Chapter 2 - The Poison in the Parlor
My sneakers squeaked against the Italian marble as I lunged for the heavy oak door. My hands were shaking so violently that the brass deadbolt slipped between my fingers twice before clicking into place.
The heavy lock sounded like a gunshot in the humid, steam-choked room.
I turned back slowly. Maxwell hadn't moved an inch from the water, but the atmosphere had transformed. The air felt thick, charged with the kind of electricity that precedes a fatal storm. His broad chest rose and fell in shallow, measured breaths. The lethal authority he carried through Rourke House was suddenly stripped bare, replaced by a predatory vigilance.
"Come here," he commanded, his voice barely louder than the hum of the ventilation exhaust.
I stepped closer to the tub, stopping two feet away. "Mr. Rourke, your peripheral nervous system... that was a reflex arc. But you pulled away from the cold. That requires deep-tissue sensory transmission. You shouldn't be able to—"
"Quiet," he snapped, his gray eyes cutting like broken glass. "Lower your voice. In this house, walls have ears, and floorboards have tongues."
"Are you saying you've been faking?" My mind raced through the past six days. I had watched this man being rolled through the mahogany corridors by his private nurse, watched his younger brother Julian speak to him like an invalid who couldn't defend his own empire.
"Faking?" A bitter, jagged laugh tore from Maxwell’s throat. "Do you think I enjoy having men wipe my chin and haul me out of bed like a sack of grain? No, Martha. Fourteen months ago, two hollow-point rounds shattered my T-11 vertebra. I was paralyzed. Completely."
"Then how—"
"Three months ago, the numbness turned into fire," he whispered, lifting his dripping right arm to lean forward, water sloshing softly against porcelain. "Pins and needles in my calves. Then dull aches in my knees. But whenever I tell Dr. Vance the feeling is coming back, my evening medication gets adjusted. And the next morning, my legs are dead lead again."
The nurse in me snapped instantly into focus, slicing through the terror.
"Adjusted with what?" I asked, dropping to one knee beside the tub.
"A cocktail of 'neuro-stabilizers.' Vance claims it stops phantom limb spasms. But two weeks ago, I started spitting the yellow capsules into the radiator vent." Maxwell stared down at his right leg, submerged beneath the rippling water. "It took fourteen days of pure agony for my nerve endings to ignite. That jerk you saw? That was the first voluntary motor response I’ve had in over four hundred days."
My stomach turned to ice. "Someone is chemically keeping you paralyzed."
"Not someone," Maxwell murmured, his jaw clenching so hard a cord of muscle stood out in his neck. "Julian. My brother doesn't want an older brother anymore. He wants a martyr he can parade in front of the waterfront unions while he loots my accounts."
Before I could process the horror of what he was saying, knuckles struck the bathroom door.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
"Maxwell?"
The voice belonged to Miss Delaney, the sharp-featured head housekeeper who ran the domestic staff with an iron fist and reported directly to Julian.
"Maxwell, why is the door locked?" Delaney’s voice sounded tight, suspicious. "Dr. Vance is downstairs with your afternoon infusion. Martha should have been out ten minutes ago."
My breath hitched. If Delaney saw the cold water running, if she noticed Maxwell’s altered posture—
Maxwell’s hand shot out of the water. His wet, calloused fingers wrapped around my wrist with the crushing grip of a drowning sailor. Despite everything, the sheer physical power in his upper body was terrifying.
"Play your part," he hissed under his breath. Then, clearing his throat, he pitched his voice into the flat, exhausted cadence of a defeated man. "Delaney! Martha spilled the scalding wash water all over the floor. She locked the door so the draft wouldn't freeze me while she cleans the mess."
There was a pregnant pause on the other side of the door.
"Tell her to hurry up," Delaney answered, her footsteps lingering for a second before slowly fading down the carpeted hallway.
Maxwell let go of my wrist. Red marks blossomed where his fingers had clamped down. He didn't apologize. A man who controlled three shipping ports and five hundred armed dockers didn't apologize to cleaning girls.
"Turn off the taps," he ordered quietly. "Help me into the chair. If Vance sees me out of position, he’ll know."
"Mr. Rourke, if Vance is giving you a paralytic neurotoxin, letting him inject you today could trigger respiratory arrest," I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline pounding in my ears. "High doses of synthetic neuromuscular blockers don't just paralyze legs. They paralyze the diaphragm. You won't be able to breathe."
Maxwell locked his gray eyes onto mine. In their depths, I didn't see a helpless patient. I saw a beast waiting for the iron bars of his cage to rot.
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"Then you had better figure out how to switch the vial, Martha," he said softly. "Because if I die, Julian inherits everything. And the very first thing he'll do is ensure the cleaning girl who knows too much meets with an unfortunate accident in Narragansett Bay."
***
