He had just changed his will. If Maya lived to eighteen, she would get everything. If something happened to her before then, it would all go to Victoria.
He had brought a monster into his daughter’s life.
“Let’s go home,” Jerry said, turning his back on her.
He picked up Maya, holding her tight against his chest.
“Jerry, wait. This is crazy,” Victoria pleaded, tripping over her heels as she tried to keep up. “You’re just stressed. You’re letting a street kid mess with your head.”
“I said we’re going home,” Jerry roared.
He turned back to the boy.
“What’s your name?”
“Jonah,” the boy replied.
Jerry pulled out a gold-embossed business card and pressed it into Jonah’s hand.
“Jonah, stay right here. I’m sending a car for you in one hour. If you stay, I will change your life. If you run, I will find you.”
Jonah just nodded.
The drive back to Banana Island was silent and suffocating. Maya fell asleep on her father’s chest, having no idea that her world had just exploded. Victoria sat on the other side of the SUV, staring out the window, her jaw tight and her hands still shaking in her lap.
When they pulled through the gates of the mansion, Jerry knew he had to be careful. Victoria was smart. If he moved too fast, she would get rid of the evidence.
“Take Maya to her room,” Jerry told the nanny the second they walked into the marble foyer. “And nobody feeds her. Not even a drop of water. You hear me?”
The nanny nodded, terrified by the look on Jerry’s face.
Victoria tried to regain her footing.
“Jerry, this is ridiculous. I’m going to make Maya’s evening soup. She needs her strength.”
“Stay away from the kitchen, Victoria,” Jerry said, his voice cold as ice. “Go to the guest room. Now.”
“Now you’re locking me up because of a beggar?” she screamed.
“I’m protecting my daughter,” Jerry replied, stepping right into her space. “If you try to leave that room, my guards will stop you.”
He did not wait for her to answer. He marched into the kitchen, grabbed the pink flask Victoria used for Maya’s meals, and unscrewed the top.
It smelled like normal chicken broth.
With shaking hands, he poured a sample into a glass jar. He pulled out his phone and dialed a private number.
“Dr. Mike,” Jerry said. “I have a sample. I need a full toxin screen immediately. I don’t care what it costs. It’s coming to you right now.”
He hung up and looked out the kitchen window, the same one Jonah had looked through.
He thought of that boy standing in the dark, watching his daughter being poisoned by the woman who was supposed to be her mother.
The war had started, and Chief Jeremiah Williams was ready to burn everything down to save his child.
The silence in the Banana Island mansion was no longer a symbol of peace. It was the suffocating quiet of a ticking time bomb.
Chief Jeremiah Williams paced the length of his mahogany-paneled study, the shadows of the evening creeping across the walls. He had immediately summoned his most trusted staff. Mrs. Roa, the stern, fiercely loyal head housekeeper who had been with his family since Maya was born, was stationed directly outside the little girl’s bedroom door. Her instructions were absolute: no one, especially not Madam Victoria, was to cross that threshold.
Downstairs, the atmosphere was thick with unspoken tension.
Jerry’s encrypted phone buzzed, vibrating violently against the glass of his mahogany desk.
It was Barrister Johnson, his ruthless estate lawyer and oldest confidant.
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