The maid could understand dogs and saved the CEO’s dying K9—then became the one woman he trusted with his darkest secret

Chapter 3

“I’m suggesting someone check his food.”

Julian held up a hand. “Tracy.”

His personal assistant stepped forward — a thin woman in her forties with steel-gray hair and a no-nonsense expression that suggested she had seen everything and was impressed by none of it. “Yes, Young Master?”

“What did Valor eat today?”

Tracy consulted her tablet. “The Second Young Master delivered a bag of Meridian Imports’ Nutritional Meat Meal this morning. He said Valor had been off his feed lately and suggested mixing it into his regular meal. The kitchen staff complied.”

Zachary.

I saw Julian’s expression flicker — just for a second — before the mask of calm descended again. His younger brother. The one who had been angling for control of Whitfield Holdings ever since the accident. The one who always had a ready smile and a sympathetic word, but whose eyes never quite matched his mouth.

“Where is this meat meal now?”

“Still in the kitchen, Young Master. The bag is half-full.”

“Secure it. Send a sample to Boston General for testing immediately. And have someone find my brother. I want to speak with him.”

“Yes, Young Master.”

“And Nora Chen.” Julian’s voice softened, just slightly. “You know what you’re risking, don’t you? If you’re wrong — if Valor goes wild and hurts someone while you’re treating him — the consequences will be severe. I won’t be able to protect you.”

“I know, Young Master.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

I looked at Valor. The dog was watching me with an expression of such desperate gratitude that it made my chest ache. In his thoughts, I could hear him repeating the same thing over and over: She can hear me. She can actually hear me. After all these years of being alone in my head, someone finally hears me.

“Because he’s not ready to die,” I said. “And because someone needs to answer for what they did to him.”

Julian was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Do what you need to do. I’ll handle the consequences.”

I spent the next hour working on Valor. I induced vomiting first — gently, with a mixture of warm water and salt that I remembered from my shelter days. The dog didn’t fight me. He understood what I was trying to do, and his thoughts were a steady stream of encouragement.

Almost there. Get it out. I trust you. I trust you, woman.

The vomit came up in a dark, bile-streaked mass. And mixed in with the half-digested meat were small, white, partially dissolved pills.

I stared at them. My blood ran cold.

“Dr. Miller,” I said, my voice flat. “Do rabid dogs vomit pills?”

The physician’s face had gone the color of old paper. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

The pills were the same size, shape, and color as the ones I’d seen in Julian Whitfield’s medicine cabinet. The ones he took every morning and every night. The ones that were supposed to be treating his nerve damage.

I looked up at Julian. He couldn’t see what I was holding, but he could hear the silence. He could feel the tension in the air.

“What is it, Nora?”

I picked up one of the pills with trembling fingers. The bitter smell was unmistakable. It was the same sharp, acrid undertone I’d noticed on Julian’s medicine bottles — the undertone I’d dismissed as normal because all medicine smelled strange, didn’t it?

“Pills,” I said. “In the vomit. The same kind you take.”

The silence that followed was heavier than anything I’d ever experienced. It was the silence of a man realizing his own brother had been trying to kill him.

And that was when I knew for certain: this wasn’t about the dog at all.

Someone was trying to kill the blind heir.

And they’d started with the one thing he loved most.