Chapter 3 - The Drugged Groom
I grabbed Julian’s shoulder, shaking him forcefully as panic began to tighten its grip on my chest.
"Julian! Wake up! Look at me!" I shouted, pulling his heavy frame upright against the padded headboard.
His head rolled back loosely, his eyes half-open, glassy, and completely unaligned as he mumbled incoherent nonsense.
"Mom... let me sleep... 'm so tired..." Julian slurred, his tongue heavy and thick in his mouth.
My stomach plummeted into a cold abyss as the horrifying reality of the situation crashed over me.
Victoria hadn't just kicked me out of my own honeymoon suite on my wedding night using a fake drunken act.
She had drugged her own son with a massive dose of liquid sedatives to keep him completely incapacitated in that bed beside her.
"What did you put in his drink last night, Victoria?!" I screamed, turning on her with my fists clenched at my sides.
"I gave my son a mild sedative to help him rest after he nearly had a panic attack about marrying you!" Victoria shot back, her voice ringing with icy arrogance.
"Julian was crying in my arms before the reception even ended, Elena!"
"He realized he was making the biggest mistake of his life by tying himself to a middle-class nobody from Ohio!"
"You forged your way into our family's trust circle, but you will never see a single dime of the Vance estate!"
I pulled out my smartphone, my hands shaking as I unlocked the screen to dial emergency services.
"I'm calling an ambulance and the police," I declared, my thumb hovering over the dial pad.
Victoria didn't even flinch; instead, she reached into her designer leather tote bag on the vanity and pulled out a stamped legal envelope.
May you like
"Go ahead, call them, sweetie," Victoria taunted, tossing the envelope onto the blood-stained sheet.
"And while you wait for the sirens, read the prenuptial agreement addendum Julian signed twenty minutes before he walked down the aisle."
