He poisoned her lover to steal his legacy. Now, he’s raising a toast to the woman plotting his quiet demise.
The Vintage Vintage
Mia smoothed the silk of her emerald dress in the rearview mirror. Todd Banks was a creature of predictable appetites: mid-market ego, top-shelf tastes, and an insatiable desire to possess whatever Kevin had once touched.
At the wake, when Kevin’s casket had barely been lowered into the loam, Todd had squeezed her waist, murmuring about “fresh starts” with breath that smelled of spearmint and malice. The medical examiner found arsenic laced into Kevin’s daily thermoses of dark roast, but the police called it inconclusive—insufficient chain of custody. Mia didn’t need a jury. She knew the cadence of Kevin’s final, agonizing weeks, and she remembered Todd casually volunteering to pick up their morning coffees at the lab.
Now, Todd sat across from her at the corner banquette of L’Hiver, swirling a glass of 2012 Saint-Émilion.
“I always told Kevin he didn’t appreciate the finer things,” Todd murmured, leaning forward so close she could see the broken capillaries around his nose. “He lacked patience. He rushed his work, rushed his life.”
“Patience is an acquired taste,” Mia said, lifting her own glass to touch the rim of his with a sharp, crystal chime. “To new partnerships.”
Todd smiled, a smug, heavy curve of the mouth, and drank deeply.
Mia held her wine against her lower lip, watching his throat bob. When he set his empty tumbler down, his hand trembled—just once. He blinked, the pupils dilating rapidly in the candlelight, a sudden slick of cold sweat shining across his forehead.
“Delicious,” Todd whispered, suddenly pressing a hand against his diaphragm. He stared at her, the smirk freezing into something jagged and uncertain. “What did you say that vintage was called?”
Mia slowly set her untouched glass down.
Where Does the Story Go Next?
