Chapter 4 - The Confession in the Rain
By midday, the storm had returned, turning the manicured lawns into a blur of green and gray. Inside the estate's high-security basement holding room—a soundproofed cellar originally built for storing vintage wines before Adrian converted it—Thomas Gable sat handcuffed to a metal chair.
His face was bruised, his expensive sweater stained with mud. Two of Adrian's senior enforcers stood quietly by the reinforced steel door.
Adrian walked in, holding a single glass vial containing the white powder from Noah's pillow.
"Thomas," Adrian said softly, pulling up a chair and sitting directly across from the terrified nurse. "We've known each other four years. You cared for my son when his mother died. I trusted you with the keys to his room."
"Mr. Vale—I swear to God, I didn't know what was in those packets!" Thomas blurted out, tears springing to his eyes. "I swear it!"
"Then you admit you put them there."
Thomas flinched, his shoulders collapsing. "I had no choice! They have my sister—she's in Montreal—they took her six months ago. They said if I didn't place the packet under the boy's pillow every Tuesday and Friday night, they'd send her back to me in pieces!"
Adrian didn't raise his voice. That was what terrified people the most.
"Who?"
"I don't know names!" Thomas sobbed, pulling frantically against the handcuffs. "A man with a scar across his left jaw—he met me at a diner off Interstate 95. He gave me the packets. He said it was just a herbal supplement to help the boy sleep, that it wouldn't hurt him—"
"It's a synthetic neurotoxin derivative," Adrian interrupted, his voice cutting through the room like broken glass. "It slowly shuts down the nervous system's ability to regulate autonomic functions. For three years, my son has been slowly paralyzed from the inside out."
Thomas turned white as paper. "Oh God... I didn't know... I swear I thought it was just medicine..."
"Who gave you the contact?" Adrian asked, leaning forward. "Who ordered it?"
Before Thomas could answer, a sharp, metallic click echoed from the corner of the room.
Adrian's instincts saved his life. He lunged sideways off his chair just as a silenced gunshot tore through the reinforced glass of the basement's high ventilation grate.
The bullet struck Thomas squarely in the chest.
The nurse gasped, his eyes widening in shock, before slumping forward, lifeless.
May you like
"Ambush!" one of the enforcers yelled, drawing his weapon and firing upward toward the grate.
Adrian hit the floor, rolling behind a concrete pillar, his own hand drawing his sidearm. "Vance! Lock down the perimeter! Nobody leaves the property!"
