Reed crept down the hallway, his heart hammering against his ribs. He expected silence. Instead, he heard something that made his blood run cold: laughter.
He rounded the corner and stopped dead in the open archway of the sunlit living room.
Marina was on the floor. But she wasn’t in her usual nanny attire. She was wearing a blue, short-sleeved uniform and thick, yellow rubber cleaning gloves. Ellis was riding on her back, giggling wildly, while Rowan sat in front of her. Marina laughed, waving a beige plush toy.
Then, she stopped. She raised a thick, yellow-gloved hand, gently cupping Rowan’s cheek.
“I love you with all my heart,” she said in a slow, impossibly warm voice.
Reed’s vision tunneled. That uniform. Those yellow gloves. That exact phrase. They were the absolute last things his late wife had worn and said before she mysteriously collapsed in this very room. Reed had locked those items in a basement safe.
“What is happening?!” Reed roared, his pristine control shattering.
His heavy leather briefcase slipped from his grip. *THUD.*
Marina and the twins froze instantly. The boys turned their heads, staring blankly. Marina’s joyful expression vanished into wide-eyed shock.
But as Reed stepped forward, trembling with rage, Marina didn’t cower. Her panicked expression abruptly hardened. Slowly, she set the babies aside, unzipped the back of the beige plush toy, and pulled out a tiny, half-empty glass vial.
“Mildred told you I was acting suspiciously, didn’t she?” Marina asked, her voice dropping its warm facade, replaced by razor-sharp authority.
She peeled off the thick yellow gloves, revealing a silver detective’s badge clipped to her waistband.
“I wore the gloves to avoid contaminating the evidence, Mr. Halbrook,” she said grimly. “Your boys aren’t ‘naturally content.’ They’re being systematically sedated. And your trusted housekeeper is the one doing it.”