A Wrong Surrogate for the CEO-Chapter 54: Poisoned

Lara woke up late. It was weird, seeing as she had already set an alarm to wake up earlier in order to get to work as soon as she could.

She decided that she must have been stressed, and she got ready for work.

When Lara walked downstairs, she was surprised to see Lazarus Doe waiting for her.

"Hello, ma’am," Curtis’ bodyguard greeted as soon as he saw her.

"Hello, Lazarus. Is anything the issue? Where is Curtis?" she asked.

Lazarus’s face remained bland and expressionless as he responded.

"There is no issue, ma’am. Mr. Curtis asked me to tell you that from now on, I will be your personal bodyguard and driver."

Lara’s brows furrowed into a frown. Lazarus was always with his boss, always. Besides, Lara already had a driver and bodyguard of her own.

What was with the sudden change?

"Why?" she asked.

"Your safety is Mr. Curtis utmost concern, ma’am. I think he just wants you to be safe at all times," Lazarus stated.

Lara sighed. Curtis was a weird man, but she was already getting used to his weirdness.

There was no point in overthinking it.

"Fine. Take me to the company. I am already late enough as it is," she said.

Lazarus nodded and they were about to walk out of the door when Benny rushed in.

The old woman looked disheveled, and she was holding a travel mug.

Lara stopped to talk to her.

"Hey. Are you okay??? You look slightly pale," she said and her words were filled with concern.

Benny smiled at Lara, but there was sadness in the old woman’s heart.

"I am fine, ma’am. Thank you for asking. I figured that you will not be eating breakfast this morning seeing as you woke up late, so please, take this tea along with you. I made it for you," Benny explained.

Lara’s lips split into a grateful smile. She leaned closer to the woman and pulled her into a hug.

"That is very generous of you, Miss Benny. Really. Thank you so much," she said.

Benny nodded and watched them leave. The woman’s heart was breaking into a million tiny pieces in her chest as she followed them outside and watched Lara get into the car.

She knew that she had done a terrible, terrible thing by handing Lara a poisoned beverage, but it was either that or let her granddaughter be killed.

Benny took her phone and dialed Lisa’s contact.

"Hi ma’am, I have done what you asked me to do. Now please, let my granddaughter go."

Lisa chuckled from the other end of the phone.

"Good, good. You should be so proud of yourself. You did the right thing, Benny."

Those words were meant to comfort Benny, but it only made her more guilty.

So she hung up without saying another word and made her way back inside. Once the poison hits Lara’s body, it would be only a couple of minutes before she dies.

Benny figured that it might as well be time for her to start packing her stuff. Once Lisa sent her the money that they agreed on, Benny would take her granddaughter and run far away from all of these people.

Lara, on the other hand, was in a good mood. She hummed a song as she looked out the window, and there was peace in her heart.

After a few minutes, she turned to stare at Lazarus.

"Tell me something, Lazarus. How did you become Curtis’ bodyguard?" she asked. She had always wanted to know.

The man did not take his eyes away from the road as he answered.

"I just did," he stated simply.

Lara rolled her eyes and sighed in an exasperated manner.

"Come on. You are going to have to give me more than that. I am dying to know. Please, tell me," she pleaded.

Lazarus sighed and gave in to her demands.

"He saved my life. I was a street urchin, nobody. I was well on my way to becoming a petty criminal, maybe more. I tried to steal from him one time during a red light. And he stared at me straight in the eye, and told me to ’Get my head straight.’ Then he gave me a hundred bucks."

Lazarus paused for a moment.

"For some reason, his coldness, the hardened way he said those words to me made me drawn to him. I waited for him for months, standing on the side of the road and checking every car that stopped at the red light. I had no idea why I was waiting for him. All I knew was that I had to see him."

There were tears in Lara’s eyes at this point, but Lazarus was still not done.

"I was going to stop looking for him that day. I think I had already turned around to leave when I saw his car. You have no idea how happy I was. He stopped before the light. I walked over to him. He asked me what I wanted, and I told him to give me a job. And just like that, he did. That’s the entire gist of the story," he said.

"Wow. That was...I had no idea that Curtis could be so nice," Lara stated, and then she took a sip out of the tea Benny handed to her.

"Oh, this is good. Benny is such a great maid," she said and then she drank the whole thing.

The change happened in an instant. Lara’s face went from relaxed to contorted.

The pain hit her like a freight train. She gasped, and blood started to drip from her mouth.

Panic hit Lazarus. As Lara’s eyes rolled back into her head, as she lost consciousness from the agony, Lazarus put two and two together.

And he realised that his boss’s wife had been poisoned. He instantly changed lanes, driving towards the hospital instead.

Lazarus knew that if Lara died, Curtis was going to lose his mind. So he ran. He drove hard and fast, overtaking other cars on the highway.

With one hand, he dialed Curtis’ contact.

"This better be an emergency, Lazarus. Because I am in the middle of a very important meeting, and if I find out that you called me for something irrelevant, I am going to have you punished," he snapped.

"Your wife has been poisoned," he deadpanned. There was no point in beating around the bush.

From the sudden silence that came from the other end of the phone, Lazarus knew Curtis heard him.

And from experience, he knew that Curtis was about to lose his shit.