Chapter 216
Chapter 216:
She dropped to her knees.
“Noah?”
She touched his face. It was waxy. Cold.
She shook him. His head lolled back at an unnatural angle, his eyes half-open, staring at nothing.
A scream tore through the mansion. It wasn’t human. It was the sound of an animal caught in a trap.
The housekeeper ran in, saw the body, and crossed herself.
Preston Reed, Noah’s father, ran in from his study down the hall.
“What? What is it?”
He saw Noah. He saw Monica screaming.
“Call 911! Do CPR!” Preston screamed at Monica, shoving her aside. He began pressing on the small chest, but the body was rigid.
Monica sat on the floor, catatonic, staring at her hands.
Locked. I locked the door.
Paramedics arrived in a blur of red lights and static radio chatter. They worked on Noah for twenty minutes, purely for protocol. There was nothing to save.
The lead paramedic stopped. He wiped sweat from his forehead and checked his watch.
“Time of death: 8:42 PM,” he said to the police officer writing notes. “But looking at the lividity pooling on his back, he’s been gone for hours.”
Three hours ago. While Monica was eating a macaron.
Monica collapsed, wailing. “He was just sleeping! Vivian said he was detoxing!”
The paramedic frowned. He spotted the bottle of herbal supplements on the nightstand. He picked it up.
“Did he take these?” the medic asked sternly.
Monica nodded blindly. “Natural… medicine.”
The medic shook his head, disgust written all over his face. “This contains concentrated ephedra. It’s illegal in these doses. It causes cardiac arrest in children. And with his pre-existing condition? This was a death sentence.”
The words hit Monica like bullets. Ephedra. Cardiac arrest. Death sentence.
“Vivian…” Monica whispered. “Vivian gave it to me.”
Police officers approached her. “Ma’am, we need a statement. Why was the door locked from the outside?”
Monica looked at her phone. The screen lit up with a text from Vivian.
Don’t let the doctors poison him with their chemicals. Stay strong!
The realization cracked Monica’s sanity wide open. She didn’t just kill her son. She had been the weapon, but Vivian had aimed her.
Aurora heard the news via an encrypted alert from Graves’s network.
Code 30. Child fatality. Reed Residence. Possible negligence.
She was sitting in her office chair, staring at the city lights. She closed her eyes. A single tear escaped, tracking hot down her cheek.
“I was too late,” she whispered to the empty room.