Chapter 5 - The First Taste of Life
The children had woken up during the scuffle, but Waverly had already pulled them both into her arms, her back turned to the violence as she hummed a low, steady tune against the top of Blythe’s head. She held them tight, her body acting as a shield against the sight of the blood on the glass.
By 4:00 a.m., the room had been cleaned. The technician was gone, the glass had been wiped down with industrial disinfectant, and Lawson was sitting on the edge of the small table near the window, a glass of amber liquid sitting untouched beside him.
"It was Silvio," Lawson said to the dark room. He wasn't looking at Waverly. He was looking at his own hands, which were stained with a faint line of purple ink from a pen he had broken earlier. "He thought if he took the kids, I’d drop the territorial claim on the river docks. He thought I’d be too broken to fight."
"He was right," Waverly said from the armchair.
Lawson's head snapped up. "What did you say?"
"He was right," she repeated, looking at him over the tops of the children's heads as they slept under her arms. "You were broken. You were already giving up. If that man had come in here three days ago, you wouldn't have noticed the syringe because you were too busy looking at the floor waiting for them to die."
Lawson stood up, his massive frame casting a long shadow over her. "You think you know me, Dunn? You think because I let you stay in this room, you have a right to judge how I run my family?"
"I don't care about your family, Mr. Mercer. I don't care about your docks or your money," Waverly said, her voice dropping into a fierce, quiet intensity that matched his own. "But I care about those two kids. Jonah hasn't had a single drop of real food in four days. Dr. Yates has them on a liquid glucose restriction that is starving their marrow. If you want them to live, you need to let me cook for them."
"Cook?" Lawson repeated, as if she had spoken a word in a foreign language. "They can't digest solid food. The chemo has destroyed their stomach lining."
"The chemo didn't destroy their stomach lining, the lack of use did," Waverly said, carefully sliding her arms out from under the twins and standing up. "I want access to the main kitchen. No staff. No chefs. Just me and the pantry. If they don't eat by noon, the next fever will take them regardless of what Silvio Valetti tries to do."
May you like
Lawson looked down at his daughter’s pale, translucent skin. He could see the faint blue lines of her veins beneath her temples. Then he looked at Waverly.
"Odette will show you the kitchen," he said. "If they throw up, you leave."
