peanuts, and it was a very high concentrated dose.
“This was no accident,” I explained to my cousins after hanging up the phone. “This wasn’t some small trace amount that could have ended up in his food by sloppiness. Someone put it in his food on purpose. They were trying to kill him!”
“Mother was right,” Dario said grimly. “The workers really can’t be trusted.”
I barreled towards the door, but once again he tried to stop me. “Let's think this through. We should order to see all the recipes from the kitchen staff. Maybe a pie or cake called for nuts and there was some kind of mix up…”
“Do you hear yourself!? Of course it wasn’t a mix-up! The doctor said himself that it was too much to write off as an accident!”
“What are you going to do?” he asked instead. He knew he couldn’t stop me, so he resorted to trying to mitigate the damage I intended to inflict on Lucia.
I was done with words. I shoved him off of me and stormed back to the closet where Lucia was locked inside. I could barely stand the sight of her as I flung the door open.
“Is he okay?” she asked softly, bracing herself against the back wall.
“Why do you ask!? You want to know if you’re going down for murder or just attempted murder!?”
“I swear I didn’t do anything! Stay away from me!”
Jorge and Dario caught up to me, clamoring behind as I charged in to grab Lucia. She kicked and screamed as I threw her over my shoulder, exposing the length of her legs and her panties as I carried her off. She struggled to pull her hideous brown dress back down in between pounding her fists into my chest. My cousins asked where I was taking her, but I didn’t bother responding. I charged on, ignoring everyone and everything, right across the front courtyard.
Lucia was curvy but still felt light as a feather in my big arms as I stomped across the property. I made my way to the back stables. They were old and run down, hidden off behind the new ones we had built last year. We intended to save the structures and use the lumber for future projects, but for now, they would serve a better purpose.
I threw Lucia inside one of the stalls with force and slammed the door shut behind her, locking it again. Just as she had done in the closet, she immediately flung herself against the door hitting it and kicking it with everything she had while spouting off a flurry of expletives in Spanish.
“We can’t hold her prisoner!” Dario protested as he came running out behind me.
“We can until we know more,” Jorge insisted. “We have to keep her contained while we investigate. Should we call the police?”
“No,” I growled. “If the police come and do find her guilty, justice will be up to them. If she did this, she deserves much worse than just rotting away in some jail cell.”
“I have never been treated this way in my life!” Lucia shrieked from behind the door. “You’ll pay for this, Leonardo! You’re going to find out that I’m innocent and I’ll make your life a living hell for humiliating me like this!”
I kicked the door as hard as I could, sending her flailing backward. “You’re the one who is about to be in a living hell, sweetheart. I’ll make sure of that.”
She found her way to an opening in the old, warped boards and poked her head through just before rearing back to spit in my direction. I kicked the walls again, hard enough to rattle her off of them.
“You’re nothing but a rich, spoiled brat and I’ve known it from the moment I first saw you in the laundry room! I’ve seen you stalking me ever since! You’ve been waiting for your chance to frame me with something.”
I glared at her through the opening in the boards that she had just spit through. She was thrown to the ground in the corner of the stall with her chest heaving. Her dress was ripped and falling down her shoulder, but she quickly struggled to cover herself when she noticed me looking.
“You honestly think I would poison my own grandfather to prove a point about you? You think mighty highly of yourself, don’t you? Stalking you, pfft. I don’t give you enough thought to bother. You are nothing. You are like a cockroach scurrying around the house as far as I’m concerned.”
“Oh,