CHAPTER 4 — "THE MAN WHO RETURNED FROM HIS OWN FUNERAL"
The office door burst open.
Three masked men rushed inside.
I grabbed the hard drive and dove through the private conference room.
Glass shattered behind me as bullets tore through the windows.
They weren't trying to scare me anymore.
They wanted the evidence gone.
They wanted me gone.
I escaped through the emergency stairwell and raced into the underground parking garage.
Just as they closed in...
A black SUV skidded sideways.
The passenger door flew open.
"Get in!"
It was Detective Marcus Cole.
The same detective who had signed off on my father's death.
"I know what you're thinking," he said as I hesitated.
"But if I wanted you dead..."
"I would've left you in that office."
The SUV roared away while gunfire echoed through the garage.
Marcus drove straight to an abandoned warehouse on the edge of the river.
Inside waited an elderly woman I recognized instantly.
Dr. Evelyn Brooks.
She had been my father's personal physician for fifteen years.
"I refused to sign Jonathan's death certificate," she said quietly.
"So Vanessa found another doctor who would."
She placed several X-rays and medical files on the table.
"They kept him in a medically induced paralysis."
"He could hear everything."
"He could feel everything."
"He just couldn't move."
I clenched my fists so tightly my nails cut into my skin.
"They buried him alive..."
Dr. Brooks shook her head.
"Worse."
"They planned to cremate him after transferring every asset into Vanessa's name."
Marcus unfolded a blueprint of the funeral home's underground level.
"They're moving him tonight."
"If they leave with that ambulance..."
"You'll never see your father again."
That night, police surrounded the funeral home in silence.
Marcus led the tactical team through the basement.
Vanessa stood beside the open coffin, calmly signing paperwork.
She didn't panic when officers stormed in.
Instead...
She smiled.
"You're too late."
Everyone looked toward the coffin.
It was empty.
The restraints had been cut.
The oxygen equipment was gone.
Only one handwritten message remained inside.
Written in my father's unmistakable handwriting.
I ESCAPED. DON'T TRUST THE POLICE.
Detective Marcus slowly lowered the note.
His face turned pale.
Because only four people had known about the raid.
Me.
Dr. Brooks.
Marcus.
And whoever had warned Vanessa first.
Somewhere among the officers surrounding us...
May you like
There was still a traitor.
And my father—who had already survived his own funeral—had disappeared into the night alone.
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