Bad Juice
Chapter 02 - Bad Juice
Nobody moved after the child spoke.
Megan’s son sat blinking in her lap, his cheeks warm from sleep, his hair smashed against one side of his head. He clutched the yellow blanket with both hands and stared at the vial as if he had seen it before.
Dominic’s gaze sharpened.
“What did he say?”
Megan pulled the boy closer. “Ollie talks in fragments. He’s eighteen months old. He calls everything juice.”
Silas, the security chief, remained near the doorway with the vial held between two fingers inside the bag. He was a square-built man with a shaved head and the kind of expression that made most staff avoid meeting his eyes.
“This was wrapped in a towel,” Silas said. “Bathroom wastebasket outside the guest corridor.”
Dominic looked from the vial to Megan.
She saw it. She stiffened.
“No.”
“I haven’t accused you.”
“You looked.”
“I look at everything.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“Comforting is rarely useful.”
Megan lowered Ollie onto the edge of the chair and stood, one hand still on his shoulder. “I gave you only what Dr. Hale prescribed. Fever reducer, water, orange juice because you wouldn’t eat, and the antibiotic Nancy said you started yesterday.”
Dominic’s eyes moved to Nancy.
The older woman had gone unusually still.
“Nancy?”
She stepped into the room. “Dr. Hale left the antibiotic after dinner.”
“I never saw Dr. Hale after dinner.”
Nancy blinked. “She came through the rear entrance. I thought you were asleep.”
Dominic’s voice dropped. “Dr. Hale knows better than to enter this property without seeing me.”
Silas turned toward the hall. “I’ll call her.”
“Speaker.”
Silas dialed.
While it rang, Megan reached for the medicine bottles on the bedside table. Dominic watched the small movements of her fingers. Cap. Label. Bottle. Dose. The habits of someone who had spent too much life keeping another person alive on very little sleep.
Dr. Vivian Hale answered on the fourth ring, her voice rough with early morning.
“Dominic, if this is about ignoring my instructions again—”
“Did you come to my house last night?”
A pause.
“No.”
Nancy’s hand dropped from her throat.
Dominic’s face did not change.
“Did you prescribe an antibiotic?”
“No. You had a viral fever. I told Silas: fluids, rest, temperature monitoring. No antibiotics.”
Megan placed the medicine bottle on the table as if it had become poisonous.
Silas looked at Nancy.
Nancy whispered, “I signed for it.”
Dominic’s eyes stayed on the phone. “Who delivered it?”
“I didn’t send anything,” Dr. Hale said.
Another silence settled over the room, not the soft silence of morning but the hard kind that came before men reached for weapons and lawyers reached for phones.
Megan picked up Ollie.
“I should go.”
Dominic turned his head.
“No.”
Her chin lifted. “Mr. Mason, I found you half-conscious, gave you medicine I believed came from your doctor, and now there’s a mystery vial in your house. I’m the person people like your security chief are going to blame because I’m the cheapest one in the room.”
Silas said nothing.
That made it worse.
Megan continued, “I have a child. I cannot be dragged into whatever this is.”
Dominic studied her. “You think leaving makes you safer?”
“I think staying makes me convenient.”
It was the first thing she had said that made everyone look away except Dominic.
He respected fear when it came with accuracy.
“Silas,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Pull every camera from ten last night to six this morning.”
“Already started.”
“Find the courier.”
“Of course.”
“And nobody questions Megan unless I’m present.”
Silas’s mouth tightened. “Mr. Mason—”
“Did I ask for advice?”
“No.”
“Then don’t mistake your suspicion for my order.”
Megan stared at him.
Dominic looked back. “You’re taking today off. Paid.”
“I can’t accept—”
“You can.”
“You don’t decide what I can accept.”
“No. But I can decide what I pay.”
Ollie, fully awake now, pressed his thumb into his mouth and stared at Dominic with great seriousness.
Dominic stared back.
The boy removed his thumb.
“Juice bad.”
Megan’s face drained.
“Ollie,” she whispered. “Did you see the bottle?”
He pointed toward the nightstand.
“No. Door.”
Dominic’s body went perfectly still.
“What door?”
Ollie hid his face in Megan’s shoulder.
Megan rubbed his back. “Sweetheart, did someone give Mommy medicine?”
The boy shook his head.
“Did someone come into the room?”
Another shake.
“Did someone stand at the door?”
Ollie nodded.
Silas stepped forward. “Who?”
Megan shot him a look sharp enough to stop him.
“Not like that,” she said.
Then she crouched with Ollie in her arms until they were almost eye level.
“Was it Mr. Silas?”
Ollie shook his head.
“Was it Miss Nancy?”
He hesitated.
Nancy covered her mouth.
Then Ollie shook his head again.
Megan’s shoulders loosened slightly. “Was it someone you know?”
Ollie whispered against the blanket. “Ring.”
Dominic looked at Silas.
Silas looked back.
There were seventeen men in the house who wore rings. Family rings. College rings. Wedding rings. Mason rings.
“Which ring?” Dominic asked softly.
Ollie lifted his tiny hand and touched his smallest finger.
A pinky ring.
Dominic’s face changed.
Only one person in the household wore a heavy black onyx pinky ring engraved with an old Mason crest.
His uncle, Enzo Bellaro.
The man who had helped raise him after his father’s death.
The man who had stood beside Dominic through surgeries, funerals, indictments, betrayals, and every dirty compromise that had kept the Mason empire alive.
Dominic looked toward the open door.
“Where is Enzo?”
Nancy answered before Silas could.
“He left for Savannah before dawn.”
Dominic’s voice went very quiet.
“Did he?”
Silas’s phone buzzed.
He looked down.
Then looked up with a stiffness that told Dominic the morning had just become worse.
“What?” Dominic asked.
Silas swallowed. “Camera feed from the guest corridor was erased between 1:12 and 1:28 a.m.”
Megan closed her eyes.
Dominic’s fever had not left him. His body still ached. His head throbbed behind his eyes. But something colder than sickness moved through him now, steady and awake.
“Any backups?”
Silas hesitated too long.
Dominic’s eyes narrowed.
“Silas.”
“The server room log shows authorized access.”
“Whose code?”
Silas looked at Megan.
Then at Dominic.
“The access code used was Megan Foster’s.”
Megan went still with her child in her arms.
Dominic watched her face lose color, watched her process exactly what it meant to be named inside a house built to sacrifice the powerless first.
Megan took one step back.
“I don’t have a server code.”
“I know,” Dominic said.
May you like
But the damage had already entered the room.
Because somebody else knew too.
