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She thought the hospital cameras had a blind spot. She didn't know her own reflection would condemn her to a lifetime behind bars! / Chapter 4 / 6

Chapter 4 - The Sub-Floor Showdown

HOOK: Trapped in the dark, Marcus faces the man who pulled the strings. The truth will leave you breathless!

The basement of the luxury hospital was a labyrinth of concrete walls and heavy pipes. Armed with a heavy fire axe, Marcus and Daniel Cruz bypassed the jammed elevators and took the emergency stairs down into the pitch blackness.

Above them, the faint sound of a newborn baby's cry echoed through the shafts—a miraculous sound. The baby was out, but the fight for her survival had just begun. The ventilators were running on rapidly depleting battery power.

Marcus swung the axe with brutal force against the server room door. The heavy metal groaned but didn't give. He swung again, fueled by pure adrenaline, until the lock shattered with a shower of sparks.

They burst into the server room. The servers were spinning furiously, their blue lights blinking in the dark. In the corner of the room, sitting at a terminal with a laptop plugged directly into the hospital's core mainframe, was a figure in a black hoodie.

"Step away from the console!" Daniel shouted, drawing his weapon.

The figure slowly turned around, lowering the hood. It wasn't a remote hacker. It was Julian himself. He had never left the country. He had been hiding in plain sight, working with corrupt elements inside the hospital's IT department.

"Hello, little brother," Julian sneered, his fingers hovering over a large enter key on his laptop. "You're too late. The wipe is 98% complete. In sixty seconds, the video evidence disappears, the medical logs are altered to show Khloe had a history of fainting, and Isabella walks free on bail."

"Why, Julian?" Marcus demanded, slowly advancing. "You want the money? Take it! Take every single dime! Just let the doctors save my wife and daughter!"

"It was never just about the money, Marcus," Julian hissed, his face twisting with jealousy. "Father loved you. He gave you the business, the prestige, and a beautiful wife. I got the scraps. Isabella was mine first, did you know that? But she wanted you because you had the crown. So I gave her to you to ruin you from the inside. When that failed, we had to take drastic measures."

Julian grinned maliciously and pressed the key. "Goodbye, Marcus."

But before the data could completely erase, Daniel Cruz didn't shoot Julian—he shot the main coolant pipe directly above the server rack. A high-pressure blast of freezing liquid nitrogen sprayed across the servers and Julian’s laptop. The electronics instantly shorted out in a spectacular explosion of sparks and smoke.

Julian screamed as the freezing gas nipped at his hands, dropping to the floor. The terminal went dead. The wipe was halted at 99%.

"The data is safe," Daniel muttered, coughing through the smoke. "And the main power grid is resetting."

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The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure terminal on my desk flashed a violent crimson. I hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, my eyes burning from staring at columns of ghost figures, duplicate invoices, and shell corporations linked to Dominic Rossi. But the red alert wasn’t from Rossi’s faction. It was an internal security flag originating from the estate’s main vault deep beneath the west wing.

The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure ter...

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scattering the light from the chandeliers. The muffled laughter died instantly, replaced by a suffocating, heavy silence that crept outward from the grand staircase.

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scatter...

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking out the clinical, terrifying silence of the kitchen. Evelyn Crane stood stiffly in front of my mahogany desk, her hands folded over her apron with the rigid precision of someone who had spent decades micromanaging every square inch of my estate. Behind her, Norah hovered near the doorway, clutching her clipboard like a shield.

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking...

Above them, the heavy hum of the hospital's main generators kicked back on. The lights flooded the basement. But the victory was short-lived. Marcus's phone rang again. It was Dr. Arthur Vance.

"Marcus... you need to get up to the ICU immediately. The baby is stable, but Khloe... Khloe isn't waking up. She’s slipped into a deep coma, and her brain activity is dropping."

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