Chapter 1
“The act is over. It’s time for you to pay the price.”
I was standing beside my wheelchair when I said it.
Barely.
My right leg trembled under me, the muscles still recovering from the spasm, but I stayed upright long enough to watch Lucia’s face drain of color. June stood a few feet away holding the medication bottle she had pulled from beneath the cabinet.
Nearly full.
That was the part none of them could explain.
Edwin stared at the bottle as if it had become more dangerous than Grant, who was still dragging himself out of the wrecked book display.
Lucia recovered first.
“You’ve been refusing those.”
I looked at her.
“No.”
“You throw pills away. You scream at staff. Half the house is afraid to come near you.”
June glanced toward me, then toward the bottle.
I saw the question in her face.
Edwin saw something else.
“Sir,” he said carefully, “that prescription arrived twelve days ago.”
I looked down.
Twelve days.
I had been told the bottle was nearly empty two nights earlier.
Lucia’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
Enough.
“How many doses should be gone?” I asked.
Edwin swallowed. “Most of them.”
June turned the bottle in her hand.
“It’s almost untouched.”
Silence.
Grant laughed from the floor.
“Maybe the cripple forgot.”
I looked at him.
He stopped laughing.
My leg buckled once, and June immediately moved toward me. I raised one hand.
“Wait.”
I wanted Lucia to see me lower myself back into the wheelchair by choice.
Not collapse.
Not fail.
Choose.
Once I was seated, I looked at Edwin.
“Who controls my medication cabinet?”
His face tightened.
“Mrs. Santoro has been supervising access since the attack.”
Lucia lifted her chin. “Because you became impossible.”
I looked at her.
“No.”
Then at the nearly full bottle.
“You became useful.”
May you like
And that was the moment I understood the spasms were not the mystery.
The schedule was.
