She Tried to Poison Me, but My Plant Died First! novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Rule Two

At the top of the stairs Fiora throws herself down in front of Rocco, and Nerina is the one blamed.

I didn't sleep.

I sat on the floor with my back against the bolted door until the sun came up and the key had stopped moving.

Then I opened my phone and added a fourth rule.

Rule four: find out who left me on that shelter doorstep.

I had been six years old, with a paper tag pinned to my coat and no name on it.

Everybody had told me for eighteen years that my family was dead or gone.

Now my family had a sunroom and a lemonade pitcher.

I pulled the goggles down over my eyes and pressed the little button on the side.

A red light blinked once.

They recorded everything in front of me, and they had cost me a month of dish duty.

The grand staircase was marble, with a gold banister and a hall full of people at the bottom.

My father stood there in his shirtsleeves with a coffee, talking to Rocco Varenna.

Two capos in dark suits waited by the front door.

Mom sat on a bench by the wall with a magazine she wasn't reading.

I started down with my back close to the wall and my right hand on the banister.

"Nerina, wait!"

Fiora came out of her room above me in a pale blue robe, barefoot, her hair loose.

She hurried to catch up and stopped a step above me.

"I'm so sorry about last night. I felt awful all night. Can we start over?"

She held out her arms.

I didn't take them.

"Don't stand behind me," I said.

"What? Nerina, I only want a hug."

"Then come around where I can see you."

She stepped down beside me.

We were near the top.

Her eyes filled with tears, right on schedule.

"Please," she whispered. "Please don't hate me."

Then both her hands came up toward my chest.

I stepped back and to the side, flat against the wall.

Her shove found nothing.

For one second Fiora hung in the air with her arms out and her mouth open.

Then she did something I had never seen anyone do on purpose.

She let go of the banister and dropped her shoulder and rolled.

She went down the stairs screaming, "Nerina, don't! Please don't push me!"

She landed at my father's feet with one arm flung out and her robe tangled around her legs.

The hall went dead quiet.

Rocco was kneeling beside her before I'd taken a breath.

"Fiora."

"My ankle," she sobbed. "She pushed me. I just wanted to hug her."

He looked up at me on the staircase.

I had never seen a man go from polite to murderous so fast.

"Rocco, I didn't touch her."

"I watched it."

"No, you watched her fall."

"She was standing right beside you."

"I know where she was standing."

Dad crossed the hall.

His coffee cup lay in pieces somewhere behind him, and his face was dark red.

"Nerina Gattuso."

"I stepped away from her. That's all I did."

"You've been under my roof for one day."

"I know."

"One day, and my daughter is on the floor."

I took out my phone with a steady hand and put a checkmark next to rule two.

That was a mistake, and I knew it as I did it.

Rocco saw it.

"She's keeping score," he said, and there was real disgust in his voice. "She's actually keeping score."

Mom rose from her bench with a hand at her throat.

"Emilio, the poor girl is frightened. She's lived in a shelter. She doesn't know how to live with people."

It was exactly the voice you'd use to defend a stray dog.

Dad didn't look at her.

He looked at me.

"Take that thing off your head," he said. "And go to your room."

"Dad."

"Take it off."

I kept the goggles on.

"You can see from here that I never touched her. Let me show you what I saw."

"I'm not watching your home movies. Your sister is hurt."

Fiora sobbed louder.

Rocco lifted her into his arms and carried her toward the family doctor's wing, and he didn't look back at me even once.

Dad jerked his chin at one of the capos by the door, and he didn't have to say anything else.

The man started up the stairs.

Mom came forward and laid a gentle hand on my arm.

"Sweetheart, go with him quietly. I'll see to it that nobody hurts you."

I glanced down at her hand.

Her nails were pale pink and perfect.

She had said the same thing in the car about the spare keys.

"Thanks, Mom," I said.

I walked up the stairs with the capo behind me.

The red light on the side of my goggles kept blinking, steady and small.

Nobody in that hall had noticed it.

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