Chapter 65: Mold

When Mina finally stopped retching, her body weakly slumped to the floor. Tara, who Mina only knew as Blue, did her best to pick the woman up and half carry her back to the bed. Mina was weak and distraught. Her fragile state made it hard for her to stand and she leaned against her rescuer heavily. Once she was laying down, Mina pulled the woman close and looked deep into her eyes. Her words were spoken in a low, crying whisper but they were resolute. Mina wanted to get her point across, she wanted Blue to know she was serious.

"Blue, please kill me. I promise, I will not fight back. I do not want to live like this anymore. Can you please help?" She cried. Blue ignored her request and tried to change the subject. Their lives were tied, if Mina died, she would too.

"Shh, please call me Tara." Mina looked at the girl's face, the name suited her well, and she almost forgot about why she was crying, as the ability to put a real name to the face uplifted her, but Tara's misdirection did not work. Mina could not stop crying.

President Lee felt an unfamiliar pang in his chest at the sight. He had heard people beg for their lives, beg for forgiveness, and then beg for death, but Mina had skipped the first two steps and went straight to the dying part. He would have been happy to oblige had he not had conflicting emotions when it came to the woman he imprisoned. She had snuck into his hotel room, she had plotted to blackmail him, and she had slept with him while he was under the influence of an unknown drug. Everything she did was worthy of death, but not like this. He did not know why seeing her suffer did not give him the satisfaction he thought it would bring.

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Tara affectionately continued to shush Mina as she cuddled the crying woman in the bed. Mina did not know this, but Tara blamed herself for this nerve-wracking situation. If she had not been selfishly driven to use this woman for her knowledge, Bressaw and Samuel would not have been sent away and Mina would not be begging for death so pitifully. She wanted to pick Mina's brain and prove to her family that she could do better than they expected her to do, and now she had caused a huge disturbance that she had been forewarned not to.

President Lee had long ago left the room, but Tara still had Mina wrapped in her small arms. She had coaxed Mina to close her eyes and rest. The woman had told her that she was too afraid to sleep, she did not want to have that nightmare again, but alas she was weary and weak. Her body rebelled and Mina's lids closed slowly.

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President Lee made his way into the kitchen and called each staff member to stand before him. Directly addressing the head chef, he asked the man what he had been putting in Mina's food. The man was confused. He reminded President Lee that his orders were to keep the prisoner alive. He did not dare to do anything less.

"Show me what you have been feeding her," President Lee demanded. Wasting no time, the chef pulled a large bowl out from the fridge. He presented it to President Lee who questioned the bowl's content.

"It's cornstarch sir," he said. Ian, who was not a chef, had no idea what cornstarch was used for. He asked the chef for its nutritional value. Like all Lee family chefs, he was expected to know these things.

Without hesitation the man explained that cornstarch would help fill the stomach but did not contain many nutrients. It was basically a carbohydrate. Which is what the brain needs to function, but the chef failed to mention that a prolonged period of eating cornstarch alone would eventually lead to death. President Lee inferred as much.

"Why is so much pre-prepared?" President Lee asked.

Ashamed to say he was too lazy to cook a fresh batch daily, the chef claimed that he had made too much and stored it for later. To the man's surprise, President Lee asked for a spoon. Another kitchen staff member hurriedly handed their boss a spoon. President Lee scooped up a huge bite of the clumpy mess and shoved it into his mouth. He immediately spit it out.

Looking up with a scowl, President Lee commanded the chef to taste his handiwork. The man did not want to. He knew that he had prepared that bowl last week and he had personally been the one who scraped the mold off the top before dishing it out. However, underneath the penetrating stare of his boss, he grabbed a spoon and took a bite. Disgust colored the chef's face and he violently retched.

"I told you to keep her alive. Not torture her through her meals!" President Lee shouted. He was not aware that he used the word 'her' and not prisoner.

With a bang, the porcelain bowl was flung across the kitchen and shattered. Its contents oozed onto the floor and revealed traces of black and green coloring that indicated the mush had grown mold.

'No wonder she is so sick,' Ian thought. Not only had the food been barely meeting the nutritional requirements to keep her brain active, but it had also gone bad. She probably could no longer stomach it and skipped eating all together.

"When was this prepared?" Ian shouted. He was asking for himself, but he also wanted to know if he should take Mina to the hospital. If she died now, all his efforts thus far would be useless. The chef was silent. He did not want to further aggravate President Lee, but he knew the wrong answer was likely to get him killed.

"President Lee, it's my fault," The man said.

"Sir, I didn't realize the pris…" he corrected himself, recalling how his boss had used the word 'her' a second ago. "I did not know the 'guest' was an important one." President Lee was not satisfied with this answer. Mina could have died because of his negligence. Still, he could not deny that it was his own actions that caused the staff to look down upon the woman upstairs. He suspended the chef without pay for a month and demoted him from head chef to sous chef. The man was unhappy with this arrangement but, it was better than what he had been imagining. He thanked President Lee for his leniency and waited to be dismissed before exiting the kitchen.

The current sous chef, who was a middle-aged woman with an unfriendly face, was put in charge of all kitchen operations, and all meals that were to be served to the person upstairs. President Lee ordered her to prepare a soup that could help recover a person's strength. He also ordered the staff to prepare this soup freshly three times a day. They did not need to ask who the soup was for. They had apparently misread the 'guests' situation.

President Lee did not leave the kitchen as he watched them prepare the soup for Mina. He wanted to make his stance clear. Everyone in the kitchen was responsible for 'her' recovery.