Chapter 6 - The Poisoned Meal
The phone slipped from Ren's trembling hand and shattered against the hard tile floor.
Silas had orchestrated the entire debt scheme to trap her inside the deadly Cole family rivalry.
She needed to find Damon immediately and tell him that his psychotic stepbrother had compromised their safety.
Before she could leave the kitchen, a temporary catering assistant walked through the swinging doors.
The temp had been hired by Ruth to help prepare the massive dinner for Damon's important board meeting that night.
"I finished garnishing the soup courses, Chef," the young man said with a strange, nervous smile.
Ren walked over to the bowls of delicate butternut squash velouté lined up on the silver tray.
Something about the temp's overly eager demeanor made her highly suspicious.
She noticed a faint, unnatural blue powder dusting the edge of the first porcelain bowl.
It was a highly toxic, lethal derivative of nightshade, nearly invisible to the untrained eye.
"Who hired you?" Ren demanded, grabbing a heavy cast-iron skillet from the stove.
The temp dropped his polite facade, pulling a silenced pistol from beneath his white apron.
"Silas sends his absolute best regards," the assassin sneered, raising the deadly weapon.
Just as he pulled the trigger, Damon burst through the kitchen doors and tackled the shooter violently to the ground.
The suppressed bullet shattered a glass cabinet, raining sharp debris all over the kitchen floor.
Damon delivered a brutal punch to the assassin's jaw, knocking him completely unconscious.
"Are you hurt?" Damon yelled, rushing over to pull Ren into a desperate embrace.
"He poisoned the soup, Damon, Silas is actively trying to kill everyone in this house tonight," she cried.
Suddenly, all the lights in Windmir House flickered once and went completely black.
The heavy steel security shutters slammed down over the windows with a deafening crash, sealing them inside.
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"We are trapped," Damon whispered, pulling a tactical handgun from his waistband.
"And Silas just overrode the entire security grid from the outside."
