SHE WAS HIRED TO COMFORT A DYING MAFIA BOSS—THEN A STRAY CAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

Chapter 8: The Cat

The next morning she wrapped Elias’s leftover breakfast in cloth and fed it to the stray cat that wandered the garden. By afternoon, the cat lay curled beneath the oak tree, trembling, vomiting, its legs jerking in spasms — Elias’s exact symptoms, scaled down into a smaller body.

That night, locked in her bathroom, she called Sister Monica at St. Catherine’s and laid it all out — the chart, the pattern, the cat. Sister Monica’s silence stretched long enough to be its own answer. “Bring me a sample. If this is what I think it is, you are living under the same roof as a murderer, Celeste.”

At one in the morning, Celeste drove the stolen sample through the sleeping city. Sister Monica worked for nearly an hour before lifting her head with eyes full of horror. “Black herb. A chronic poison — small doses, building for months. Vomiting, tremors, hair loss, fainting, wasting. Left unchecked, he dies within weeks. And no doctor will ever find the cause, because the symptoms mimic a dozen other diseases.” She pressed a bundle of dried antidote into Celeste’s hand. “Who is doing this?”

“I don’t know who’s behind it yet,” Celeste said. “But I know who’s putting it in the food.”