𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐌𝐞

3|| Poison

Dante / January 11
•••

"And?" Lester Finley's voice sounds from my laptop. "How are the test results coming along?"

"We're not far off. The formula is almost identical to what it ones was," a man with a thick French accent replies. "But with John Elsner out of the team I recon it'll take maybe just a little-"

"I can't wait longer. You know that."

"Yes, I know," he says. "But it's out of my hands, really, the lab is doing everything they can and my wife has been searching for the old formula recipe but it's unfindable."

There's a short, unimpressed silence on Lester's side. "Because it's been turned to ashes, Tobias. That's what happens when paper meets fire."

"Right." His voice comes closer. "It's just that she was hoping to find anything in her father's office in the city, everything there has been untouched all these years."

"And you're telling me this now?" Lester snaps.

"I didn't want to give you false hope," Tobias is quick to say. "But now with Elsner gone we're hitting a wall in our progress."

Again, a silence before Lester speaks, "I'm not happy about this, Dupont."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry." His tone was genuinely apologetic, telling me that the power dynamic between the two was definitely hanging in Lester's favor.

"Are you sure you're up to the job, kid?"

This time, the silence came from the other end of the line and I had a suspicion that it was related to the belittling choice of word Lester used.

"Yes," the Frenchman says at last. "I can do this. We're close. Very, very close. And I promise you'll soon have the exact poison you want."

"Good," he says. "But don't make me wait much longer, we both know where that will get you."

The last recording that John Elsner sold me ends and I pull my hands through my hair.

Who knew a death could follow you through the years and lead you through life even when you stopped caring about the ones who died.

It has been seven years since my father and Vittoria were left with purple skin, foaming mouths, blood leaking eyes and unresponsive hearts.

I was only 22 back then, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

Wine glasses, that is what killed them. Just reaching for the glass, pressing their fingertips against an invisible amount of liquid that caused them to spend their next two hours dying in pain.

And just my luck that my ten year old sister was the one to find them sputtering and chocking on the floor.

An unknown, aggressive poison, they called it. There was no name for it and never seen before, so some psychopath had been creative in a lab. After a long examination they concluded that one millicurie drop would be enough to kill a person, slow and painfully.

And that's what happened. Someone had snuck inside, placed the tiniest bit of poison on the wineglasses and left before it all went to hell.

Lester Finley had claimed the attack as his. Something about our mafia getting too big after we'd driven the French-American mafia out of the country for assassinating my uncle.

So there I was at 22 with my father, uncle and witch of a stepmother assassinated, my sister traumatized for life, and the entire empire of the Italian-American mafia on my shoulders.

And what did I do first as the youngest appointed capo in history?

I tracked down the reason of my father and Vittoria's deaths.