Chapter 2 - The Quarantined Room
Elena moved purely on clinical instinct. Bypassing the security guard whose arm reached out to seize her collar, she drove her elbow hard into his diaphragm, dropping him back a half-step. Before the second guard could react, Ethan's loyal valet, old Thomas, shoved an ornate wooden serving cart directly into the man’s shins with a furious rattle of silverware.
""Get him upstairs, Miss Elena! Move!"" Thomas barked, his aged voice trembling with righteous fury.
Elena hauled Ethan's deadweight over her shoulders. Adrenaline flooded her bloodstream, converting terror into raw mechanical strength. Ethan was tall, but his months of wasting atrophy had left him dangerously light. Dragging his paralyzed lower half forward, she hoisted him into the service elevator tucked behind the library doors and slammed the manual grate shut just as Evelyn’s pointed heels clattered outside.
""Thomas will pay for this, Elena!"" Evelyn’s voice shrilled through the metal lattice. ""You walk out of this estate in handcuffs tonight!""
Elena punched the button for the third floor, watching Evelyn’s twisted face vanish below the descending concrete slab. Inside the dim elevator cab, Ethan slumped against the corner, his breathing shallow and rapid. Elena dropped beside him, her fingers pressing into his carotid artery.
His pulse was galloping, hammering above 160 beats per minute.
""Look at me, Ethan. Focus,"" she demanded, gently tapping his pale cheeks. ""What did they give you before I arrived?""
Ethan’s lips were tinted with a faint cyanotic blue. ""The tea... she insisted on pouring it herself. Said it was... peppermint from the greenhouse."" He shuddered violently, a cold sweat drenching his shirt. ""My hands... Elena, they’re numb. My chest feels like lead.""
""It's a neurotoxin. She didn't want the syringe to treat you—she wanted to cover up what was already in your bloodstream.""
Elena kicked open the steel door as the lift groaned to a stop on the private medical wing. She hauled Ethan into his bedroom suite, locking the heavy mahogany double doors and sliding the iron security latch—a leftover precaution from Ethan's paranoid late father.
She dragged Ethan onto the bed, immediately tearing open the medical crash kit she had smuggled in weeks earlier. She tore open an ampoule of atropine and prepped an intramuscular injection.
""This is going to burn,"" she warned softly.
Ethan ground his teeth, letting out a stifled cry as the needle sank into his thigh. For two agonizing minutes, the only sound was the heavy thudding of Elena’s heart and the wind howling against the tall leaded glass windows.
Slowly, the erratic shuddering in Ethan’s limbs subsided. His breathing deepened, ragged but steadying. His eyes opened, clarity bleeding back through the haze of poison. He stared at the girl kneeling beside him, her brown hair wild, her hands stained with his sweat.
""Why are you doing this?"" Ethan whispered, his voice cracked with exhaustion. ""Everyone in this house was paid off. Evelyn owns the lawyers, the doctors, the board. Why haven't you run?""
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Elena secured a saline drip into the back of his hand, her expression hard as flint. ""Because my sister died three years ago under the care of the same private clinic that Evelyn’s father funds. They called it 'unforeseen cardiac failure.' I know the signature of that blue compound, Ethan. She didn't just target you to steal this estate. She practiced on others first.""
Ethan’s breath hitched. Before he could speak, the heavy brass door handle rattled violently, followed by the muffled screech of an electric saw grinding into the deadbolt.
