Chapter 4 - Blood on the SlateThe rooftop helipad was battered by the freezing wind howling in off the open sea. Dark grey clouds hung heavy over the harbor, threatening a winter snowstorm.
Marcus and two armed guards pushed my wheelchair out onto the open slate platform, their bodies forming a human shield against any potential angles from the surrounding ridges. Julian was dragged behind us, zip-tied at the wrists, stumbling over his own designer shoes.
"Are you insane?" Julian screamed over the roar of the wind. "We're sitting ducks up here!"
"Keep moving," Marcus barked, shoving him toward the center of the helipad.
I raised my hand, signaling Marcus to stop. I scanned the jagged coastline through a pair of tactical binoculars. The cliffs opposite my estate were rugged, choked with dense pine trees and jagged rock formations. Perfect cover for a professional sniper.
And then I saw it—a tiny, metallic glint reflecting the grey light of the afternoon sky, roughly eight hundred yards out on the eastern ridge.
"Three o'clock," I muttered, lowering the binoculars. "Tree line, beneath the rocky outcrop. Elevation forty degrees."
Marcus didn't hesitate. He pulled out his encrypted comms link. "Strike team Alpha, execute sweep on the eastern ridge. Do not kill—I want the shooter alive. Move!"
Within seconds, the deep, thrumming roar of our private security drone fleet lifted off from the automated hangars beneath the helipad. Half a dozen sleek, matte-black drones shot across the water like hornets, heading straight toward the sniper’s nest.
Julian watched them go, his face pale, sweat freezing on his forehead. "You don't understand, Caleb... the syndicate behind this isn't just some local gang. They control the shipping lanes, the courts, the medical board... they killed your wife because she found out where the illegal pharmaceutical trials were being funded."
My breath hitched. The wind seemed to stop.
"What did you say?" I grabbed Julian by the collar of his ruined suit, hauling him upward until his toes barely touched the slate. "Say that again."
"Audrey..." Julian gasped, coughing as the tight collar choked him. "She wasn't just giving birth that night. She was auditing the hospital's research grants. She found the ledger linking your corporate funds to illegal human testing facilities run by the Vanguard Syndicate. They induced her labor, staged the complications, and forced the doctors to falsify her death!"
The world tilted on its axis.
Eight years of mourning. Eight years of guilt, believing I had failed to protect her, believing her death was a tragic, unavoidable accident. It wasn't an accident. It was an execution.
And the men who ordered it had lived fat and happy while I pushed myself around a marble cage.
May you like
Before I could tear the answers out of Julian’s throat, a heavy explosion rocked the eastern ridge. A plume of black smoke billowed into the grey sky as our drones successfully neutralized the sniper position.
"Target secured," Marcus’s radio crackled. "Strike team has the shooter. But sir... you need to see who it is. They're bringing them across now."
