"Someone Is Poisoning You," The Little Maid’s Daughter Whispered That My Fiancée Was Poisoning Me—Then One Butter Dish Exposed the Woman Sent to Inherit My Empire

By nightfall, Dr. Mercer had completed the chemical analysis of the butter dish.

I sat behind the massive mahogany desk in my private study, illuminated only by a single brass lamp. Santino stood across from me, dropping a manila folder onto the blotter.

"Thallium acetate," Santino reported, his voice grim. "Colorless, odorless, tasteless. Injected slowly over weeks, it causes hair loss, organ failure, and eventually cardiac arrest. It looks like a natural, rapid illness. If Emma hadn't seen her... you would have been dead before Christmas, Boss."

I stared at the report. "And Isabella’s phone?"

"We decrypted her messages," Santino said, his jaw tightening. "She wasn't working for her family. She was taking orders from someone inside our own inner circle. Someone who provided her with the thallium."

"Who?"

Santino pulled a printed transcript from the folder. "The code name used in the messages is 'Janus'. But we tracked the encrypted IP address to a private server hosted at the Federal Hill Banking Syndicate."

I closed my eyes. The pieces fell into place with devastating precision.

Dominic Moretti.

Dominic was my father’s oldest lieutenant, my godfather, and the chairman of the banking syndicate. He was the man who had placed his hand on my shoulder at my father’s funeral and sworn to guide me. He was also the man who had introduced me to Isabella Marchetti two years ago at that charity dinner.

Dominic didn't want a war. He wanted a quiet coup. With me dead of a "sudden illness" and Isabella inheriting my estate as my grieving fiancée, Dominic would have stepped in as the executor of the Romano trust, taking total control of the East Coast shipping routes without firing a single bullet.

"Assemble the captains," I said, opening my eyes. "Call an emergency council meeting at the estate tonight at ten o'clock."