I froze. A coldness unrelated to the air temperature crawled up my spine.
“What was I drinking?”
Sierra pressed a few keys on the keyboard. A black-and-white recording of our table appeared on the screen.
Time: 20 minutes ago.
I saw myself getting up from the table and heading toward the ladies’ room. Marcus and Candace remained seated. I watched the screen, afraid to blink. As soon as my silhouette disappeared from the frame, Marcus’ behavior instantly changed. The solicitous posture vanished. The respectful bow of his head disappeared. He quickly glanced around, sharp and furtive, like a thief.
Then he reached into the inner pocket of his blazer. On the grainy screen, it was clearly visible: he was pulling out a small, clear vial. Not a pharmacy bottle. Not medicine. A laboratory ampule.
He uncapped it with a single flick of his thumb, and while Candace shielded him from any potential glance from the staff, he poured the clear liquid into my glass of wine. The very glass from which I took a sip when I returned.
My breath caught. I grabbed the edge of the table to keep from falling.
My son. My own flesh and blood.
But that wasn’t all.
On the screen, Marcus said something to Candace and they both laughed, and then he began to imitate me. He hunched over. His body started to tremble in a small, repulsive tremor, mimicking my weakness, my bouts of dizziness, my frailty that I was so ashamed of. He was parodying an affliction that, apparently, he himself was causing. Candace threw her head back, laughing, wiping away tears of amusement with a napkin.
This wasn’t just laughter. It was mockery.
He wasn’t worried about my health.
He was enjoying my breakdown.
“Turn on the sound,” I demanded.
My voice sounded frightening, even to myself. It was icy.
Sierra nervously spun the mouse wheel. The noise of the restaurant filled the cramped storage room.
“She thinks it’s old age,” Marcus’s voice from the speakers was clear and smug.
“The silly old fool. A couple more doses and she’ll forget what a rose even smells like.”
“What if she doesn’t sign next week?” Candace’s voice was petulant.
On the screen, Marcus leaned back in his chair, spinning the empty glass between his fingers.
“She’ll sign. Where else is she going to go? She’s weeping over losing her precious gift, her nose. But the real joke is that she’s losing Sterling Sense and she doesn’t even suspect it.”
He leaned closer to his wife, his face on the screen distorted by a grimace of greed.
“By Friday, we’ll be pouring industrial floor cleaner into her crystal perfume bottles. This contract with Synergy Chem is going to make us richer than all her fragrances put together over thirty years. Let her smell bleach. She won’t be able to tell the difference anyway.”
My legs buckled beneath me, and I sank to my knees right there on the dirty linoleum of the storage room. This was not a physical weakness, but a blow from the monstrous, unbearable weight of the truth. I gasped for air like a fish thrown onto the shore, but something in my chest tightened into a painful knot.
My son, my Marcus—the boy I taught to distinguish between the scent of lilac and lily of the valley—was now poisoning me to sell the work of my entire life to manufacturers of cheap chemicals.
Tears streamed from my eyes—hot, angry, bitter. I covered my face with my hands, and my shoulders shook with silent sobbing. Sierra knelt beside me, hesitant to touch me, but I could feel her frightened breath.
“Vivien,” she whispered, “do you need some water or an ambulance?”
I sharply drew in a breath. The cold, dusty air of the storage room—and suddenly one clear, crystalline thought broke through the haze of grief.
My sense of smell. I wasn’t losing it because of age. My nose hadn’t betrayed me.
I was being poisoned methodically, cynically, to block my receptors—turning me into a crippled invalid so that I would sign my own death warrant.
I took my hands away from my face. The tears dried instantly. Instead, a coldness spread within me—the same professional coldness I used when mixing the most volatile and dangerous essences.
I rose to my feet. My movements became precise, measured.
I looked at Sierra. There was fear in her eyes, but also resolve. She had saved me.
“Thank you,” I said firmly, pulling out all the cash I had in my wallet, a large wad of bills. “Take this. It’s not payment for silence. It’s gratitude for my life. But you must stay quiet. Not a word to anyone, even if they ask. You saw nothing. I just forgot my phone.”
Sierra nodded, tucking the money into her apron pocket.
“I swear, Vivien. I believe you.”
I took my phone and left through the back entrance. The night air hit my face. But now I knew I wasn’t sick.
I was poisoned.
And that could be fixed.
I returned home not as a broken old woman, but as a general preparing for the decisive battle.
The house greeted me with silence. Marcus and Candace were probably celebrating their victory somewhere in the city. I didn’t go upstairs to the bedroom. I went straight to my sanctuary—the lab, located in the old carriage house wing of the estate.
It smelled the way my world should smell: dried herbs, alcohol, wax, and the faint aroma of old wood.
I locked the door with two turns of the key. I removed the silk scarf from my neck. At dinner, when I choked on a wave of dizziness, a drop of wine had stained the fabric. Now that small burgundy spot was my chief witness.
I turned on the fluorescent light above the workbench. My hands, which had been trembling an hour ago, now worked with surgical precision. I cut out the piece of cloth with the stain, placed it in a test tube, covered it with a solvent, and then started the centrifuge. The hum of the machine was soothing.
This was chemistry. Science.
There was no room for emotion here—only facts.
Half an hour later, I was looking at the results of the chromatography. The curves on the graph were familiar to me. It was a complex synthetic alkaloid, a powerful blocker of nerve endings in the nasopharynx. It didn’t kill the sense of smell permanently. It simply shut it down, creating the effect of swelling and atrophy.
But most importantly, it was eliminated from the body within forty-eight hours if intake stopped.
I smiled bitterly.
Marcus was an idiot.
He used a drug whose effects were reversible. He thought I would give up before I figured out what was happening.
I set the test tube aside. My grief had tempered, hardening into diamond clarity.
They want to see a weak, helpless old woman. They’ll get her.
I’ll play this role so well they’ll give me an Oscar.
First thing in the morning, I called my son. I deliberately made my voice sound shaky, weak, adding notes of panic.
“Marcus,” I croaked into the phone, barely containing my disgust.
“Mom, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
His voice was cheerful—too cheerful for a man worried about his mother.
“I—I woke up and I—” I sniffled for effect. “Coffee. I brewed the strongest coffee the way I like it, but I can’t smell anything. Nothing at all, Marcus. Not even the bitterness. It’s over. It’s all over.”
A pause hung on the other end of the line. I could almost see him smiling.
“Now, now, Mom, don’t cry. We knew this was coming. The doctor warned you.”
“I can’t live with this uncertainty anymore,” I wailed. “Bring the papers today. I don’t want to wait until next week. I’ll sign everything. Take the company. Do what you want. I want to go to the coast like you said.”
I sounded tired of fighting.
A mixture of surprise and delight slipped into his voice.
“Of course, Mom. Candace and I will come right after lunch. You’ve made the right decision. Rest. Don’t worry about a thing.”
I hung up and tossed the phone onto the sofa. The first move was made—by accelerating the events. I deprived him of time to think. He would act fast, carelessly, drunk on an easy victory. He would think I was completely broken and lose his guard.
Now I needed to cleanse my body. I knew what to do. I retrieved an old-school nebulizer from the lab safe. I brewed a powerful decoction of eucalyptus, mint, and St. John’s wort, a mixture that could punch through rock. I breathed the steam, feeling the hot moisture penetrate my lungs, washing out the poison.
But the most important thing was food.
I couldn’t eat anything in the house. If Marcus poisoned me with wine at the restaurant, he could have gotten into my kitchen.
I went to the kitchen with a large garbage bag. I opened the cabinets and ruthlessly swept everything away—cereals, teas, spices, open bottles of oil—everything he or Candace might have touched during their visits.
My eyes fell on a shelf with health supplements that Marcus had brought me a month ago.
“For your immune system, Mom,” he’d said then.
Pretty jars of vitamins. Herbal blends.
I opened one of the capsule containers, poured the contents into my palm. Ordinary white capsules. But something about them alarmed me. I looked closely at the label. At first glance, a common supplement—but I picked at the edge of the sticker with my fingernail. It peeled off too easily, as if it had been placed over another. I ripped the paper. Beneath the harmless name, Nature’s Strength, hid another logo. Stylish, minimalist, black and red.
I knew that logo.
It wasn’t just a competitor’s logo.
It was the mark of Synergy Chem’s subsidiary—the same chemical giant I’d been fighting for the purity of the industry for the past ten years.
But the most terrifying discovery wasn’t that.
Deep in the cabinet behind the jam jars, I found a small cardboard box. I pulled it out into the light. Inside lay rows of those same vials of clear liquid—one of which Marcus had used at the restaurant.
I picked one up. There was a tiny, almost invisible engraving on the glass.
Property of Synergy Chem Labs. Sample number 45. Not for sale.
The world went dark for a second.
Marcus hadn’t just bought poison on the black market. These vials were labeled with my greatest enemy’s logo. It meant they were supplying him. They had given him a weapon against his own mother.
It was a conspiracy.
They weren’t just waiting for me to step down. They were actively eliminating me, using my own son.
I gripped the vial so tightly the glass nearly cracked.
So, Synergy Chem. They think they’ve won.
I threw all the food into the outside bin, returned to the lab, and opened the emergency supply drawer. Canned goods, crackers, sealed water that I kept for long experiments when I didn’t want to leave my work trance. I ate a dry cracker and washed it down with water from a sealed bottle.
“Well,” I said into the emptiness of the lab, “if it’s war, then it’s war.”
I leaned over the nebulizer again. I needed my nose back. I had exactly four hours until they arrived.
Precisely at 2:00 that afternoon, the gravel on the driveway crunched under the tires of their heavy SUV. I watched them from behind the sheer curtain in the living room, trying to keep my breathing steady. Marcus stepped out first, adjusting his blazer. There was so much proprietary assurance in that gesture that it made me cringe. Candace fluttered out after him, carrying a large box from a bakery tied with a bright red ribbon.
They walked toward the house not as guests, but as conquerors, coming to accept a surrender.
I quickly sat down in an armchair, pulling an old knitted shawl over my shoulders. I hunched over, making my face look blank and slightly bewildered. When the door opened, I didn’t turn my head right away, pretending not to have heard the doorbell.
“Mom.”
Marcus’ voice boomed through the room as if he were addressing someone deaf.
“We’re here.”
I jumped deliberately, acting startled.
“Marcus? Is that you?”
I blinked, looking at them. “I—I dozed off.”
Candace came closer, and I smelled the suffocating scent of her perfume—something trendy, loud, and utterly tasteless.
“Vivien, we brought you cake.”
She spoke slowly, drawing out her words, the way one talks to a difficult child.
“Your favorite Napoleon. Let’s celebrate your new beginning.”
She placed the box on the coffee table in front of me.
“Thank you, dear,” I mumbled.
My hand trembled as I reached for the box.
“Only I can’t smell the vanilla at all. I used to be able to tell if the cream was fresh from the doorway, and now—nothing.”
“It’s all right, Mom,” Marcus interrupted, impatiently, tapping the folder of documents against his thigh. “The taste is still there. Why don’t we go to the kitchen for a knife and some water, and you look over the papers? I put them right here next to you. The pen is here, too.”
They exchanged glances and left the room. I heard their footsteps receding toward the kitchen, followed by muffled laughter.
As soon as the door closed behind them, my old-woman feebleness vanished. I swiftly opened the cake box. The cream shone with an unnaturally white glaze. I pulled a tiny sterile container from my pocket that I had prepared in advance and quickly scraped the top layer of frosting from a decorative rose into it. The lid clicked shut. The container disappeared into the folds of my shawl.
Then I grabbed the cake and bolted toward the fireplace where embers were still glowing—no, that would leave traces. The bathroom was adjacent. I ran inside, dumped the contents of the box into the toilet, and flushed. The water noisily carried the sweet mass away.
Returning, I smeared the remaining cream on the plate, making it look as though I had greedily eaten it with my hands, and dropped a few crumbs onto my shawl.
When they returned with the knife and a carafe of water, I was sitting in the same pose, but with an expression of profound disgust on my face. The plate with the smeared cream was in front of me.
“Mom, did you already eat?”
Candace sounded surprised.
I pushed the plate away, nearly knocking it over.
“Disgusting,” I cried out tearfully. “It’s awful. It smells like burnt rubber and tastes like old plastic. Are you trying to poison me, or has my nose completely gone crazy? All I smell is smoke. Smoke everywhere.”
I saw them relax. My raving fit perfectly into their narrative: the old perfumer’s brain was short-circuiting, interpreting smells as distorted hallucinations.
“Calm down, Mom.”
Marcus came closer, opening the folder of documents. The first page read GENERAL POWER OF ATTORNEY in large letters.
“It’s just your nerves. You need to sign the papers and we’ll leave. You’ll lie down and rest. The doctor will come tomorrow.”
He handed me a luxurious fountain pen. I took it and my hand trembled so violently that the cap fell to the floor.
“Yes, yes, of course,” I mumbled, leaning over the table.
A heavy crystal vase full of water stood nearby.
I pretended that while trying to hold the pen, my elbow jerked awkwardly to the side and crashed into the vase.
The heavy crystal tipped over. A quart of water splashed directly onto the document spread out on the table. The ink on the official paper instantly bled. The paper became soaked and wrinkled.
“Oh goodness!” I shrieked, jumping back. “Oh, my hands, my stupid old hands. Marcus, forgive me. I’m so clumsy.”
Marcus froze, staring at the ruined power of attorney. His face turned crimson. Candace gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.
“Mom—”
he yelled, then immediately caught himself, remembering his role.
“Damn it. You ruined all the seals. This document is invalid now.”
“I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry.”
I began frantically wiping the water with the edge of my shawl, only smearing the mess more.
“I didn’t mean to. I’m so dizzy.”
Marcus snatched the wet sheets from under my hands with disgust. Water dripped from them.
“Fine. Fine.”
He took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure.
“It’s nothing. It’s just paper. We’ll print a new one.”
“The notary is closed for the day,” I said quickly, looking up at him with guilty eyes. “The day after tomorrow,” I added. “The day after tomorrow is the board of directors meeting. Remember? You said everyone would be there. I’ll sign it right there in front of everyone to make it official, so everyone sees that I’m handing over control of my own free will. That would be beautiful, wouldn’t it?”
Marcus exchanged glances with Candace. In their eyes, I read irritation, but also agreement. A public transfer of power with witnesses. That would indeed be safer. No one could challenge the signature afterward.
“All right, Mom,” he gritted out. “Friday. At the board meeting. But until then, you stay home and take your medicine. Clear?”
“Of course, son.”
I gave him the warmest, most maternal smile I could muster.
“I’ll be a good girl.”
They didn’t leave immediately. Marcus said he needed to make an important call and went out into the garden to avoid the dust. I stayed in the living room, watched by Candace’s sympathetic gaze, though she immediately buried her face in her phone as soon as I turned away.
I slowly, shuffling my feet, went upstairs to the second floor, entered my bedroom, and immediately, like a cat, silently slipped to the window facing the garden. The window was slightly ajar. Below on the terrace, Marcus paced. He had switched to speakerphone, confident that his half-deaf and half-demented mother wouldn’t hear anything but the wind.
But my hearing was as sharp as my mind.
“Yes, everything is going according to plan.”
Marcus’s voice was loud and boastful.
“The old woman is really bad. Just threw a fit over a cake. She’s smelling burnt rubber. Her brain is disintegrating. She’ll sign everything in front of you on Friday.”
A coarse barking laugh came from the speaker. I didn’t recognize the voice, but the tone was all business. Cynical.
“Excellent, Sterling. Just make sure she doesn’t pull any tricks. We need those assets clean.”
“Don’t worry,” Marcus scoffed. “She can barely hold a fork. The queen of sense has turned into a wreck. I broke her. It was easier than I thought.”
I gripped the windowsill so hard my knuckles turned white. Broke me. That’s what you think, my boy.
“What about the timeline?”
the voice from the phone asked.
“Right after the signing,” Marcus replied, and his next words made my heart stop.
“The tankers can roll in Friday night. The warehouses will be open. We’ll flush everything over the weekend.”
“The entire volume?”
the interlocutor clarified.
“But those are unique oils, some aged for thirty years. They should go to auction.”
“Forget the aging,” Marcus cut in. “I need the cash here and now to cover my casino debts and invest in your franchise. Flush everything as technical raw material. Empty the containers. On Monday, we start bottling your Fresh Breeze.”
I stumbled back from the window.
Tankers.
He wasn’t just selling the company. He was planning to destroy the heart of my empire. My oils. My essences. Collected drop by drop for decades. The sandalwood that had been maturing since the ’90s. The rose oil worth more than gold.
He intended to drain them into industrial tankers as waste, to make room for a cheap chemical substitute.
This was not betrayal.
It was murder.
The murder of art. The murder of memory. The murder of a soul.
He wanted quick money. He wanted to dump my legacy down the drain of history for gambling debts and a fast buck.
I slowly sank onto the vanity stool. The fear was gone.
Only icy fury remained.
He thought I was weak. He thought I was old.
Tankers are coming on Friday.
Well, Marcus, a surprise awaits you on Friday.
You wanted to flush my oils?
We’ll see who flushes whom.
That same night, when the moon hid behind thick clouds, I slipped out of the house through the back door. I wore a dark coat and a scarf covering my face. In my pocket were two incriminating pieces of evidence: the vial from the Synergy Chem lab and the container with the frosting scrapings. I walked not to the main gates, but to the old side gate deep in the garden that led to the woods.
There, on the dirt road, an old nondescript pickup truck waited with its lights off. Preston sat behind the wheel, nervously drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. We had known each other for forty years. He was my chief supplier of rare raw materials, a man who could get ambergris from closed reserves and sandalwood from under the earth. He was the only person I could trust with my life.
I got into the passenger seat, and he immediately turned on the dim interior light.
“Vivien.”
His voice was hoarse with anxiety.
“You look determined. What’s wrong? You said on the phone it was a matter of life and death.”
“Not just life, Press,” I replied, placing my finds on the dashboard. “It’s a matter of honor. Look at this.”
He picked up the vial, held it to his eyes, squinted, then pulled out a portable analyzer from the glove compartment—an expensive and rare piece of equipment, but necessary in our business. He dropped a spot of the liquid onto the sensor. The device beeped and numbers scrolled across the screen.
Preston frowned. His thick gray eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose.
“This isn’t perfume, Vivien. This is industrial chemistry. Third-generation receptor blocker. A Synergy Chem Corporation development.”
“I knew it.”
I exhaled, feeling everything inside me turn cold.
“Marcus is working with them. Synergy Chem.”
Preston went pale.
“But they—they make toilet bowl cleaners and laundry detergent. It’s cheap, aggressive chemicals. Why do they want you?”
“They don’t want me, Press.”
I said it softly.
“They want my name. My bottles. My reputation. They want to sell their chemical sludge under the Sterling Sense brand to raise the price ten times over. And Marcus—Marcus is selling them everything. On Friday, they plan to haul away my oils.”
Preston slammed his fist on the steering wheel.
“The oils we collected drop by drop. Your ’85 iris, your oud—that’s sacrilege.”
“We won’t let it happen,” I said softly. “I need your help. On Friday morning, before the board meeting, I need you and your crew to do something at the warehouse.”
I leaned in and quickly, in a whisper, laid out my plan. Preston listened attentively, nodding occasionally. A spark of excitement lit up his eyes.
“Risky, Vivian. Very risky.”
“If Marcus checks—”
“He won’t check.”
I kept my voice calm.
“He’s too busy counting the money he doesn’t have yet. He thinks I’m a senile old woman. We’ll play on that.”
Preston gripped my hand with his rough, warm palm.
“I’ll do it. The oils will be safe. And you be careful. That boy—your son—he crossed a line.”
I returned home as stealthily as I had left, but sleep wouldn’t come. I went down to the lab. I needed to prepare for the board of directors meeting. It wouldn’t be just a meeting. It would be a performance, and the props had to be flawless.
I took out two absolutely identical crystal decanters, heavy and with gold engraving. Into one, I poured clean water tinted with food coloring to the shade of aged bourbon. This would be the water for the guests.
Into the second decanter, I began to assemble a composition—but it was not perfume. I wasn’t looking for harmony.
I was looking for truth.
I mixed the base: the same industrial solvent that Synergy Chem used, a sharp, acrid smell that made the eyes water. To it, I added a drop of the blocker my son was using to poison me. And finally, the top note—a synthetic alpine fresh scent, cheap and cloying, the kind that smells like public restrooms.
The resulting aroma was monstrous. It was the embodiment of everything I despised.
It was the smell of betrayal.
I closed the decanter with a stopper. The liquid inside looked noble, shimmering with an amber light, like the finest vintage fragrance. But within it lurked the death of everything pure.
It was almost dawn when the first rays of the sun touched the treetops, and I went up to the study, where Marcus—who had stayed the night in the guest room—had dropped his briefcase. He was so confident in his impunity that he hadn’t even locked it.
I knew I shouldn’t, but I had to see everything with my own eyes to be absolutely sure.
I opened the briefcase. Inside were stacks of papers, draft contracts. I sifted through them until I found a thick folder labeled REBRANDING / BRAND BOOK. With trembling fingers, I opened it.
On the first page was my logo—an elegant golden S entwined with jasmine vines. My pride. A symbol of quality.
Across it was a bold red X.
I clamped my hand over my mouth to keep from crying out. It was vulgar. It was crass. Bright acid colors. Toxic green and orange. A heading in a cheap rounded font:
STERLING FRESH CLEAN.
Below were product sketches. My legendary handmade bottles, which once held Evening in Venice and Golden Autumn, were now filled with bright green sludge. The labels read:
ALL-PURPOSE TUB AND TILE CLEANER. KILLS 99% OF GERMS.
PIPE DECLOGGER POWER SCENT.
They were going to use my name—the name of a great perfumer—to sell pipe cleaners.
The scent of clean by Vivien Sterling, read the slogan.
The tears dried up. Everything inside me was scorched to ash. There was no more maternal pity. No more doubt.
Marcus wasn’t just selling the business.
He was publicly defiling my memory, turning the work of my life into a laughingstock. He wanted my name to be associated with bleach and sewage.
I closed the folder, carefully placing it back in the briefcase exactly as it had been. I walked to the mirror in the hall. The reflection staring back at me was not a tired woman, but cold, rational fury.
“You wanted fresh, clean, son?” I whispered to my reflection. “You’re going to get a clean-out you will never forget.”
On Friday morning, I put on my best suit. Not a mournful black. Not an old woman gray. I chose a velvet pantsuit in a deep wine color—the color of authority, strength, and blood. I dabbed a drop of true perfume on my wrist.
Vengeance.
A scent I had never released for sale.
Bitter wormwood. Cold steel. Black pepper.
When I came down for breakfast, Marcus was already waiting for me. He was nervous, constantly checking his watch.
“Mom, are you ready?”
he asked without looking me in the eye.
“The car is waiting. We need to go.”
“Of course, darling.”
I gave him the warmest, most maternal smile I could muster.
“I’m ready to sign whatever you say. I just want this to be over.”
I carried a basket containing the two decanters wrapped in a napkin.
“What’s that?”
Marcus asked, suspicious.
“Oh, just water and some of my old herbal infusion.”
I waved him off.
“In case I feel faint during the meeting. You know my throat gets dry.”
He nodded, losing interest.
We got into the car. All the way to the office, I looked out the window, memorizing every turn, every tree. I was not saying goodbye to the world. I was saying goodbye to my illusions about family.
Ahead was the board of directors meeting.
Ahead was my stage.
And the curtain was already rising.
The conference room doors swung open for me, and I walked in—not as a sacrificial lamb, but as the mistress returning to her domain. My wine-colored velvet suit fit perfectly. My back was straight as a string, my chin held high. I heard Marcus scuttling nervously behind me, trying to rush past and open the door that I had already opened myself.
Silence fell in the room. Five men in expensive gray suits sat around the long oval mahogany table. These were them—the executive directors of Synergy Chem—men whose faces were as sterile and lifeless as the products they manufactured.
Marcus froze at the threshold. I saw his Adam’s apple bob. He had expected to see me in the shapeless cardigan he himself had slipped onto me that morning, hunched and shuffling. My confident, regal appearance knocked the ground out from under him for a second. Panic flickered in his eyes.
“Gentlemen,” my voice rang out clearly and strongly, echoing off the glass walls of the office, “I apologize for the slight delay. Traffic.”
One of the men, seated at the head of the table, heavy-set with a fleshy face and cold fishlike eyes, slowly rose. This was Wallace King, the CEO of Synergy Chem. He gave me an appraising look that held not a drop of respect, only calculation.
“Vivien,” he said with a slight smirk. “We are pleased your health allowed you to join us.”
Marcus said you were feeling unwell.
Marcus immediately jumped in, wringing his hands nervously.
“Yes, yes. Mom’s having a surprisingly good day today. A moment of clarity. Doctors say this happens right before—well, you understand. But pay no mind to her appearance. Inside, it’s all complicated. She confuses names, forgets where she is.”
He spoke about me in the third person, as if I weren’t there, as if I were an antique cabinet that needed to be carefully removed so as not to scratch the floor.
“We understand,” King nodded, gesturing to the chair at the head of the table. “Please sit down. Let’s not drag this out. Time is money.”
I walked to my place, sat down, and placed my hands on the table, fingers interlaced.
They did not tremble.
Marcus nervously laid copies of the contract in front of everyone. Before me, he placed the thickest copy and the same fountain pen I had dropped at home.
“So,” King began, not even looking at me but addressing only Marcus, “the agreement for strategic partnership and asset merger. We keep the brand. You receive a seat on the unified company’s board of directors, and of course, the agreed-upon sum in a lump payment within three days. All terms are agreed upon.”
Partnership. What a beautiful word for takeover and destruction.
I turned the page. The text was cleverly drafted. Not a word about reprofiling production. Not a word about Fresh Clean. Only dry legal terms: product line optimization, market expansion.
I remained silent. I just sat there looking at them—at their slick faces, their expensive watches, and how they impatiently tapped their fingers on the table. They were waiting for a signature. To them, I was just an obstacle, an annoying inconvenience that needed to be eliminated with a stroke of a pen.
Marcus leaned toward me. He smelled of sweat and fear.
“Mom,” he whispered, pointing a finger to the signature line, “right here. Just sign and we’ll go home. I’ll buy you ice cream.”
Ice cream. He really thought I was feeble-minded.
I slowly raised my eyes to him. They did not hold the murky haze he had become accustomed to seeing in recent days.
“Don’t rush me, son,” I said calmly. “I will sign. But first—”
I paused.
The room grew even quieter. Even the air conditioner seemed to stop humming.
“First, I want to observe a tradition,” I continued, surveying everyone present.
King frowned.
“What tradition? There’s nothing like that in the regulations.”
“The tradition of the Sterling House,” I said firmly. “Every time a new partner enters our family, we perform a symbolic ritual.”
Marcus rolled his eyes.
“Mom, stop it. There are no rituals. Gentlemen, she’s making things up.”
“There is,” I interrupted him, and a steel tone rang in my voice that forced him to silence. “The founder’s test. My grandfather performed it. My father performed it. And I will not break this custom—especially today, when I hand over the work of my entire life into new hands.”
I reached for my basket, which I had placed on the floor by the chair leg. I pulled out the two decanters and a row of small tasting glasses. The faces of the Synergy Chem directors stretched out. They exchanged bewildered and irritated glances. They were financiers, chemists, technologists, marketers. They were used to dealing with numbers and formulas, not the mysticism of old perfumers.
“Is this a tasting?”
One of them, young and pimply, sneered.
“We don’t drink on the job.”
“Oh, this isn’t for drinking.”
I smiled with my lips only.
“This is for the nose. You are buying a perfume house, gentlemen. You must understand exactly what you are acquiring.”
I placed the decanters on the polished surface of the table. The liquid in them glittered in the light.
“The condition is simple,” I said. “Before I put pen to paper, I ask you, Mr. King—and you, Marcus, as my successor—to pass a blind test. Identify the main notes of the aroma contained in this decanter.”
Marcus went pale. He knew he had no talent. He had avoided the lab all his life, preferring offices and parties, but to refuse now in front of the buyers would be to admit his incompetence.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered. “Why this circus?”
“It’s not a circus,” I countered softly. “It is respect for the product. If you, gentlemen, intend to develop the Sterling brand, you must be able to distinguish a rose from manure. Or am I wrong?”
King snorted. He was confident. After all, what was so hard about smelling perfume?
“Fine.”
He leaned back in his chair with a grand air.
“If that’s the price of your signature, Vivien, let’s smell your little water.”
I took the first decanter—the one containing the hellish mixture of solvent, blocker, and cheap scent. I poured a small amount of the liquid onto blotters, special paper strips, and extended them to Marcus and King.
“Please inhale deeply. Don’t rush. Tell me what you feel. What is the soul of this fragrance?”
Marcus took the strip with a trembling hand. He held it to his nose cautiously, as if expecting a sting. King did the same, but with an expression of bored superiority.
I held my breath now.
Everything would be decided now.
Marcus drew the air in.
His face remained completely calm. No reaction. Not the slightest hint that he had just inhaled acid chemical rubbish.
King also sniffed, furrowing his brow in deep thought.
“Hm. Floral. Definitely a little sweet.”
I looked at them, and cold triumph spread inside me.
Marcus felt nothing. The blocker he had been slipping me had apparently affected him too—perhaps through micro particles on his hands, or maybe he accidentally inhaled the fumes himself when preparing my treat.
Or more likely, he was simply lying, trying to guess.
And King—King, the head of the chemical giant—had just called the smell of paint solvent sweet and floral.
This meant one thing.
His nose had long been burned out by the fumes of his own factories.
He was incompetent.
Both of them were blind kittens in the world of scent.
“Well, Marcus,” I encouraged my son. “Your version.”
Marcus swallowed, his eyes darting around the room.
“Uh… rose and sandalwood. Yes, definitely sandalwood. Classic.”
Silence hung in the room.
I slowly set the decanter aside.
Rose and sandalwood.
I repeated the words, letting them echo.
“Interesting.”
I rose from my seat. My face no longer expressed warmth or feigned dementia. Now they were looking at Vivien Sterling—the legend—who had just caught the fraudsters red-handed.
“Mr. King,” I said in an icy tone, “you just called the smell of S40 industrial solvent mixed with a neurotoxic blocker floral.”
“And you, Marcus?”
I turned to my son.
“You found sandalwood in it?”
Their faces elongated.
“What?” King muttered, looking at the blotter in his hand. “What solvent?”
“The very one your company supplies for the manufacture of cleaning products,” I snapped. “And the very blocker my son has been using to poison me for the past two weeks to force me to sign this contract.”
Someone in the room gasped.
Marcus leaped up, knocking over his chair.
“You’re delusional. She’s crazy. I told you. Call security—”
“Sit.”
My shout was like the crack of a whip.
Marcus, startled, plopped back down.
“I’m not finished. You failed the test, gentlemen. You have proven that you haven’t the slightest idea what you are buying. But the funniest part isn’t that.”
I leaned over the table, looking straight into King’s eyes.
“The funniest part is that you are about to buy a dud. You think you are buying warehouses full of precious oils? You think your tankers will haul away the gold reserve of perfumery on Friday?”
I laughed, a short, hard sound.
“You are mistaken.”
“What do you mean, mistaken?”
King’s voice cracked, losing its corporate assurance.
He slowly lowered the blotter to the table, but his gaze remained fixed on my lips.
Marcus jumped up again. His face was blotched with red patches of rage and fear.
“Don’t listen to her!” he screamed, spraying saliva. “It’s all lies. She’s crazy. Senility, dementia. Mom, stop this show immediately. Sign the papers or we’re leaving.”
I didn’t even turn my head toward him. I continued to look at King—the director of Synergy Chem—a man accustomed to buying everything and everyone.
“If I am crazy, gentlemen,” I said quietly, yet so distinctly that every word dropped into the silence of the room like a heavy stone, “if my mind is clouded, as my loving son claims, then I am legally incompetent. Any signature of mine on this contract will be contested in court. We will wait for the appointment of a state medical examiner. That will take months.”
I held his gaze.
“Are you prepared to wait months, Mr. King?”
King shifted his gaze to Marcus. In his eyes, there was no more partnership warmth—only the cold calculation of a predator who senses his prey escaping.
“Sit down, Marcus,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Let her talk.”
Marcus slumped back into his chair, clenching his fists until his knuckles were white. He was in a trap he had built himself.
To admit I was sane meant letting me speak the truth.
To admit I was insane meant losing the contract.
Thank you. I nodded slightly.
“Now let’s return to the essence of the deal. You are buying Sterling Sense for its assets—for the warehouses full of unique essential oils aged for decades. You want the raw materials that cannot be produced in a lab so you can flush that gold down the drain and free up the containers for your chemicals. Am I correct?”
A heavy silence fell in the room. No one answered, but their darting eyes told me everything.
“Well, then,” I continued, drawing myself up to my full height, “three nights ago, my old friend Preston’s trucks hauled away the entire contents of the main vault. Every ampule, every barrel, every gram of jasmine and iris absolute.”
Marcus’s face turned ash-gray.
“What?” he whispered. “That’s impossible. Security—”
“Security?” I scoffed. “Security works for me, son. They work for Sterling Sense, not for traitors. They opened the gates and helped with the loading. At this very moment, my oils are in a secure, climate-controlled bunker whose location is known only to Preston and myself.”
I turned to King and spread my hands.
“And what’s left in the warehouses, you ask? Don’t worry, they aren’t empty. My lab assistants filled all the containers with tinted water, with the addition of a small amount of—shall we say—Alpine Fresh air freshener that I picked up at the supermarket.”
I took the second decanter from the table, the one with water tinted like bourbon.
“This is what you are buying, gentlemen. Water. Expensive, beautiful water in beautiful barrels. You can certainly buy the brand. You can buy the factory walls. But the soul of Sterling Sense—its fragrances—will not be yours. You are buying an empty shell.”
King slowly stood up. His face was flushed with blood. He slammed the contract folder onto the table.
“This is fraud,” he bellowed, pointing a finger at Marcus. “You said everything was clean. You guaranteed the assets.”
Marcus sat as if stunned by a blow. He looked at me, and in his eyes I saw not remorse but animal terror. The terror of ruin.
“Mom,” he stammered. “Why? You—you bankrupted us. Those are millions.”
“I didn’t bankrupt us,” I replied harshly. “I saved us. I saved my name from disgrace. I will not allow toilet bowl cleaner to be written on my bottles. I will not allow the work of my life to turn into a chemical dump.”
“To hell with your life’s work!” Marcus suddenly screamed, jumping up. The mask of the loving son had completely fallen away. “Who needs your smelly oils? The world has changed. People need chemicals—cheap and fast. You’re an old fool living in the last century.”
He snatched a heavy paperweight from the table and raised his hand, but immediately dropped it when he saw King’s bodyguards tense up.
“You deceived us, Sterling,” King said quietly. “You sold us air.”
“I didn’t know!” Marcus shrieked. “She planned everything. She pretended to be sick. She lied.”
“Lied?” I echoed. “And who was slipping me the blocker in the wine? Who laughed at me in the restaurant, mimicking a paralytic? Who negotiated with Synergy Chem behind my back, using their own poisons against his own mother?”
I pulled a small remote control from my pocket.
“Did you think I had no proof? Did you think these were just the words of a bitter old woman?”
I pressed a button. From the conference room speakers embedded in the ceiling, a voice rang out—clear, loud, and recognizable.
“She thinks it’s old age. The silly old fool. A couple more doses and she’ll forget what a rose even smells like.”
Then Candace’s laugh, and Marcus again:
“By Friday, we’ll be pouring industrial floor cleaner into her crystal perfume bottles.”
The room became so quiet that you could hear the projector humming.
The Synergy Chem directors froze.
This was not just a breach of business ethics.
It was a felony.
And they were accessories who supplied the poison.
Marcus recoiled toward the wall. He stared at the speakers, his eyes wide with horror.
“It’s a fake,” he whispered. “It’s not true.”
“It’s the security footage from the Charleston Club,” I said. “And I have the original. And I have the lab report confirming the substance in my body. And I have the vial with your logo, Mr. King, that I found in my son’s belongings.”
King went even paler. He understood. He understood that this was no longer about a failed deal. This was about a massive scandal that would bury Synergy Chem’s reputation forever.
Poisoners. Corporate killers.
“We have nothing to do with this,” he said quickly, gathering his papers. “These are your family issues. We did not know he was using our samples in this manner. The deal is off. We’re leaving.”
“Stop!”
Marcus roared, lunging toward the doors and blocking their path.
“You can’t leave. We have a letter of intent. You promised me money. I need that money.”
He was pathetic, frightening, and ready for anything.
“Get out of the way, idiot,” King snapped, nodding to his security.
But at that moment, the conference room doors burst open from the outside. Standing on the threshold were not secretaries with coffee.
There were people in uniform.
Police officers.
And in front of them all, a detective I had known for years.
And my faithful Preston.
“Marcus Sterling?” the detective asked, stepping forward. “You are under arrest on suspicion of attempted murder and causing serious bodily harm.”
Marcus froze. He looked at me. His gaze was a mix of hatred and childish resentment.
“You—you called the cops on your own son.”
“I don’t have a son,” I answered, and my voice did not shake, although my heart was breaking. “I had a son, but he died the moment he decided to pour poison into his mother’s glass. You are just a stranger who tried to steal my life.”
The police officers approached Marcus and the handcuffs clicked. The sound was dry and short, like a gunshot.
King tried to slip past, but a second officer blocked his way.
“King, you’ll also have to come with us. We have questions regarding the origin of the chemical substances found on the suspect.”
The room filled with noise, commands, commotion. I stood motionless by the table, resting my hand on the back of the chair. I watched Marcus being led away. He did not look back.
I had won.
I saved the company. I saved the name.
But the price of that victory was terrifying.
I was alone.
Or was I?
I looked at Preston, who stood in the doorway, nodding encouragingly at me. I remembered Sierra, the waitress who was not afraid to tell the truth. My legacy was saved, and now I had to rebuild it—not on blood, but on honesty.
The heavy oak doors closed behind my son, cutting off his hysterical screams from the sterile silence of the conference room. The click of the lock sounded like the final chord in the symphony I had been writing for the last three days. The heavy, suffocating odor of the chemical mix I had poured into the glasses lingered in the room—the scent of betrayal mixed with the cheap aroma of air freshener.
I slowly sank into the chair. The adrenaline that had kept me straight and rigid began to recede, giving way to lean exhaustion, but it was too early to relax. King and his entourage were still standing by the table. They looked like beaten dogs driven into a corner. All their pretense of metropolitan businessmen had fallen away, exposing plain, sticky fear. They shifted their gaze from the police officers blocking the exits to me, and one question was in their eyes.
How do we get out of here?
“This is a misunderstanding,” King began, and his voice—usually thick and commanding—broke. He nervously adjusted his jacket. “Vivien, we—we truly did not know the magnitude. Your son presented us with a completely different picture. We are bona fide purchasers.”
I looked at him with a long, unblinking stare.
“Bona fide?” I asked softly.
Preston, standing next to the police officer, stepped forward. In his hands, he held not the contract folder, but a simple cardboard laboratory one.
“Bona fide purchasers do not supply neurotoxins to private individuals,” Preston said grimly.
He approached the table and threw the folder in front of King. The papers scattered across the polished surface.
“What is this?”
King flinched as if the folder were radioactive.
“Those are the chromatography results,” I replied, nodding toward the documents. “From the frosting on the cake Marcus brought me the day before yesterday, and the wine he gave me at the restaurant.”
I saw one of the Synergy Chem directors flinch. They were chemists. They understood what this meant.
“In these samples,” the detective continued, stepping into the circle of light from the chandelier, “we found your patented receptor blocker, Series S45. The very one that has not been released for open sale and is used only in your internal labs to test environmental aggression.”
King went blue with fear.
“This—this is a coincidence. A stolen batch. We’ll file a report for theft.”
“Don’t bother,” I cut him off. “The vials found in Marcus’ belongings have inventory numbers, and I’m certain that the investigation will quickly determine exactly who signed those samples out of the warehouse.”
I rose and walked to the window. Below, the red and blue lights of patrol cars flashed by the main entrance. The city went about its life. People hurried about their business, unaware that here on the twelfth floor, someone’s life—and someone’s empire of lies—had just collapsed.
“You didn’t just try to buy my company for a pittance,” I said, looking out at the city but addressing them. “You armed my son against me. You gave him the tool to drive me insane. To turn me into a vegetable incapable of fighting back. This is not business, gentlemen. This is accessory to a capital crime.”
King slumped into his chair, holding his head in his hands. He understood the deal wasn’t just off.
This was the end of Synergy Chem.
A scandal of this magnitude would wipe out their stock overnight.
Poisoners. Killer corporation.
“Take them away,” I waved my hand wearily.
The police began escorting the delegation out. They walked silently, heads down, trying not to look my way. King stopped for a second as he passed.
“He would have sold you anyway,” he rasped spitefully. “If not to us, then to someone else. He hated your perfumes. He said they smelled of mothballs and death.”
“He was wrong,” I replied calmly. “They smell of eternity. And now it’s your career that smells of death.”
The doors closed.
Only Preston, the detective, and I remained in the room. I walked to the table where the two decanters stood—the one with the toxic mix and the one with the tinted water. I picked up the glass from which Marcus had sniffed the test sample. He had never sipped from it, only smelled it, but the scent remained on the glass. Sharp. Chemical. Dead.
Preston came up to me and gently placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Vivien, how are you?”
“I don’t know, Press,” I answered honestly. “I feel like my skin has been peeled off.”
“You won,” he said firmly. “You saved the main thing. You saved the soul of this house, and the skin will grow back. You are strong.”
I looked at the ruined contract lying on the floor.
“Detective,” I addressed the officer, “when can I retrieve my warehouses from arrest? I need to work.”
The officer looked up, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
“Vivien, your son was just arrested. Maybe you should take a rest. A retreat. Some peace and quiet.”
I smiled bitterly. It was the same song Marcus and Candace had sung to me.
Rest. Go away. You’re old.
“No,” I said, straightening the cuffs of my velvet jacket. “Rest is for those who have finished their journey. And I seem to have just had the position of chief technologist open up, and I need to check the preservation of the oils we evacuated. Iris does not like humidity fluctuations.”
I picked up my purse. My hands were no longer shaking. My mind was ringing with clarity. The pain of losing my son hadn’t vanished. It was curled up like a heavy cold stone at the bottom of my heart. But I knew how to cope with it. I would turn that pain into a fragrance. I would distill it, cleanse it of bitterness, and turn it into art.
“Let’s go, Preston,” I said, heading for the exit. “We need to stop by and get Sierra.”
“The waitress?” he asked, surprised.
“My new apprentice,” I corrected him. “That girl has something my son lacked. She has a conscience. And her nose? We’ll train her nose.”
We left the room, leaving the smell of solvent and fear behind. Ahead was a long corridor bathed in light, and at the end of it, I could already feel the scent of freedom. It smelled of ozone after a thunderstorm and bitter almond—a harsh but honest smell, a smell one could live with.
Six months is a long time for a person, but an instant for a good perfume. During that time, the scandal that had rocked the nation subsided, leaving behind only an echo in newspaper headlines and lengthy court transcripts. The case of the corporate poisoners became a case study for law schools, and the Sterling Sense brand soared to unprecedented heights. People did not turn away from me. On the contrary, they saw in my story a symbol of resilience. My bottles flew off the shelves—not just for the scent, but for the legend of the woman who would not be broken.
The dawn sun had just touched the tops of the old linen trees in my garden. The air was cool and damp, saturated with the aromas of the waking earth. I walked between the rows of jasmine bushes, touching the white, still-closed buds with my fingers. I wore a simple linen apron. My hands were in the dirt and I felt utterly happy.
“Don’t rush,” I said quietly, stopping near a sprawling bush. “Look, Sierra, see this bud? It’s slightly yellowish at the base.”
Next to me, in a similar work apron, stood Sierra. In six months, she had changed. The stoop of the waitress accustomed to serving was gone. A spark of interest appeared in her eyes, and her movements became fluid. Careful. She leaned toward the flower, squinting.
“I see it, Vivien. That means it’s overripe, right?”
“No.”
I smiled.
“It means it has more indole in it, a heavy animalic note. If you pick it now, it will give the fragrance depth and sensuality. But that snow white one over there will give a light green freshness. Perfumery is a balance between purity and decay, between heaven and earth.”
Sierra carefully plucked the flower with two fingers and held it to her nose. She closed her eyes, inhaling the aroma.
“Bitter honey,” she whispered. “And a bit of wet asphalt.”
I laughed.
“Excellent. You have wonderful associations. Wet asphalt is ozone. You are starting to hear the world, Sierra.”
I looked at her and saw more than just an apprentice. I saw the future. Sierra did not have my education nor a famous surname, but she had something that money could not buy—honesty and a thirst for knowledge. She absorbed knowledge like a sponge. She was the first to arrive in the lab and the last to leave.
Marcus.
Marcus was in the past. The court sentenced him to seven years in federal prison. I did not attend the sentencing. I sent my lawyer. I was told he cried and begged for forgiveness, but I knew the price of those tears. They were tears of self-pity.
Candace filed for divorce a week after his arrest. She tried to sue for a share of the assets, claiming she had been misled, but my lawyers crushed her in court. She was left with nothing, returning to the same provincial hole Marcus had pulled her from.
I did not gloat. I simply had no time for it.
We returned to the lab with full baskets of flowers. Here, among the retorts and distillers, was my real life. A small, elegant, clear glass vial stood on the table with no label, no gold—just a shape perfect in its simplicity. Inside was a liquid the color of the morning sky.
“Is this it?” Sierra asked with reverence.
“Yes.”
I nodded.
“The final blend. I’ve been working on it all these months.”
I picked up the vial. It was not just a scent. It was my confession. I blended in the cold wormwood of loneliness and the bitter pepper of betrayal. But in the heart of the fragrance, I placed the same jasmine we gathered at dawn—a symbol of new hope. And the base, I made the base from vetiver and oakmoss—roots, strong, unbreakable roots that hold the tree even in the fiercest storm.
I named it Clarity.
I dabbed a little on my wrist and offered my arm to Sierra.
“What do you say?”
She inhaled and her eyes widened.
“It’s… it’s like a drink of cold water on a hot day. It’s like the truth, Vivien. Sharp, but necessary.”
“Exactly.”
I smiled, feeling warmth spread inside me.
“The truth is always a little bitter, but it heals.”
I walked to my workbench. There, in a beautiful frame, was a photo of Marcus as a child. I looked at it for a second, then flipped the frame face down. Next to it lay an old crumpled piece of paper—the very general power of attorney I had never signed. A copy the lawyers had returned to me from the case files as evidence.
I picked up a heavy metal lighter, clicked the flint, and a flame sprang up. I held the fire to the corner of the document. The paper caught reluctantly, but then the fire licked the seal, devouring the words: I hereby transfer all rights. I relinquish property.
I dropped the burning sheet into a large crystal ashtray. Sierra and I stood and watched my son’s ambition, his greed, and his betrayal blacken and curl into a tube. The smoke rose in a thin stream, mixing with the scent of Clarity.
“Vivien,” Sierra asked quietly, “don’t you feel bad that you have no heir left by blood?”
I looked at her—at her hands stained with soil, at her bright eyes, at her sincere face.
“Blood is just a biological fluid, Sierra,” I replied, watching the last shred of paper burn out. “Sometimes it’s rotten.”
I took the stopper and, with a quiet glass clink, sealed the vial of Clarity.
“My legacy is not in my blood,” I whispered, feeling an incredible lightness. “My legacy is in my spirit. And it is now here—in this room, in you, in this bottle. I am free, Sierra. And I am only just beginning to live.”
That’s the story, friends. A story of betrayal by the closest people, of strength of spirit, and of how it is never too late to start over, even when it seems like the whole world is collapsing. Vivian Sterling went through a hell created by her own son, but emerged from it not as a victim, but as a victor.
But let’s be honest: what would you have done in her place? Could you have sent your own son to prison knowing it would ruin his life forever? Or would a mother’s heart have faltered and would you have tried to conceal everything—forgive and give him a second chance? Write in the comments. I am incredibly interested in your opinion. Some might say she is cruel, that a mother must forgive, while others might say that evil must be punished regardless of kinship. Whose side are you on?
