Buried Alive, I Left the Don My Blood-Written Truth Chapter 07
The butler lay on the floor.
“Y-yes. Three.”
“Margaret said Elena had gone mad and that every letter was an excuse. She wouldn’t allow them to be sent
to the Mexican border outpost.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
“Where are they?”
Vivian said softly, “They were probably burned.” Ava said, “Not if Margaret kept what she could still use.”
“Women like Margaret never burn every leash. They always keep one thing they can use to control someone
later.”
Margaret’s expression hardened. Adrian ordered a search of the main house. In the end, they found an old
chest in Vivian’s room. Ava lifted the lid and sneered.
“Margaret is clever. Burning letters leaves smoke, so she had her niece hide them instead. If this ever came out, she could push an outsider forward to take the blame. Cleaner than implicating herself.”
Vivian went white.
“Adrian, I do not know how that got into my room.”
Adrian did not look at her. He opened the first letter.
“Adrian, Lily is missing. Mother says she ran away, but her bell is by the backyard well.”
The second letter.
“Connor’s death is suspicious. The medicine bowl isn’t mine. I’m locked up and can’t get out.”
The third letter was covered in blood. Only one sentence remained.
“Adrian, save me.”
Adrian held the letters. His hand shook so hard he almost tore the paper apart. I looked at that letter. When I
wrote it, I still believed it could reach him. Margaret spoke.
“What if you had received them?”
“There are more than a thousand miles between the Mexican border and New York. Could you have made it
back in time?”
Adrian slowly looked at her.
“At least I’d have believed her.”
Margaret laughed.
“Would you?”
“The day you received the investigation file, did you not believe she had killed someone?”
“Adrian, do not pretend your hands are clean.”
The words landed exactly where they were meant to. Adrian did not argue. He walked out of the hidden chamber and stopped in front of Margaret’s courtyard. The plaque over the door read Saint Anne Hall. He drew his gun and knocked the plaque down with the butt. It split in half.
“From today on, you’re no longer the Donna of this compound.”
Margaret screamed, “I’m your mother.” Adrian didn’t look back.
“I have no mother who murdered my wife and my children.”
“Interrogate Vivian first.”
When Adrian said those words, Vivian’s tears finally stopped. She collapsed on the floor and lifted her
bloodless face.
“Adrian, you think I did this?”
Adrian threw the three letters at her feet.
“They were in your room.”
Vivian bit her lip.
“Mrs. Moretti often asked me to collect old things. I swear I didn’t know what was inside.”
Ava crouched and pulled a handkerchief from Vivian’s sleeve. A tiny smoke emblem was embroidered in one corner. A dark stain marked the fabric. Ava sniffed it.
“Poisoned herb residue.”
Vivian snatched her hand back.
“That’s incense.”
Ava looked at Adrian.
“Connor wasn’t poisoned with ordinary arsenic.”
“It was black vine from the northern border region. In small doses, it eases pain. In excess, it makes a person look as if he died from illness.”
Adrian’s gaze darkened.
‘The Moretti clinic’s restricted supply room has that herb.”
Vivian shook her head and cried.
“I don’t know medicine.”
Ava said, “You don’t understand medicine, but you often went to the Moretti clinic to bring clothes to Adrian.” Vivian looked up.
“You investigated me?”
Ava’s voice was calm.
“I investigated what was done to her.”
Vivian threw herself toward Adrian.
“Adrian, Mrs. Moretti forced me.”
“She said Elena had hurt the Moretti family. She said that once Connor died, you would completely despise
her.”
“I only delivered a bowl of sweet soup. I didn’t know there was poison inside.”
Margaret sneered.
“Vivian, why pretend to be clean?”
“You were the one who invited Mara in.”
Vivian jerked her head around.
“Mrs. Moretti, how can you say that?”
Margaret pointed at her.
“You wanted to be Donna. Every day, you whispered in my ear that Elena was sitting in the Donna’s chair as if
it belonged to her.”
“You said her birth was too low to help Adrian.”
“You said Lily was only a daughter and useless to keep.”
Vivian screamed, “I wasn’t the one who drowned Lily.”
“You pressed her down with your own hands.”
The hall went dead quiet.
