Chapter 10
The substance in my drink was never meant to kill me.
That truth disappointed some of my men.
They wanted a cleaner enemy.
Attempted murder is easier to hate.
This was more strategic.
Weakness.
Confusion.
Maybe collapse.
Enough for a physician to order rest.
Enough for Marco to activate continuity.
Enough for Celeste to explain months of “symptoms.”
Enough for Anna to look suspicious if anyone found residue around service areas.
Then what?
That mattered more.
Marco admitted the next stage.
“You would recover.”
I stared.
“Convenient.”
He shrugged.
“Eventually.”
“And then?”
“You’d see how smoothly things ran.”
There.
Not removal.
Demonstration.
He wanted me alive to witness my replaceability.
That was almost more insulting.
“You thought I’d thank you?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“You’d be forced to share.”
Forced.
That was the heart.
He believed reform was impossible through argument.
So manufacture incapacity.
Create dependency.
Then call the new structure common sense.
I understood the grievance.
I rejected the method.
“You may have been right that I held too much.”
Marco almost smiled.
“Don’t.”
The smile disappeared.
“You were still wrong to drug me.”
Silence.
“And more wrong to turn Anna into the person who would carry your guilt.”
That was the distinction he hated.
He wanted the political argument to swallow the human damage.
No.
May you like
Policies can be debated.
People cannot be converted into collateral and then erased by ideology.
