Right before the toast, I caught my daughter-in-law slyly slipping something into my champagne. I didn’t panic. I simply smiled… and when no one was looking, I quietly switched glasses with her own mother.
Within minutes, she began gasping—while the entire room turned to stare. And that’s when the truth came crashing down. The champagne glass slipped from my daughter-in-law’s hand the moment she hit the floor.
Jessica’s mother, Helen, was convulsing on my marble kitchen floor, foam collecting at the corners of her mouth. And all I could think was, “Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen to her.”
Before I tell you how I got to this point, let me be clear. I’ve spent seventy years on this earth, and I didn’t survive a ruthless business world by being stupid.
When someone tries to poison you at your own retirement party, you notice. Especially when that someone has been eyeing your bank account like a starving woman stares at a feast. Two hours earlier, my kitchen had been full of laughter.
I’d just sold my consulting firm for $23 million. Not bad for a company I’d built from nothing after my husband died fifteen years ago. My son, Michael, had insisted on throwing this party.
“Mom, you deserve to celebrate,” he’d said, those sincere brown eyes of his working overtime. “Let Jessica handle everything. You just relax.”
I should have known something was wrong when Jessica volunteered to play hostess.
The woman who usually complained about loading the dishwasher was suddenly Martha Stewart incarnate, arranging flowers and polishing crystal like her life depended on it. Which, as it turned out, it probably did. I was making small talk with my former business partner when I saw it.
Jessica, standing near the champagne table, glancing around nervously before pulling a small vial from her purse. My blood turned to ice as I watched her empty the contents into a specific glass—the one with the tiny chip on the rim that I always used. Now, a sensible person might have screamed, might have called the police.
But I’ve learned that sometimes the best way to catch a snake is to let it think it’s cornered a mouse. Jessica picked up my doctored champagne and began walking toward me, her face a mask of daughterly concern. “Sarah, you look tired,” she said, offering me the glass.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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