Chapter 5 - The Cursed Milk
The estate went into complete quarantine. Armed guards lined every hallway, and security protocols were elevated to wartime status.
Yet, despite the locked doors, a insidious rumor began to circulate among the older household staff and lower-level family associates. Whispers echoed through the kitchen and the basement corridors: The wet nurse is cursed. Her grief poisoned her milk. She lost her own child, and now her dark luck is taking the Moretti heirs.
Emma heard the whispers when she walked down to the kitchen to boil fresh water for the nursery. The servants looked away, crossing themselves as she passed.
When she returned to the nursery, she found Gabriel sitting by the window, his hand resting on a heavy leather folder.
"They are saying my milk is cursed, aren't they?" Emma asked quietly, setting the kettle down.
Gabriel looked up, his jaw tight. "Ignore the fools in the kitchen. They repeat whatever nonsense they are fed."
"Someone is feeding it to them deliberately, Gabriel," Emma said, stepping closer to his chair. "They want you to send me away. They failed to kill Anthony with the poison bottle, so now they are trying to force you to fire me so the babies will starve."
Gabriel stood up, walking over to the incubators where the twins were sleeping peacefully after Emma had nursed them.
"I had the liquid from the water bottle analyzed by a trusted lab in the city," Gabriel said, his voice dropping low. "It was oleander glycoside. A lethal dose for an adult, fatal in seconds for an infant."
"Who had access to the nursery floor after midnight?" Emma asked.
"Only four people," Gabriel replied. "Mateo, Marcus, Harrison, and the night nurse, Clara. All four swear they saw nothing on the security cameras."
Emma thought back to the night Isabella died at St. Catherine’s Hospital. She remembered her own tragic labor at one end of the floor, and the sudden, chaotic emergency at the other end when Isabella had hemorrhaged.
"Gabriel," Emma asked softly, "what exactly caused Isabella’s death?"
Gabriel’s eyes darkened with painful memory. "Sudden uterine atony and DIC—disseminated intravascular coagulation. The doctors said her body simply failed after the twin delivery."
"Who was her chief obstetric physician during the last three months of her pregnancy?"
"Dr. Harrison," Gabriel answered, his brow furrowing. "He was recommended by Uncle Marcus five years ago. He handled all our family medical matters."
Emma felt a cold shudder run down her spine. Her mind, trained in precise detail through her craft work, connected two seemingly unrelated facts.
"Before my daughter Grace died," Emma whispered, "I took an herbal nursing prep course at the hospital. They warned us never to ingest certain natural blood thinners—like sweet clover or concentrated willow bark—because they destroy blood clotting in pregnant women while leaving almost no trace in a standard post-mortem panel."
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Gabriel turned his entire body toward her, his dark eyes flaring with sudden, terrifying realization. "What are you saying, Emma?"
"I'm saying Isabella didn't die from natural complications," Emma said, her voice trembling with the weight of the truth. "She was bled to death from the inside out. And the same person who killed her just tried to put cardiac poison in Anthony’s nursery."
