Page 79 of Corruption

I frown. There’s no real difference between the fake autopsy and the real one. Why go through the trouble of hiding the real one and forging one? So the man was allergic to roses? Roses aren’t an uncommon flower. He could have smelled one walking into dinner.

That still doesn’t make sense though. The records don’t say he ever carried an EpiPen around or any kind of inhaler. The allergy seemed to be a mild inconvenience at best…

I don’t want to, but I decide to look up rose allergies. Look up if there was any way a whiff of a rose could have killed him when he’d never had such an allergic reaction before…

“A highly concentrated dose…” I mutter to myself after I’m done reading.

Now something like that… that would have to be deliberate. Deliberate and terribly clever. It almost makes me wish my mom had an allergy, so I could have done something like this to her. The problem is that though it makes it clear that the death was deliberate, it doesn’t narrow down who it was. Any of Isaak Sr.’s people would have known he was allergic to roses and done it. So it had to be someone with something to gain.

Vaughn is the most obvious answer, but looking at the report on his father’s medical history, why would he risk getting caught poisoning his father when he stood to gain the position ofpakhanin a few short years anyway? His father was sick. He was going to die in a few years anyway. Memory issues. Something on his brain… which reminds me of something Isaak confided in me.

He was sick and about to die and Dad was making a lot of the decisions anyway.

Suddenly, Vaughn’s motive isn’t so clear. Suddenly, he didn’t have as much to gain as I thought he did. Why risk doing something to get something that you’re going to get in a matter of time anyway? If I could figure that out with my mother when I wanted something, Vaughn could. I may hate the man, but he’s smart. He bides his time. Just like he’s been biding his time to get his hands on me after our marriage. If he would bid his time to wait to have me after our wedding, he’d wait for his father to die to becomepakhan. Or wait the short months it would have taken for him to lose his faculties enough that he’d have to take over anyway.

I was so certain Vaughn was the one who did this. But now, it makes no sense. And I have no other suspects. I don’t know the people who work in the family enough to know who had anything to gain from the man’s death. Who had a grudge. Who wanted revenge. Who Isaak Sr. might have offended or harmed so greatly that they were willing to risk everything to kill him. Someone who maybe had nothing to gain but lost everything because of him…

…he decided my entire family had to die.

How about the rose? Simple. Predictable even. But classic. A flower that suits everyone… unless you’re allergic like Alik’s father used to be. Then it becomes a deadly poison…

When spring rolls around, we won’t be able to keep you out that damn garden. Playing with your plants and drying things out for your teas and perfumes.

Nadia.

Nadia is the one who said she was a bit of a horticulturist. Nadia is the one who spends her springs making teas and perfumes. It’s not a stretch to believe that she could take a rose and make a harmless, potent, concentrated rose brew. Harmless, unless you were allergic to roses.

And then I remember the conversation I overheard Nadia having with Alik when I first got here.

“Before you get any ideas to do anything on your own, don’t forget exactly what you did that made my stupid brother turn on you in the first place and forced us to elope so my father wouldn’t kill you with the rest of your family.”

I’d forgotten about that piece of information that I overhead. I knew it had something to do with why I was here, but it never became relevant.

Until now.

Because Nadia’s not the only one who has a motive. So does Alik.

Alik, the man who eloped with her. Refused to carry out the sentence of death on her. Lost his inheritance to Vaughn. All for defying hispakhan. Defying, not Vaughn. But defying his father.

Suddenly, I feel sick. Sicker than I was already feeling.

I rush to the bathroom and lift the toilet. But though my stomach continues to roll, nothing comes up, and I can’t make anything come up. I start to sink to the floor until I hear from my room, “Pretty Girl? Are you okay? We saw you jump up from the bed and run into the bathroom. Do we need to…”

I rush back into the room upon realizing I left all the reports out in the open on my bed. But it’s too late. Nadia has already seen them.

“N-Nadia,” I stutter, an anxiety I haven’t felt since Alik and Nadia took me into their home overcoming me. I swallow. “Nadia. I…”

Nadia looks up and says, “It’s not what you think.”

“I don’t know—”

“I can tell when you’re lying, Pretty Girl.”

“Stop calling me that.”

Nadia sighs and repeats, “It’s not what you think.”

“So you and Alik didn’t kill your father-in-law?”

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