Page 106 of Where Dark Hearts Devour
“You don’t have to. I’ll be okay,” I assure him.
“I know you will.” His reply is firm and filled with conviction. “I’ll still see you there. And Cristiano ...”
“Yeah?”
“Tell me you still carry a gun.”
“I’m a Di Santo,” I say. “I never leave the house without one.”
I hang up and throw the phone onto the passenger seat. Then, with zero regard for oncoming traffic, I spin the car into the opposite lane and put my foot to the floor.
As I drive, a series of recent images flashes across my eyes like a seventies home movie: Trilby’s fearful face, the house cleared of people for the first time in my living memory, suspicion tunneled through a sideways glance at last night’s dinner.
My chest tightens.
Savero wanted to kill me when we were just kids. Does a desire like that ever go away?
The decision I made to move to Vegas probably saved my life. I’d never been a threat to him ... until I stuck around after Father died.
Until now.
Another image spins into view and makes my pulse thunder. The doll’s eyes. What was it that Ranch said?
“One of the most dangerous plants in North America.”
“Deadly.”
I hit a red light, so instead of burning through it, I reach for my phone and search for the plant. Photos depicting its white irises with black pupils on blood-red stalks pepper the screen. It’s also known as white baneberry, or so Wikipedia informs me.
Then, as my eyes scan the words, blood pumps loudly in my ears.
“Poisonous.”
“Cardiogenic.”
“Ingestion of the berries can lead to cardiac arrest and death.”
It can’t be.I swallow around a sharp lump in my throat.He wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t poison his own father. Poison is a fool’s folly. He couldn’t be soweak.
Father’s death wasn’t suspicious, the rational part of my brain asserts.But he died of heart failure despite never having had heart issues before, another part argues.
My mind darts back to the living room, where Savero found Father lying on the sofa, dead. That morning, the staff were dismissed, and Sav spent the day and night at the private mortuary, holding vigil by Father’s bedside. When I stopped by the house to drop off my things, I saw nothing suspicious. Nothing to suggest Savero had a hand in our father’s death. I don’t even remember seeing the eerie plant. Everythingappeared to be normal—from the drapes fluttering by the window to the half-empty glass of water on the table.
Water.
Sav has never in my life offered me a glass of water. The only times he’s offered me a drink, it’s been beer or whiskey.
This afternoon he passed me a glass that had already been poured, then he poured his own and Trilby’s from a pitcher. I drank it all. And I feel fine.
Unless . . .
I placed my glass next to Trilby’s so I could touch her one last time. It was on her right. The glass I drank from was on her left.
I drank hers, not mine.
Not the one meant for me.
