Moreau finished what the needle had begun.

Cold entered my arm before the plunger emptied, widening the lights into white halos while the steel moved farther away and my pulse stumbled, raced, then withdrew deep inside my chest.

My tongue dragged against my teeth. “What did you give me?”

“A short-acting sedative.” Moreau answered too quickly, already withdrawing the needle from Dante's sight.

My chest seemed to miss an entire beat. “Then why can't I feel my heart?”

I struck the cart. The bottle rolled across the tile, its loose label lifting to reveal blue beneath it; I trapped it under my heel, scraped off the label and seal, then hid both inside my neckline.

Dante caught me. “Mara?” His palm crossed my cheek, and for one stupid instant I wanted to turn into the tenderness I had begged for earlier. Now? Now, when it asked him only to grieve instead of believe me? “Open your eyes.”

A guard recoiled from my blue lips. Dante ordered Moreau to fix it while the doctor blocked his view of my throat. I gathered everything left into one finger and pressed it against my husband's wrist.

“She touched me.” Hope broke through Dante's voice, and mine rose with it.

Moreau flattened my hand against the tile and called the movement a nerve reflex. Dante protested but did not push him aside; my pulse continued in strokes separated by darkness.

Valentina retreated while Dante lowered me to the floor. Moreau touched my throat for less than a breath, reached for the sheet and announced, “Time of death, eleven forty-two.”

“No.” Dante caught the cloth before it covered my face, flung it back to my collarbone and dropped beside me so hard that the impact traveled through the tile. “My wife was speaking to me less than a minute ago.”

His fingers searched too hard beneath my jaw. “You said it was a sedative.” He seized Moreau's coat, then drove him against the cabinet when the doctor blamed the cyanide. “Why did she stop breathing after your needle?”

Vittorio's monitor screamed from the adjoining room, cutting through the silence before Moreau answered. “Keep me here, and you lose your father too.”

Dante checked my throat with a shaking hand, then stood when Vittorio's alarm sharpened. No. I was still here, still furious, still feeling his warmth leave my skin. Come back, some dying habit begged. He did not, and I could no longer survive on the promise that one more piece of truth would turn him around.

An attendant pulled the sheet over my face as hands lifted me onto a gurney. Dante followed, insisting no one move me until he decided, but Moreau stopped the wheels. “At dawn, her body becomes evidence. If they open her, they open this family.”

I waited for Dante to say no. Beneath the sheet, I heard his hand leave the rail.

Moreau lifted his shoe, and the wheels began to turn. “Cremation before dawn.”