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

Chapter 9: The Truth in the Dawn

She locked Elias’s door behind her before sunrise and laid out everything — the chart, the cat, Sister Monica’s confirmation, the antidote on the bedspread between them. He listened without a word, his hand rising slowly to the new hair growing at the back of his skull, then to his own hands, steady for the first time in months.

“I don’t have a terminal illness,” he said. “I’ve been poisoned.”

The transformation that followed was one Celeste would never forget. The gaunt, dying man vanished. His spine straightened, his jaw hardened, and Elias Cade — mafia boss — woke from nine months of engineered hibernation with a stillness far more frightening than rage.

“Call my grandmother. Now.”

Dorothy arrived within minutes and listened to the whole account a second time, tears running silently down a face Celeste had never once seen crack. Then she wiped them away, folded the handkerchief into her pocket, and became someone else entirely — the woman who had once ruled this family before her grandson ever did. “We will deal with this the Cade way.”

They built a plan with surgical precision. Elias would keep performing illness — every groan, every tremor — for everyone except Dorothy and Celeste. Celeste would dose him with antidote three times a day, hidden in tea only she prepared. Oscar would keep bringing poisoned food, which Elias would pretend to eat and secretly dispose of. Dorothy would bring in five trusted guards disguised as new staff, with one job only: follow Oscar until he led them to whoever was really pulling the strings.