The Little Maid Said My Fiancée Was Poisoning Me — So I Asked Her To Eat My Breakfast First

Daniel did not return home that evening until long after dark.

When he stepped through the heavy mahogany front doors of his estate, the house felt entirely foreign. The marble floors, the crystal chandeliers, the oil paintings he had collected for two decades—all of it felt compromised, as if a venomous viper were slithering silently beneath the silk rugs.

Victoria was sitting in the formal parlor, wearing a soft lavender cashmere sweater, reading a leather-bound book by the fireplace. A glass of red wine sat on the side table beside her.

“Darling,” she said smoothly, looking up with that warm, effortless smile that had once disarmed him so completely. “You’re home late. I was getting worried. I had the kitchen keep some prime rib warm for you.”

Daniel felt a sickening surge of disgust rise in his throat, but twenty years of ruthless corporate negotiations had given him iron control over his expressions. He smiled back, taking off his suit jacket and draping it over a chair.

“Rough day with the investment board,” Daniel lied smoothly, walking over to the bar cart and pouring himself a glass of neat bourbon from a sealed bottle he had opened himself. “The healthcare acquisition is getting messy.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Victoria cooed, standing up and wrapping her arms around his waist, resting her head against his chest. “You work far too hard, Daniel. You really need to let your executives handle the heavy lifting. You look exhausted.”

Exhausted. The word sounded deliberate now—a subtle psychological seed she was planting to make his eventual death seem natural to their friends and colleagues.

Daniel gently stroked her hair, fighting the urge to recoil from her touch. “I’ll slow down soon, Victoria. Very soon.”

Later that night, after Victoria had fallen into a deep sleep beside him, Daniel slipped out of bed, holding his breath as he tiptoed into his private home office. He locked the heavy double doors, sat at his encrypted workstation, and dialed a private number he had saved for emergencies.

The call was answered on the second ring by Marcus Vance (no relation to Dr. Kenneth Vance)—a former director of military intelligence who now ran an elite private corporate intelligence firm in Manhattan.

“Daniel,” Marcus’s gravelly voice came through the encrypted line. “It’s midnight in Chicago. What’s wrong?”

“I need a full forensic background check on Victoria Lang,” Daniel said, his voice dropping an octave. “Not the glossy biography her public relations firm released when we got engaged. I want everything. Her high school records, her offshore bank accounts, her former boyfriends, her medical records, her financial debts—every breath she’s taken for the last fifteen years.”

Marcus was quiet for three seconds. “May I ask why?”