2: 2
Ned watched me for a long time, waiting for me to keel over, and when I didn't, something wary flickered in his eyes.
But minute after minute passed and nothing happened to me, so in the end he left with his mother to take Bianca to pick up her medicine.
The second the door shut, I locked it behind them.
I didn't cry. I didn't fall apart.
Confronting him now would only tip him off.
I took out my phone and called my best friend, Amber Delgado.
"Amber, bring the most reliable person at your firm and get to my place right now."
"What's wrong?"
I looked at the glass on the table, still marked with a ring of water.
"Someone's trying to kill me."
When Amber arrived with her colleague, I carefully sealed the glass into an evidence bag and handed it to her.
"Send this to the most reputable forensic testing center for a toxicology screen. Rush it. I need to know exactly what was put in there."
Amber took one look at how pale I was and drew in a sharp breath. "Ned did this?"
"Yes."
I opened my laptop, logged into the company's internal system, and pulled up every one of Ned's financial approval records.
"Amber, one more thing. Look into Ned's personal account activity for the past six months, and the company books too."
"Focus on any large sums flowing to unidentified medical facilities or overseas accounts."
Amber's expression turned grave. "You think he's embezzling?"
"Worse." I gave a cold laugh. "I think he's using my money to pay off an illegal clinic. He's planning to cut out my kidney."
The toxicology results came back that same night.
Amber's hands were shaking when she sent me the digital copy.
"They found a high concentration of 'midazolam' in the residue at the bottom of the glass. That's a heavy anesthetic. A normal person would be in a deep coma ten minutes after drinking it."
"Has Ned lost his mind?!"
I stared at the chemical name on the report.
Whatever was left of the bond between us as husband and wife died right there, completely.
I saved the report to an encrypted cloud drive.
"He hasn't lost his mind. He just thinks I'm stupid."
Early the next morning, Ned came home and handed me a stack of documents.
"Babe, I feel terrible. I've paid so little attention to your health all these years."
"I got the hospital to draw up this 'appointment form for a physical.' Just sign it, and we can go in today through the priority channel for a full checkup."
I took the papers, and a row of red pop-ups suddenly drifted across my vision.
【Don't sign it! Whatever you do, don't sign! There's a forged 'voluntary organ donation consent form' slipped in between the pages!】
【Once you sign, the moment they get you into that illegal clinic, they can use this agreement to dodge all legal responsibility and claim you donated your kidney willingly!】
【Turn to the third page and check the watermark! That's the official seal of 'Kentic Medical'!】
My fingertips tightened. I flipped straight to the third page, pinched the edge of the paper, and held it up to the light. Sure enough, I could faintly make out the illegal clinic's hidden watermark seal.
I let out a cold laugh. "I won't sign. I just had a checkup recently."
Ned's face changed in an instant. Panic flashed in his eyes for a second, then his voice shot up.
"Laurel Swanson! What is that supposed to mean? I stayed up all night finding a specialist, and now you brush it off with 'I just had one'? Have you been guarding yourself against me this whole time?!"
Then his eyes went red and he put on a look of utter disappointment.
"Babe, Bianca is hanging by a thread. I only wanted to have your hepatitis B checked, and see if there was any way to save her while we were at it..."
"After all these years of marriage, I'm just now finding out how selfish you are. I misjudged you completely!"
Beside him, his mother jumped up and started screaming too.
"Exactly! You'd think a checkup was going to cost you your life! Bianca is in the hospital waiting to die, and here you are making excuse after excuse. How can your heart be so poisonous?"
The same old guilt trip.
"Say whatever you want." I dropped the words coldly. "I won't sign a single stroke of my name."
