CHAPTER 3
Ethan carried the suspicious glass of milk down the grand mahogany staircase, placing it carefully inside a sealed container on the kitchen island. He turned back to find Elena hovering by the entrance, her arms tightly crossed over her silk pajamas as she watched his every move.
"You're making a catastrophic mistake that will ruin our marriage, Ethan, and for what? Because a confused, injured child had a nightmare?" Elena hissed, stepping into the bright kitchen light with an air of wounded arrogance. Ethan ignored her completely, pulling his smartphone from his black trousers to dial a private toxicology lab he used for corporate product safety.
"I want a comprehensive chemical assay run on the contents of this sealed container within the next two hours, regardless of the cost," Ethan instructed the lab director with absolute authority. Elena let out a sharp, breathless scoff, though a bead of cold sweat visibly trickled down the side of her powdered cheek.
"Go ahead and humiliate yourself, but when the test comes back clean, you'll be begging me for forgiveness on your knees," Elena spat out, turning on her heel with a dramatic swirl of silk. Ethan remained rooted to the spot, his breathing steady and controlled as he watched her retreat back toward the upper-level bedrooms.
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He knew he couldn't rely on intuition alone anymore; he needed hard, undeniable scientific proof to tear away the protective legal shield Elena had built around herself. He walked over to the kitchen wall-mounted tablet, pulling up the live high-definition security feeds that monitored every hallway and room in the house.
His eyes scanned the timeline playback from earlier that evening, freezing when he spotted something terrifying that his regular oversight had previously missed. On the muted screen, Elena could be seen standing by the kitchen counter, extracting a small, unlabeled vial from her designer handbag and pouring its contents into Lily's milk.
