Chapter 209
Chapter 209:
“Sleep well, Phoenix,” he whispered.
Aurora walked into the lobby, her legs feeling unsteady. She felt safe. For the first time in weeks, the cold didn’t reach her bones.
Inside the car, the warmth vanished the second the door closed. Elias picked up his phone.
“Graves,” he said. His voice was ice. “Execute the financial blockade on the Kensington accounts at dawn. And find out exactly what Sebastian said to her tonight. I want him squeezed until he cracks.”
In the Reed mansion, Noah Reed drank the tea. He gagged, but swallowed it. Ten minutes later, he fell back onto his pillow. His breathing was shallow, rattling in his throat like dry leaves.
He wanted to call for his mom again, but he was too scared. He closed his eyes, and the darkness took him.
The morning light hit the windows of the Reed mansion, grey and unforgiving.
Noah Reed woke up, but he didn’t feel awake. His limbs felt like they were filled with lead. His chest didn’t hurt anymore; instead, it felt hollow, as if a bird were fluttering weakly against his ribs.
Monica entered the room with a tray of breakfast. “Up and at ’em, Noah! We have errands to do.”
Noah tried to sit up. He swayed, his vision blurring.
“I feel sick,” he whispered. “Can I stay in bed?”
“That’s the toxins leaving your body,” Monica chirped, parroting Vivian’s words. She handed him another cup of the green sludge. “Drink this. All of it. Then get dressed. We need to go to the boutique. If people don’t see you out and about, they’ll think something is wrong. We can’t let the rumors win, Noah.”
Noah drank. He vomited it back up three minutes later.
“Noah!” Monica scolded, wiping the duvet. “That medicine is expensive! Vivian had it imported! Stop being difficult.”
She dressed him in a stiff collared shirt and dragged him out to the car. He stumbled, his feet dragging, but she pulled him along, desperate to maintain the facade of a healthy, perfect family.
Aurora was in the luxury shopping district for a reason, and it wasn’t clothes. She needed high-grade medical supplies for her private kit—specific gauze and antiseptics she could only get from a boutique pharmacy that catered to private surgeons. She was preparing for the confrontation with Eleanor, knowing things could get physical.
She walked out of the pharmacy, adjusting her scarf, when she saw them.
Monica Reed was pulling a stumbling Noah toward the entrance of Petit Trésor, an exclusive children’s boutique next door.
Aurora stopped. Her “Healer’s Vision”—that hyper-observant part of her brain that noticed gait, skin tone, and respiration—screamed at her.
The boy wasn’t just tired.
His lips were blue. A distinct, dusky cyanosis. His jugular vein was distended, pulsing visibly against his pale neck.
He was in heart failure.
Aurora dropped her shopping bag. It hit the pavement with a thud. She ran.