She Tried to Poison Me, but My Plant Died First! novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Rule One
Nerina's sister hands her lemonade, the fern she pours it into smokes and dies, and at 2 AM a key turns in her bolted door.
The day my father came to take me home, I met him at the shelter door in a bulletproof vest.
I wore tactical goggles pushed up on my head, too.
Don Emilio Gattuso stood on the sidewalk with two bodyguards and looked me over from boots to goggles.
"Nerina," he said. "Are we going to a war?"
"You tell me."
I crossed my arms.
"You didn't look for me for eighteen years, and now you show up with a car. I know what this is."
"What is it?"
"You need a daughter to marry off to some old creep for a business deal."
My father laughed out loud.
"Nobody is selling you. We're not that kind of family."
Behind him my mother, Adriana, pressed a hand to her pearls and smiled at me with wet eyes.
"Fiora is so excited to meet you," she said.
Fiora was the adopted daughter, twenty-two, the one who had grown up in my old bedroom.
"And I bet your precious Fiora has her eyedrops ready for the waterworks," I said.
"Nerina," Mom said softly, hurt.
I didn't buy a single word of it.
The vest had come from the donation box.
A retired cop who volunteered at the shelter had slipped me the chem pen the night before.
"It turns blue near most poisons," he'd told me. "Don't ask where I got it."
My father's lawyer had paid off the shelter's mortgage the same afternoon I said yes.
Forty families slept under that roof.
That was why I got in the car.
On the drive I typed on my phone and Mom leaned over.
"Journaling?"
"Survival rules."
I read them aloud.
"One, someone will poison my food. Two, if I'm near stairs, I'm getting pushed. Three, I'll be framed for something I didn't do."
Dad chuckled in the front seat.
Mom swore up and down that none of it would happen.
"This family is normal, sweetheart. And I'll keep the spare house keys myself, so you never have to worry about anyone coming into your room."
That last part I typed down, too.
The estate sat behind iron gates, with a long lawn and a stone terrace.
Fiora met us in the sunroom in a white dress with a pearl necklace.
She had curly blonde hair and a tray in her hands with a pitcher of lemonade and three glasses.
"Welcome home, Nerina," she said. "I made this for you myself."
She poured me a glass and held it out.
Then she stood there, watching me, waiting.
She didn't blink once.
Mom and Dad stood by the windows with their arms folded and the same warm, hopeful faces.
I looked at the lemonade.
I looked at the potted fern on the end table behind her.
"Thanks," I said.
I tipped the glass into the fern.
"Nerina!" Dad snapped. "That's rude. Your sister made it herself."
Mom opened her mouth to scold me for wasting it.
Then smoke began to curl off the leaves.
The fern drooped, turned brown and folded in on itself, all in a few seconds.
The soil hissed.
Nobody said anything.
I took out my phone and put a checkmark next to "poison."
Mom's face went white and Dad's went grey.
"You should send that to a lab," I said.
It was Fiora who started to cry.
"I'm so sorry, Nerina." She hiccuped, tears running down her cheeks. "I thought it was honey. I swear. I was only trying to make your drink sweeter."
It was the worst excuse I had ever heard.
Ammonia doesn't smell like honey, and it doesn't look like honey either.
But Mom pulled her into a hug and patted her back.
"You have such a good heart. You'd never hurt your sister on purpose."
Dad turned to me.
"Drop it. Fiora's been through enough, and you're part of this family now."
Then he looked at my vest.
"And take that ridiculous thing off."
I didn't.
I skipped lunch.
By dinner I was ready.
I sat down at the long table with a can of beans from the shelter and ran the chem pen over the surface.
Clean.
That was when a man in an expensive suit walked in without knocking.
He was tall and dark-haired and about twenty-nine, and he held himself like the room belonged to him.
Rocco Varenna.
He was supposed to have married Fiora, and my father had switched the deal to me.
Rocco looked at my beans and sneered.
"Raised in a shelter, and you still eat garbage."
I kept eating.
Fiora slid a plate of lamb across the table, still smiling.
"Chef's specialty. I promise it's not poisoned."
I tested it right there with the pen.
Rocco slammed his fist on the table.
"Are you serious? She's being nice to you and you treat her like a criminal?"
I tossed the lamb in the trash.
"Someone tried to kill me this afternoon," I said. "I trust nobody in this house but myself."
Then I opened another can.
After dinner I went upstairs and wedged a reinforced bolt under my door.
It had cost me almost everything I owned.
It was supposed to hold against a chainsaw for a few minutes.
At two in the morning I heard the handle move.
I crept to the door and looked through the peephole.
Fiora stood in the hall in her pajamas, holding a key.
She was working it into the lock with both hands, very slowly.
The key turned halfway.
The bolt held.
She stood very still for a moment.
Then she looked straight into the peephole and smiled.
"Mom said you'd sleep like a baby," she whispered.
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