Chapter 3 - The Unconscious Heiress
The realization hit Edward like a physical blow. The woman he loved—the woman he had planned to marry—had just tried to murder him in cold blood.
"Is there any doubt?" Edward managed to ask, his voice hoarse.
"None," the toxicologist confirmed, handing him the report. "It was meticulously dosed. It would have looked like a sudden, massive heart attack. Standard autopsies rarely catch this specific synthetic variant unless they know exactly what to look for."
Before Edward could fully process the nightmare, his phone buzzed violently in his palm. It was Marcus, his head of private security.
"Boss," Marcus said, his voice tense over the speaker. "We have a situation at Miss Monroe's penthouse on Park Avenue."
"Did you find her?" Edward demanded, standing up immediately.
"Not exactly, sir. We followed her car from the restaurant. She entered her building at 8:40 PM. At 9:05 PM, an emergency call was placed from her apartment. Paramedics are on the scene right now. She’s unconscious."
Edward stared at the wall, his mind racing. "Unconscious? What happened?"
"Her maid says she found her collapsed on the bathroom floor with an empty prescription bottle beside her," Marcus reported. "The paramedics are wheeling her into an ambulance as we speak. They're heading to Bellevue Emergency."
"I'm on my way," Edward said, cutting the call.
Two hours after the dinner that was supposed to end with an engagement, Edward stood in the dimly lit hallway of Bellevue Hospital’s intensive care unit. The harsh fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, reflecting off the linoleum floors.
Through the glass panel of Room 412, he could see Isabella lying in a hospital bed. Tubes connected her to heart monitors and oxygen tanks. Her golden hair was matted, and her skin, usually glowing and flawless, was a sickly shade of gray.
A detective in a wrinkled trench coat approached Edward, flashing his badge. "Mr. Miller? I'm Detective Reyes, NYPD Homicide and Special Investigations."
"Is she going to survive?" Edward asked, keeping his tone carefully neutral.
"The doctors pumped her stomach in time, but she’s in a deep chemical coma," Reyes replied, taking out a small notepad. "We found a note on her vanity table. It looks like a suicide attempt, Mr. Miller. It says she couldn't live with the guilt of what she’d done to her family's trust fund."
Edward looked at the detective, his eyes narrowing. "Guilt?"
"According to her records, Monroe Financial went bankrupt three weeks ago," Reyes revealed. "Her father left her with thirty million dollars in hidden debt. If she died, her life insurance policy—worth twenty million—was set to pay out to her estate. But if you died..."
Reyes paused, looking squarely at Edward. "...our sources tell us you recently made her the primary beneficiary of your personal foundation's liquid accounts in the event of your marriage."
The puzzle pieces fell into place with terrifying clarity. Isabella didn't just want his money; she needed him dead before her own financial collapse was made public. And when her plan failed at the restaurant, she had panicked, taken an overdose, and staged a suicide to hide her track marks.
"And what about the little girl?" Edward asked suddenly, turning away from the glass panel. "The child who stopped me from eating the cake?"
Detective Reyes frowned, looking down at his notes. "We checked the security footage from outside The Gilded Lily. The girl doesn't exist in any city database, Mr. Miller. No school records, no foster care logs, no missing persons reports."
"She saved my life, Detective," Edward said firmly, stepping closer to the officer. "She knew about the vial. She knew what Isabella was doing before anyone else did."
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"Well," Reyes sighed, flipping his notepad shut. "Whoever she is, she vanished into thin air after she ran out the back door. In a city of eight million people, a nameless street kid is like a ghost. You'll never find her."
Edward adjusted his cuffs, his cold determination returning with vengeance. "I have fifty million dollars in liquid capital, Detective. I don't care if I have to search every alley in New York. I will find that child."
