Chapter 1
“And Lily is certain she saw Dominic put something in it?”
Adrian rubbed a hand over his face.
“She’s three.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Adrian looked up.
“She said she saw drops.”
Marco nodded slowly.
Children invented dragons beneath beds and kingdoms behind curtains. They misunderstood adult conversations. They confused yesterday with last week and sometimes answered questions based on what they thought adults wanted to hear.
Adrian knew all of that.
He also knew Lily had mentioned the tea before anyone had asked her about it.
That was what troubled him.
“She shouldn’t be involved in this,” Adrian said.
“She isn’t.”
“She already is.”
“No.” Marco’s voice remained calm. “She noticed something. That’s different.”
Adrian leaned back.
For the first time in years, his body felt heavy in the pleasant way he had almost forgotten. His eyes did not burn. His thoughts arrived in order instead of colliding inside his head.
Seven hours of sleep had done something remarkable.
It had reminded him what exhaustion had taken.
Not merely strength.
Perspective.
For years, every problem had felt urgent. Every disagreement sounded like betrayal. Every forgotten appointment became evidence that he was losing control. He had begun keeping three notebooks because he no longer trusted his memory.
And through all of it, Dominic had been there.
You should rest, Adrian.
Let me handle the meeting.
You’re forgetting things again.
Sign it. I already reviewed everything.
Adrian closed his eyes.
How many decisions had he surrendered simply because thinking had become unbearable?
Marco stepped closer.
“I know a laboratory that can examine the tea quietly.”
“No names.”
“Of course.”
“And no one in this house hears about it.”
Marco gave him a tired smile.
“You called me because I already know that.”
The study door opened a few inches.
Both men turned.
Sarah Carter stood there, one hand on the brass handle. She was thirty-two, with dark blond hair tied loosely at the back of her neck and the permanently alert expression of a mother who had learned silence usually meant her child was attempting something ambitious.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Mrs. Ricci said you wanted breakfast brought in.”
Adrian glanced toward the hallway.
“Where’s Lily?”
“Eating pancakes in the kitchen.”
“Good.”
Sarah hesitated.
Something in Adrian’s face must have worried her.
“Did she disturb you last night?”
“No.”
“I told her she is never to enter private rooms without permission. She must have woken up and—”
“Sarah.”
She stopped.
“She didn’t do anything wrong.”
Adrian rarely spoke gently enough to make people notice.
Sarah noticed.
Her shoulders lowered slightly.
“She said you slept.”
“I did.”
“That’s good.”
Her smile was small but sincere.
Adrian almost told her everything.
Then he remembered Lily’s sentence.
I saw him put drops in it yesterday.
The last thing he wanted was Sarah becoming frightened in a house where she lived with her daughter.
“You and Lily should take the afternoon off,” he said.
Sarah blinked.
“Sir?”
“Take her somewhere.”
“We were planning to go to the library after lunch.”
“Go earlier. Stay as long as you like.”
Suspicion entered her eyes.
“Is something wrong?”
Marco looked away, giving Adrian the choice.
Adrian hated lying.
He had built much of his adult life around half-truths, careful omissions, and sentences that meant different things depending on who heard them.
But lying to Sarah now felt especially ugly.
“There may be a problem with something served in the house,” he said. “I’m having it checked. I don’t think you or Lily are in any danger.”
Sarah’s expression changed immediately.
“The tea?”
Adrian went still.
Marco did too.
Sarah looked from one man to the other.
“What do you know about the tea?” Adrian asked.
“Nothing, exactly.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
His old tone slipped out before he could stop it.
Sarah stiffened.
Adrian heard himself.
Three years without sleep had turned impatience into instinct.
He tried again.
“I’m sorry. Tell me what you’ve noticed.”
Sarah studied him for a moment.
Then she stepped inside and closed the door.
“Mrs. Ricci usually prepares your evening tray,” she said. “But your brother started doing the tea himself a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Before I began working here.”
Sarah had come to the Moretti estate nineteen months earlier after the small hotel where she worked closed unexpectedly.
“Did that seem unusual to you?”
“At first, I thought it was kind.”
That word landed strangely.
Kind.
Dominic had always presented the ritual that way.
A younger brother looking after an older one.
“I stopped thinking about it,” Sarah continued. “Then, a few months ago, I was cleaning the upstairs sitting room when Mr. Dominic came in carrying your cup. He seemed annoyed when he saw me.”
“Annoyed how?”
“He asked why I was there. I told him I was dusting. He said from then on no one was to touch your evening tea except him.”
Marco’s eyes narrowed.
“You never mentioned this?”
“To whom?” Sarah asked.
The answer silenced the room.
Adrian realized with a sting of embarrassment that nearly everyone in the household answered, ultimately, to Dominic now.
Even Sarah.
“Did Lily ever see him preparing it before yesterday?” Adrian asked.
“I don’t know.”
Sarah looked uneasy.
“She talks constantly. If she had seen something she understood as important, she might have said something. But she also tells me the moon follows our car because it likes us.”
Marco’s mouth twitched.
Adrian almost smiled.
Then Sarah’s expression became more serious.
“Mr. Moretti, should Lily and I leave the house?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
He softened it.
“You’re safe here. But I want this handled without her hearing adults argue about something she cannot understand.”
Sarah nodded.
“Thank you.”
She turned to leave.
“Sarah.”
She glanced back.
“Last night,” Adrian said, “she told me a story about a lion.”
Sarah smiled despite herself.
“I know that one.”
“You do?”
“She made it up after seeing a documentary about lions at the library.”
Adrian looked toward the window.
“Apparently the lion was an idiot who thought he had to guard his cave all night.”
Sarah’s smile widened.
“That sounds like Lily.”
After she left, Marco folded his arms.
“I like the kid.”
“So does everyone.”
“Not everyone gets you to follow medical advice by turning it into a story about a rabbit.”
Adrian gave him a look.
Marco wisely returned his attention to the tea.
Dominic arrived at eleven.
Adrian heard his brother before he saw him.
The easy laugh in the foyer.
A greeting to Mrs. Ricci.
A question about whether the gardeners had repaired the stone wall near the west entrance.
Nothing in his voice suggested fear.
Adrian remained seated at his desk with an open folder in front of him.
Dominic entered without knocking.
At thirty-nine, he resembled Adrian enough that strangers sometimes guessed they were twins despite the six-year difference.
They had the same dark eyes and black hair inherited from their mother.
But where Adrian seemed carved from stillness, Dominic had always been movement.
A hand on a shoulder.
A quick smile.
A joke at the right time.
Growing up, Dominic had been the brother people forgave before he apologized.
“You look different,” Dominic said.
Adrian kept his attention on the page.
“How?”
“Less dead.”
Adrian raised his eyes.
Dominic grinned.
“There he is.”
He placed a leather portfolio on the desk.
“Did you sleep?”
“A little.”
“Good.”
Dominic sounded genuinely pleased.
That hurt more than Adrian expected.
“Your tea was untouched when I came upstairs earlier.”
“I wasn’t in the mood.”
A pause.
Barely noticeable.
May you like
Then Dominic shrugged.
“Maybe that helped.”
