Chapter 160 Chapter 160

Chapter 160 Chapter 160
The kitchen smelled like garlic and simmering tomatoes by late afternoon.
Laura had stepped out to the small covered porch to check on the rain and call a neighbor about a fallen branch, leaving Mia and Sophia in charge of dinner. Mia sat on a stool at the counter with her booted leg stretched out on a second chair, chopping what she could reach without standing. Sophia moved between the stove and the cutting board, stirring the sauce, tasting it, and adding pinches of salt and dried herbs with the confidence of someone who had cooked in enough unfamiliar kitchens to trust her instincts. Mark wandered in from the living room with a dish towel over one shoulder and the expression of a man who had decided the radar could wait. He leaned against the counter near Mia, stole a piece of chopped onion, and made a face when it was sharper than he expected.
   “You’re both taking this very seriously,” he said. “It’s only pasta.”
Sophia pointed the wooden spoon at him. “It’s pasta made by people who are stuck in a storm with limited entertainment. It deserves respect.” 
Mark held up both hands in surrender, then settled more comfortably against the counter. For a while he just watched them work. Then, as if the quiet of the kitchen and the steady rain outside had loosened something, he started talking.
    “You know, when I was about your age, Sophia, I worked nights at a loading dock on the other side of the city. Worst hours of my life. Got off at six in the morning, slept through half the day, went back again. I thought I was going to do that forever.”
Mia glanced up from the cutting board.     
   “You’ve never told me that.”
   “Because it was nothing to be proud of at the time. I was broke, tired, and convinced the whole world was arranged to keep people like me exactly where we were.” He reached over and stole another piece of onion, this time prepared for the burn. “Your mother was the one who told me to stop complaining and go learn something that paid better. She was right, of course. She usually is. But those loading-dock nights… they teach you things. How to stay awake when your body wants to quit. How to keep your mouth shut when the shift supervisor is in a mood. How to stretch one meal across two days without feeling sorry for yourself.”
    Sophia stirred the sauce and looked interested. “Did you hate it?”
   “Every minute. And I still remember the names of the guys I worked with. Funny how that works. You can hate a job and still carry the people with you.” Mark’s voice stayed easy, the story unspooling without rush. “There was one older man Carlos who used to bring extra coffee in a thermos and force it on whoever looked like they were about to fall over never made a speech about it. Just put the cup in your hand and walked away. I think about him whenever I see someone running on empty.”
    Mia set the knife down and wiped her hands on a towel. “Is that why you always push food on people when they’re stressed?”
    Mark smiled, a little sideways. “Probably. Your mother says I try to solve everything with a plate of something warm. She’s not wrong.”

He kept going while they worked a story about a winter when the dock heaters failed and they worked in coats and gloves until their fingers went numb, another about the first time he brought Laura to a work party and she told his supervisor, politely but clearly, that the overtime system was unfair. Sophia asked questions. Mia listened and chopped and felt the familiar comfort of her father’s voice filling the kitchen the same way it had when she was younger and the world outside the house still felt manageable.

The sauce thickened and the water for the pasta came to a boil. Laura’s footsteps crossed the porch and then the rain swallowed the sound again. For a stretch of minutes the storm felt secondary to the ordinary work of making dinner and listening to old stories. Then Mia’s phone rang on the counter. Victoria’s name filled the screen. Mia wiped her hands quickly and answered on speaker so she wouldn’t have to repeat whatever was coming.
   “Victoria?”
   “Mia.” Victoria’s voice was controlled but tighter than usual. “I’m at the house, I need to update you.”
The shift in tone cut through the kitchen. Sophia turned the burner down. Mark straightened.
   “I’m listening,” Mia said.
   “Kai is here. He’s been here. Security confirmed his car never left the property after he returned from the track yesterday. When they did the welfare check earlier they found him in the bedroom, difficult to rouse. I came straight over.”
    Mia’s hand tightened on the phone. “Difficult to rouse how?”
   “He was heavily asleep. Unnaturally so and we got him partially responsive, but he’s still not fully clear there’s more.” Victoria paused, then continued in the same precise, clipped way she used when delivering bad news cleanly. “Veronica was here yesterday evening. Security logged her at the gate. She claimed she needed to drop something off and that Kai had approved it. They shouldn’t have let her through that’s being addressed separately but they did. She was inside for a short period.”
Sophia had gone still at the stove. Mark’s expression had flattened into something serious.
   Victoria kept going. “From what we can piece together, she found him in a bad state stressed, not sleeping, still wound up from the previous days. According to the preliminary conversation we’ve been able to have with him in fragments, she offered him something to help him rest. He took it and It was a strong sleeping medication. Stronger than anything he would normally use. The dose appears to have been too high for him, It effectively intoxicated him. He’s been under it since last night. He barely surfaces before going under again.”
    Mia felt the words land one after another. “You’re saying she drugged him.”
   “I’m saying she gave him a powerful sleeping pill under the guise of helping, and the effect has been excessive and prolonged. We’ve already called the doctor. Someone is on the way to assess him properly, check his vitals, and determine if he needs further treatment or simply time and monitoring while it clears his system. He’s not in immediate crisis, but he is not himself. He’s still mostly asleep.”

The kitchen was very quiet. The sauce gave a soft bubble on the stove that Sophia automatically reached over to stir down.
    “Is he safe right now?” Mia asked.
   “Yes I’m here. The security has been instructed that no one else enters. The doctor will examine him shortly. I’ll stay until we have a clearer picture of how long this will take to wear off and whether there’s any secondary concern.”
Mia stared at the countertop. The boot on her leg, the storm outside, the half-prepared dinner felt tiring.
   “She shouldn’t have been allowed inside,” she said.
  “I agree. That failure is being handled right now the priority is Kai. I’ll call you again as soon as the doctor has seen him and we know more.”
   “Please.”
   “I will. And Mia…. he’s going to be alright. This is serious, but it’s not unmanageable stay where you are. The roads are still bad, and you can’t help him by attempting them with a broken leg.”
   “I know.”
Victoria ended the call with a short promise to update her soon. The silence that followed sat heavy in the kitchen. Sophia turned the stove off completely. Mark exhaled through his nose and rubbed a hand over his face. Mia set the phone down carefully.
   “She’s at the house,” she said, mostly to herself. “Veronica gave him something strong enough to knock him out for nearly a full day. And he’s still asleep.”
   Sophia came around the counter and stood beside her. “Victoria is there and the doctor is coming. He’s not alone.”
   Mark’s voice was low and steady. “You want to keep trying to reach him yourself, or are you going to let the people on site do their jobs for now?”

Mia looked at her father. The stories about the loading dock and Carlos and the thermos of coffee still hung in the air between them, suddenly sharper.
   “I’m going to wait for Victoria’s next call,” she said. “And I’m going to finish dinner, because if I sit here and stare at the phone I’ll lose my mind.”
   Mark nodded once. “Then we finish dinner. And we keep the phone where we can hear it.”

Sophia squeezed Mia’s shoulder and moved back to the stove to salvage what they could of the sauce. Laura came in from the porch a minute later, took one look at their faces, and quietly asked what had happened. Mark gave her the short version while Mia sat very still on the stool, the boot heavy on the chair, the storm still working against the windows, and the knowledge that Kai was unreachable for a reason that had nothing to do with signal or schedules and everything to do with Veronica sitting in her chest like a stone.