THE BUTTER ON THE SILVER DISH
Morning light poured across the Moretti estate in Chicago. Vincent Moretti, thirty-eight years old and the most feared name in the city’s underworld, sat down to breakfast in a crisp white shirt, tattoos curling up his forearms and the side of his neck, a heavy silver watch on his wrist. A maid set a plate before him: warm bread, and beside it a small silver dish of butter.
He was seconds away from taking a bite when a small voice cut through the quiet.
“Don’t eat it.”
Six-year-old Emma Carter stood in the doorway, her light brown hair tied with a pink bow, an old stuffed rabbit clutched to her chest. She was the housemaid’s daughter — a child everyone in the house knew, and no one took seriously.
“She put something in the butter,” Emma said, pointing.
Vincent turned slowly toward his fiancée. Vanessa Hale, thirty-three, blonde, elegant in a champagne silk dress, had gone very still.
Vincent slid the silver dish across the table until it sat directly in front of her.
“Eat it,” he said.
Vanessa froze. The color drained from her face.
Emma stepped forward and held out her hand. In her small palm sat a tiny empty glass vial. She had picked it up earlier, she explained, and hidden it inside her rabbit for safekeeping. She had watched Vanessa pour whatever was inside it into the butter.