Chapter 4 - The Doctor’s Confession
The muzzle of the suppressed pistol didn't waver an inch. Dr. Malcolm Reeves looked less like a healer and more like an executioner who had spent decades hiding behind stethoscopes and expensive degrees.
"Put the clipboard down, Miss Dawson," Dr. Reeves instructed, his tone conversational, almost polite. "Step away from the bench and turn around."
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird, but I forced my breathing to stay even. Panic would kill me faster than a bullet.
"You're not just a corrupt doctor taking kickbacks for fake treatments," I said, keeping my voice steady to buy fractions of a second. My eyes darted across the lab benches, looking for anything heavy—a glass beaker, a wrench, a heavy centrifuge rotor. "Nobody goes to this kind of trouble just to pad medical bills. Three million dollars isn't enough to justify slow-poisoning a mafia boss's sons."
Dr. Reeves chuckled, a dry, papery sound that sent a chill down my spine. "You think too small, my dear. You look at Nathan Coleman and you see a monster who controls docks and gambling rings. But you don't see the family tree."
He took another step forward, closing the distance between us.
"What do you mean?" I asked, shifting my weight subtly onto my right foot.
"Nathan didn't build this empire by himself," Reeves explained, his eyes gleaming with a twisted sense of intellectual superiority. "He had a partner. A brilliant man named Julian Vance. Sound familiar?"
My blood ran cold. Vance. My late father’s brother—my uncle Julian—had mysteriously vanished from the corporate world twenty-five years ago, wiped clean from family records after a bitter dispute over corporate assets and syndicate control in New York.
"Julian was my mentor," Reeves continued, his voice dropping into a dark cadence. "Thirty years ago, Nathan and Julian founded the syndicate together. But when it came time to divide the empire, Nathan pushed Julian out, stripped him of his shares, and left him with nothing while Nathan took the throne, married a high-society trophy wife, and birthed two golden heirs to inherit his entire kingdom."
"So this isn't just about money," I whispered, the horrifying puzzle pieces clicking together in my mind. "It's about revenge."
"It's about balance," Reeves corrected smoothly. "Julian didn't want Nathan dead—death is too quick, too merciful for a man like that. No. Julian wanted Nathan to experience the slow, agonizing torture of watching his bloodline wither away piece by piece. To spend millions of dollars begging for miracles while the cure sat right under his nose, administered by his most trusted physician."
Reeves raised the pistol, leveling it directly at my chest. "And you, Miss Dawson... you had to go poking around the ventilation shafts. A real shame. The report will state that the new nanny suffered an unfortunate accidental overdose of experimental sedatives in the basement storeroom."
He clicked off the safety. The metallic click echoed loudly in the concrete room.
"Any last words, nurse?"
"Just one," I said.
Reeves frowned slightly. "What?"
I didn't answer with words. Instead, with a sudden, explosive burst of energy, I swept my right arm across the lab bench, smashing a heavy glass tray filled with metal surgical instruments directly into the goose-neck lamp.
The bulb shattered in a blinding shower of sparks, plunging the laboratory into absolute darkness.
Bang!
A bullet tore through the air where my shoulder had been a microsecond before, embedding itself deeply into the concrete wall behind me with a loud crack.
I didn't hesitate. I dropped low to the floor, scrambling on my hands and knees beneath the lab benches, navigating by memory through the maze of heavy steel frames and chemical crates.
"You can't hide in the dark, you fool!" Reeves shouted, his footsteps crunching angrily over broken glass as he swept his penlight beam across the room. The narrow cone of white light cut back and forth, missing me by inches as I crawled toward the heavy steel doorway.
Just as I reached the threshold, a massive, shadowy form burst through the open doorway from the hallway.
It wasn't a human.
It was Goliath.
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The 140-pound mastiff didn't bark. He charged straight into the darkness with the terrifying momentum of a freight train, his heavy body slamming directly into Dr. Reeves's midsection with a bone-crunching thud.
The pistol flew from Reeves's hand, skittering across the concrete floor. A scream of pure terror echoed off the stone walls as the doctor hit the ground, pinned beneath the massive, snarling weight of Nathan’s guard dog.
