Either she went back to sleep, or she is still pouting about this morning. Maybe both.
I shove my phone in my pocket and head upstairs to my office. I’m not even halfway up the stairs when I hear it. A high-pitched scream coming from the kitchen. Taking two steps at a time, I run up the stairs and down the long hallway leading to the kitchen.
When I enter, I find Lorelei, my cook, on the ground. Her lifeless body still, and her eyes open but completely blank. Marie–the new maid is standing over her sobbing, her hand clutched to her chest.
“I-is sh-she…” She stutters.
“Yes, she is dead.” I don’t have to check her pulse to know she is gone. The bluish color of her skin and the vacancy in her eyes says it all. “What the hell happened?” I ask as I take out the phone to text Markus.
Me: Get the fuck to the kitchen. Now.
“I-I don’t know. She was fine when I left to go to the store. I just got back and found her.”
Only now do I notice the groceries spilled out on the floor. The maid must have dropped the bags when she came in.
Markus comes up behind me a moment later. “What the fuck?”
“Maid said she left for a bit, came back, and found her,” I explain.
“What was she doing when you left?” Markus implores.
“Nothing.” The maid shrugs. “Just eating the leftovers from breakfast.” Hiccupping, she points to the nook in the corner of the kitchen.
My gaze falls onto the plate that holds leftover fruit. A half-cut red apple and green papaya peel. Nothing that explains what the fuck happened here.
I turn my attention back to the dead body on the kitchen floor—an awful feeling gnawing in the back of my mind. Something is off, terribly fucking off.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I let the puzzle pieces fall into place. I connect the dots in my mind. Elena, papaya… death.
“Fuck!” I yell before running out of the room.
“What…” I hear Markus yelling after me, but I’m already down the hallway.
My heart is hammering against my ribcage, and my lungs refuse to fill with air as I try to get the door open. I’m probably wrong about this, and completely overreacting. Elena’s just sleeping, there can’t be a connection between Lorelei’s death, and the fucking fruit Elena ate too.
Those are all the thoughts running through my mind as I rush up the stairs and into the room and to her side.
“Elena, get up.” I tap her shoulder, but she doesn’t react. A feeling similar to the one I had the night my mother died threatens to take me under, and I sink a little deeper inside my mind. If I go back to that place, there will be no coming back.
Grabbing her hip, I flip her over, and that’s when I know… my suspicion was right. Shit!
Her face is pale, ghostly white with an almost green tint to it. Sweat pearls on her forehead as I move her limp body around. The only reason I’m not completely losing it right now is the fact that I know she is alive by the raspy shallow breaths she is taking.
Turning her onto her side, she groans in pain before she starts gagging and dry heaving, so I pick her up and cradle her to my chest.
Markus bursts into the room at the same time. “What the fuck?”
“Call the doctor,” I growl, heading toward the bath.
I only make it halfway before she starts throwing up, and I turn her in my arms, so she doesn’t choke. Her eyes briefly open, but she is so out of it, I don’t think she knows what’s going on. I have to bend her over the toilet as she continues to vomit. Her whole body convulsing as she does. At least she is getting it out, her body fighting whatever it was that poisoned her.
Thinking of it has a burning rage rising inside of me. Who the fuck dared try to hurt what’s mine? I need to figure out who did this, but right now, I need to concentrate on her more.
When the first wave of vomiting has passed, her eyes open again, but they are still unfocused. Her dark hair is sticking against her sweaty forehead, and spit is running down the corner of her mouth. Looking down her body, I see puke is sticking to her clothes and skin.
I need to clean her up.
Carefully, I pick her up and lay her into the garden bathtub, where I start stripping her out of her soiled clothes. Her watery eyes find mine when I pull her bra off, and for a moment, I think she comes to. Her gaze falls onto my chest and mumbled something that sounds like an apology. When I look down to where she is looking, I realize that she puked on me as well.
“It’s fine, I’ve had worse on me.”
Once she is in nothing but her panties, I strip out of my shirt, throwing everything into a pile. Turning on the water, I start washing her with a soapy washcloth.
She goes in and out of consciousness while I clean her up, and I silently curse the doctor for not being here yet.
As I rinse her off, I hear the doctor’s voice coming from the hall. Markus is there too. I can’t make out everything they are saying, but it sounds like he is already filling him in on everything we know.
Grabbing a towel, I wrap it around her small body and pick her back up. She makes a small sound of distress but then buries her face in the crook of my neck.
I put her down on the bed, making sure the towel covers her pussy and tits while two other men are in the room.
“Markus, find who did this. It had to be the papaya I got for her. Someone was trying to kill her. Someone who knew it was her favorite.” Of course, there is only one person in my mind right now, but why would her own father want her dead?
“On it.” Markus disappears from the room, and I turn back to the doctor, who has already started examining her.
“How much did she throw up?”
“A lot.”
“She might not need her stomach pumped, but I’ll still give her something to make her vomit more. I’m also going to give her some IV fluids. That’s really the only thing I can do right now. I have to run some blood tests to know more.”
“Do that then.”
Crossing my arms in front of my chest, I watch him work meticulously on Elena. He sets up a makeshift IV before poking her with a needle. He draws some blood and hooks a bag of fluid up to her arm, and the fact that she doesn’t flinch is cause for concern. When he is all done, he hands me two pill bottles with instructions.
“Call me if anything changes. She might throw up again, which will be good. I’ll be back tomorrow to check on her, hopefully with the result from the blood work.”
I nod, even though all I want to do is yell at him to get me the result fucking now. The thing is, doc, doesn’t take shit from anyone, even from me. He’s been working for the family longer than I’ve been alive. Not only is he the best at what he does, I know he is doing this as fast as he can.
He disappears from the room, leaving Elena and me alone. She makes a small whimper sound, but her eyes remain closed. For a long time, I just stand there looking at her, unsure of what to do.
For the first time in a very long time, I feel… powerless. The feeling is foreign to me. I’m the head of this family, what I say goes, I’m always in control, always… but I can’t control this. I can’t take her pain away, I can’t make the blood result get here faster, and I can’t find out who did this and stay at her side at the same time.
Elena rolls onto her side and almost out of the bed. I move quickly, grabbing her at the last minute, and roll her back over. Her small hands reach for me, her slender fingers wrapping around my wrist to pull me closer.