Chapter 976:

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Cailin leaned into the embrace, but her body was stiff, unyielding. Her eyes were wide and vacant, staring at the blank wall opposite her bed. The last, flickering ember of warmth inside her had been extinguished. It was one thing for him to be cold, to be cruel for the sake of his family. But this, to be with the daughter of the woman who had murdered her mother, while she herself lay dying, it was a level of betrayal she hadn’t known was possible.

She gently pushed Mia away. She picked up a tissue from the bedside table and dabbed at a tiny bead of blood that had appeared at the corner of her mouth. Her movements were numb, mechanical.

“Don’t,” she said, her voice flat and cold as stone. “Don’t ever say his name in this room again.”

Mia nodded, tears streaming down her face. She backed away, giving Cailin space, her heart breaking for her.

Cailin turned her head to look out the window at the bleak, grey sky. The light in her eyes was gone. All that remained was a pure, focused, all-consuming hatred for the Van Doren family.

ѕа𝘃𝗲 𝘺𝘰𝗎𝗋 𝘧а𝗏o𝗋𝘪𝘵e n𝘰v𝗲l𝘀 𝗈ո 𝗴𝘢𝗹𝗇о𝗏𝖾𝗹ѕ.𝖼𝗼𝘮

A soft, polite knock sounded at the door.

Dr. Finch pushed it open, a medical chart in his hand.

Dr. Alistair Finch entered, pushing a stainless-steel medical cart. The quiet whir of its wheels was unnervingly loud in the tense silence of the room.

Cailin pulled her gaze from the window. Her eyes, now devoid of any warmth, fixed on the doctor. The man with Van Doren blood.

Finch avoided her stare. He busied himself with the chart, his head bent low, but Cailin saw the fine sheen of sweat on his forehead.

He picked up a syringe, his movements practiced but tight. As he drew the clear analgesic from a vial, his fingers trembled. It was a micro-movement, a barely perceptible tremor, but in the hyper-focused stillness of the room, it was as loud as a scream.

Cailin saw it.

She didn’t extend her arm for the injection. Instead, she spoke, her voice dangerously low.

“Last night,” she said, her tone conversational but edged with steel, “my fingertips turned black. For about a minute. And there was a pain in my chest, like a fist clenching around my heart.”

She described the specific, esoteric symptoms with chilling accuracy.

Finch froze. His thumb, resting on the plunger of the syringe, twitched. A single drop of the clear liquid beaded at the tip of the needle. His eyes widened in a fleeting, unguarded moment of panic.

Cailin’s gaze was like a scalpel. She leaned forward slightly, the movement costing her a monumental effort.

She didn’t name the poison. She didn’t have to. She used a cold, calculated guess designed to sound like an accusation steeped in dark certainty.

“A poison fit for a king, I’d imagine,” she mused, her voice a soft, venomous whisper. “Something crafted to erase a person so quietly that the world would call it fate. The kind of weapon only a family like yours would keep in its arsenal.”

The implication hit Alistair Finch like a physical blow. It was too close, terrifyingly, impossibly close to the truth.

His hand jerked violently. The syringe slipped from his grasp, clattering onto the stainless-steel tray with a sharp, metallic shriek.

He fumbled for it, his face ashen, his professional composure utterly shattered.

Cailin’s heart sank, a cold, heavy stone of certainty. His reaction was a confession.

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