Chapter 5 - The Poisoned Soup
I watched the horrifying video three times, my stomach twisting into painful, suffocating knots.
The instant soup that Gertrude had strictly forced Skylar to eat was intentionally laced with a lethal, slow-acting poison.
They were not just trying to starve my daughter while they feasted on expensive crab legs and wine.
They were actively trying to slowly murder her to break my spirit entirely, or perhaps to cash in on a tragic insurance claim.
I grabbed Skylar and rushed her out of the law office, ignoring Marcus's frantic questions as we sprinted to his car.
I drove like a maniac to a private emergency clinic on the other side of town, demanding an immediate, comprehensive toxicology screening.
The agonizing wait in the sterile white clinic room felt like an absolute eternity of pure torture.
I held Skylar's small hand, kissing her knuckles and praying to God that we had escaped that house in time.
The senior physician finally returned with a grim, serious expression that made my heart stop beating.
He stated that they found incredibly dangerous levels of synthetic heavy metals accumulating in her bloodstream.
He assured me that because she did not finish the meal last night, the toxins had not reached a fatal concentration, and she would fully recover.
A fiery, uncontrollable mother's rage completely consumed every single rational thought left in my brain.
I pulled out my phone and accessed an old family location-tracking app that Brandon had foolishly forgotten to disable on Hailey's phone.
Her GPS signal was currently pinging from a commercial building in the wealthy district of the city.
I looked up the address and saw that it belonged to a massive, high-end life insurance agency.
I left Skylar safely at the clinic under the strict, armed protection of Marcus's private security contacts.
I drove to the insurance agency, my hands gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned pure white.
I walked into the lavish lobby and spotted Hailey sitting comfortably at a large mahogany desk, signing a stack of legal documents.
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I crept up quietly behind her and glanced over her shoulder at the paperwork resting on the table.
She was actively attempting to finalize a massive, two-million-dollar life insurance payout that explicitly listed my daughter as the deceased.
