CHAPTER 4 — The Recording Everyone Tried to Destroy
The evidence room was locked down within minutes.
The tiny recording chip hidden inside Emily's necklace was placed into an evidence reader while police officers, doctors, and hospital executives crowded around the monitor.
Daniel stood in silence.
His hands shook uncontrollably.
His mistress had already disappeared.
The screen flickered.
Static filled the room.
Then...
Voices.
Emily's frightened voice came first.
"Daniel... why are we here?"
A man answered.
"Because this is where your company officially becomes ours."
It wasn't Daniel.
It was the unmistakable voice of Hospital Director Richard Holloway.
Every face in the room turned pale.
The recording continued.
Richard laughed.
"After tonight, everyone will believe it was a tragic accident."
Daniel's nervous voice interrupted.
"What if she survives?"
Richard calmly replied,
"She won't. And even if she does... she'll never wake up."
The room exploded into chaos.
Detectives immediately ordered Richard's arrest.
But one of the hospital administrators rushed into the room, breathless.
"Director Holloway is gone!"
Security cameras flashed onto the monitor.
Just three minutes earlier...
Richard had escaped through an underground service tunnel.
Police cars surrounded the hospital.
Roadblocks spread across the city.
Yet Richard had vanished without a trace.
Emily thought the nightmare was finally ending.
She was wrong.
Late that night, while recovering in her hospital room, a nurse quietly delivered a plain white envelope with no return address.
Inside was only a single photograph.
It showed Emily lying unconscious in her hospital bed...
Taken only two days earlier.
Someone had been secretly watching her all along.
On the back of the photo, written in black ink, were eight chilling words:
"You should have stayed asleep. Round Two begins tonight."
Emily's blood ran cold.
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Richard wasn't running away...
He was preparing to finish what he had started seven years ago.
