Chapter 27 Chain Reaction #2
“She realized eventually what was happening—that I was doing the same thing to her that she did to my grandfather. She was in a half-stupefied state when she confessed, more out of sheer irritation with me than anything else. Hellebore doesn’t make you tell the truth—it just strips the brakes off.
It lowers inhibition, causes confusion. What she used didn’t work the way she expected.
The tonic she’d been mixing into his tea hadn’t loosened his lips the way she’d hoped,” she whispers.
“He didn’t give up any of the secrets she was so desperate to find.
And eventually, he grew suspicious. He just…
got angry. He knew something was wrong. She had been hounding him in his study one day when he grabbed her. And she—”
Emily chokes, a sob tearing loose.
“She strangled him,” she chokes out. “He was already so weakened by the hellebore she’d been giving him that there wasn’t much left in him to defend himself.”
Baryn pulls her into his chest now, one hand cradling the back of her head. “That’s enough,” he murmurs. “You don’t have to say anything else. I think they can fill in the blanks.”
“Yes, I do,” Emily says into his jacket, voice muffled but relentless. “I never meant for anyone to die. I just wanted the truth. I just wanted my dad back. I wanted things to go back to the way they were. I wanted her to pay for what she’d done. I just needed her to admit it.”
She swipes at her face.
“She killed him. And then she let my father take the fall. Let him die for something he didn’t even do!” A sob slices out of her throat. “She was a monster. I don’t care how charming she seemed or how many charity auctions she hosted. She ruined everything she touched and smiled while she did it.”
She sways forward, fingers digging into her arms like she’s trying to hold herself upright.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” she chokes. “I just—I needed answers.”
She sinks to the floor by Baryn’s feet and leans her head against his thigh, her body finally giving up.
No one moves.
No one speaks.
Guilt, grief, and blood—soaked deep into the seams of the house. And Emily, sobbing on the floor.
“Absolutely not,’ Baryn barks. He crouches in front of Emily with both hands on her arms.
“You’re not doing this,” he growls. “You’re not taking the fall for something that ultimately wasn’t even your fault.”
Emily shakes her head, still tear-streaked, but he doesn't let her look away.
Then he looks at me, his eyes begging me to believe what he’s about to say.
“I found her first,” he says, this time to all of us.
“Victoria. I walked into her room and she was already gone—cold, eyes wide, that fucking lariat still cinched around her neck like a bow she’s tied on herself.
I panicked. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I knew, in the marrow of it, what had happened.
That everything had finally caught up with her. Karma, and all that.”
He releases a breath. “Emily came to me months before that. She was off the deep end. We’d put the pieces together about Henry, figured out what Victoria did, and it was eating her alive.”
His eyes drop to the floor for a moment before returning to the rest of us.
“She didn’t even know what she was doing at first. She just wanted answers.
Closure. So Emily asked me to help her find the truth.
To verify what she’d found. I did the most I could.
Went through, files, transcripts. I’ve been covering our tracks ever since. ”
He looks down at Emily again, softer now. “She wasn’t trying to kill her. And she didn’t die from the poison. Someone strangled her. And it wasn’t fucking Emily.”
His eyes flick up to Theo and me again. “I’ve tried everything to figure out who.
Gone over every detail. Every timeline. I still don’t know.
But I knew if anyone traced the poison, they’d potentially trace it to Emily.
So I hid it in the same way Victoria did after she killed Henry.
Every file, every sample, every thread I could cut.
I wasn’t about to let her go down for something she didn’t do.
If she is guilty of anything, it’s loving her fucking family and that’s more than I can say for Victoria. ”
His throat bobs.
“So I staged it the best I could to make it look like someone from outside the house had done it. Pulled the curtains down, broke a window, kicked a stool across the floor to make it look like a struggle. I wanted it to look like someone came for her. Someone she’d wronged. Which—take your fucking pick.”
His eyes dart between me and Theo when he says the next words. “I hadn’t accounted for the fact I would get a fucking nosebleed in the middle of it.”
Theo exhales behind me, a quiet thing.
“I dragged her into the hallway. Paid the right people to not look to closely,” Baryn continues. “Made sure the tox report disappeared before anyone could get their hands on it. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fast.”
He turns back to Emily. “I told you I would keep you safe from the fallout.”
Emily’s mouth is open like she wants to argue, but no sound comes out. She just stares at him. A fissure running down the middle of them—too much trust, too much sacrifice, and the wrong kind of love in every direction.
The weight of every confession sits in the center of the room now, a pulsing wound with no clean edge. There’s no catharsis. No relief. Just the raw, open thing left behind when the truth finally stops hiding.
And maybe we would’ve left it there—sitting in that terrible, fragile stillness—if Theo hadn’t spoken.
But he does. “Okay, but who the fuck strangled her?”
And then—Giles enters.
Utterly unfazed, he answers like he’s been waiting just outside the room all this time for his turn to speak. Waiting for someone to ask the million dollar question.
“She strangled herself.”