Chapter 6 - The Poisoned Well
By Wednesday afternoon, the news of Damian’s intervention had rippled through every dark corridor of the Costa organization.
It was no longer a secret. The boss had openly stripped his fiancée of her authority over the new maid. He had cancelled her luxury purchases, redirected her security detail, and spent forty minutes in his private conservatory talking quietly with Harper while she cleaned the glass panels.
To the syndicate, Harper was no longer just furniture. She was a catalyst—a wedge driven deep into the fragile foundation of Damian Costa’s political marriage.
And Claudia knew it.
At 4:00 p.m., while Damian was away in Manhattan negotiating the final terms of the harbor acquisition, Claudia sat in her private sitting room on the second floor.
Across from her sat a man named Marco—a thin, reedy individual with greasy hair, yellow teeth, and a dark leather jacket that smelled of stale tobacco and cheap cologne. Marco was Damian’s third-tier security operative, a man whose low salary and high gambling debts made him extremely receptive to private cash offers.
"She’s a nobody, Miss Claudia," Marco whispered, leaning forward over the glass tea table, his eyes darting nervously toward the hallway. "A former nursing drop-out with seventy grand in medical bills. She’s got no family, no backing, no connections in the city."
Claudia stared out the window at the frozen river, her fingers wringing a silk handkerchief so tight her knuckles were blue.
"Damian looked at her," Claudia hissed, her voice cracking with suppressed rage. "He looked at her the way he used to look at his empire when he was building it. He respects her, Marco. He doesn't respect me. He treats me like an expensive ornament, but he looks at that... that servant as if she were made of gold!"
"What do you want me to do, Miss Claudia?" Marco asked, his eyes gleaming with greedy anticipation. "I can make her vanish. A slip on the icy cliff path. A tragic accident during the night shift. It happens."
"No," Claudia spat, turning her head sharply. "If she dies in an accident, Damian will investigate. He’ll tear this house apart until he finds the string, and if that string leads to me, he will destroy my father’s family before the week is out."
Claudia stood up, walking toward a small antique mahogany cabinet in the corner of the room. She unlocked it with a tiny brass key hanging from her wrist, pulled out a small, dark amber glass bottle with no label, and set it on the table before Marco.
"What's that?" Marco asked, staring at the bottle.
"Potassium cyanide compound," Claudia whispered, her eyes flashing with a terrifying, unhinged light. "Extracted from almond pits. A microscopic dose causes immediate respiratory arrest, mimicking a massive, sudden cardiac event. In a woman under severe physical stress with a history of exhaustion... no coroner will perform a full toxicology sweep unless asked."
Marco swallowed hard, his yellow teeth biting his lower lip. "Miss Claudia... poisoning a member of the house staff while the boss is away... if Mr. Costa finds out—"
"Mr. Costa won't find out," Claudia interrupted, pulling a thick envelope packed with hundred-dollar bills from her robe pocket and slapping it down beside the bottle. "Ten thousand dollars now. Ten thousand more when she is in the mortuary bag. You put three drops in her afternoon tea pitcher in the service pantry. She drinks it every day at five o'clock before her evening rounds."
Marco stared at the stack of cash. His gambling debts were due on Friday; two men from Queens had already promised to break his knees if he didn't pay.
May you like
He reached out, his dirty fingers wrapping around the amber bottle and the envelope.
"Five o'clock," Marco grunted. "Consider it done."
