“Tired.”
He reached for the glass again because everyone was watching, because weakness in that room carried consequences, because he had spent his life completing gestures even after they became dangerous.
The third sip never reached his mouth.
The stem slipped through his fingers.
Crystal shattered on marble.
The sound cut through the dining room like a gunshot.
Alessandro staggered. His hand caught the tablecloth, dragging silver, plates, candles, and white roses down with him in a terrible sliding avalanche. A candle tipped. Flame licked across the linen. Rosa grabbed the water pitcher and threw it without hesitating.
The room filled with wet wax, smoke, and the copper bite of fear.
Marco reached him first.
“Doctor.”
Dr. Rinaldi was already moving. He pressed two fingers to Alessandro’s neck, lifted one eyelid, and went still in the professional way that made every person in the room understand the answer before he spoke.
“Poison.”
Elena dropped to her knees beside her husband.
“Alessandro, look at me.”
His lips had begun to gray.
He could not answer.
But his hand found her wrist and closed around it.
Not hard.
Desperate.
As if even dying, he feared she would disappear again if he let go.
At the garden doors, Mateo stood frozen. Emma clutched his hand. Both children stared with eyes too wide and dry.
Rosa crossed the room, gathered them against her, and turned their faces into her dress before either could see the tube Dr. Rinaldi demanded or the way Marco lifted Alessandro like a child and carried him toward the west wing clinic.
Four hours.
Gastric tube. Charcoal. IV lines. Dr. Rinaldi working under a white lamp with sweat running down his temple. Marco outside the door with two guards, weapons drawn, his face hard enough to carve.
At three in the morning, the doctor stepped into the hall.
“He will live,” he said.
Elena made a sound without shape.
“But it was close. Arsenic trioxide. Enough to kill a healthy adult in under thirty minutes. He survived because he took only two sips, and the glass shattered before the third.”
Marco’s face did not change.
“Seal the estate,” he said.
