Chapter 4 - THE DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION
Dr. Arthur Sterling, Silas’s personal cardiologist, stood fifty feet away, a smug, aristocratic smile on his face. He looked entirely out of place in the rusted warehouse, yet perfectly comfortable surrounded by hired guns.
"Put the gun down, Silas," Sterling called out, his voice echoing over the sound of the rain beating against the tin roof. "If you shoot me, my men will cut you in half. And poor Leo here will never find out where I’ve hidden his delightful little girl."
Hazel felt a surge of pure, venomous rage. This pristine, wealthy doctor was the monster who had kidnapped her six-year-old niece.
Silas didn't lower his gun. His aim was dead steady on the center of the doctor’s chest. "You’ve been a busy man, Arthur. Convincing my wife to poison me. Kidnapping a child to steal experimental toxins. Why? You’re a doctor. You make millions."
"Millions?" Sterling scoffed, shaking his head. "Silas, you control a multibillion-dollar shipping and logistics empire. You move pharmaceuticals across the country. I wanted the supply lines. The board would never sell to me while you were alive. So, I spent the last two years engineering your decline."
The horrific realization washed over Hazel. "The heart condition," she breathed, looking up at Silas.
Sterling laughed softly. "Ten points to the waitress. Yes. Silas never had a natural heart defect. I’ve been micro-dosing him with a synthetic weakening agent disguised as his daily vitamins. I created the failing heart. Tonight was supposed to be the tragic, inevitable finale."
Silas’s jaw locked. The betrayal ran deeper than a simple assassination. The doctor had systematically destroyed his health, lying to his face at every checkup, playing god with his life.
"Where is Mia?" Leo gasped from the floor, clutching his bleeding side.
"She’s safe, for now," Sterling said dismissively. He snapped his fingers. "Kill the brother and the girl. Bring Silas to me alive. I want to watch his heart finally give out."
The mercenaries raised their automatic rifles.
"Hazel, get down!" Silas roared.
He didn't shoot Sterling. Silas aimed at the massive, rusted electrical transformer bolted to the concrete pillar directly above the mercenaries. He fired three rapid shots.
The heavy bullets shattered the casing. A blinding shower of blue-white electrical sparks exploded outward, short-circuiting the warehouse’s ancient grid.
The lights violently popped, plunging the entire warehouse into pitch blackness.
The mercenaries opened fire blindly, the muzzle flashes illuminating the chaos in strobe-like bursts. The deafening roar of gunfire tore through the air.
Silas grabbed Hazel by the collar of her uniform, hauling her behind the thick steel base of a defunct factory machine. He pulled Leo with his other hand, dragging the bleeding man out of the line of fire.
"We can't stay here," Silas grunted, his back pressed against the cold steel as bullets sparked off the machinery above their heads. "They have night vision. They’ll flank us in ninety seconds."
Hazel’s mind raced. She looked around the dark warehouse, her eyes adjusting to the shadows. It was an old chemical storage facility. To her left, stacked against the wall, were dozens of heavy, unmarked industrial barrels.
"Silas," Hazel whispered urgently, pulling a small, metal lighter from Leo’s pocket. "Those blue barrels. In industrial coding, a solid blue drum with a white lid means it contains anhydrous ammonia. Used for cleaning."
Silas looked at the barrels, then at her. "And?"
"And if you shoot holes in them, and I throw this lighter into the fertilizer sacks stacked next to them... we create a massive, localized exothermic reaction. A smokescreen thick enough to choke a horse."
Silas offered a grim, lethal smile. "I like biochemists."
Silas leaned out of cover and fired precise, methodical shots into the blue barrels. Hissing, pressurized gas immediately began to leak into the air, smelling sharply of sulfur and ammonia.
Hazel struck the lighter. She held her breath, counted to three, and threw the small flame directly into the pile of torn fertilizer sacks.
The reaction was instantaneous.
It wasn't an explosion. It was a violent eruption of thick, dense, choking white smoke that rapidly expanded, swallowing the entire front half of the warehouse in a matter of seconds. The mercenaries began to cough violently, their night-vision goggles rendered completely useless by the dense chemical cloud.
"Move!" Silas commanded, hoisting Leo over his broad shoulder as if the man weighed nothing.
They ran through the blinding smoke toward the back loading docks. Hazel guided them, her memory of the building’s layout flawlessly mapping their escape route. They burst through a rusted side door into the freezing rain, gasping for clean air.
Silas’s armored SUV was waiting. The massive driver threw open the back doors. Silas shoved Leo inside, then helped Hazel up.
"Drive. The safehouse on 5th," Silas barked, slamming the heavy door shut.
The SUV peeled out into the night, leaving the burning warehouse behind. Hazel collapsed against the leather seat, panting heavily. She looked over at Leo, who was unconscious, his breathing shallow.
"We got away," Hazel breathed, a momentary wave of relief washing over her.
Silas didn't answer.
Hazel looked over at him. The mob boss was slumped against the reinforced window. His face was ghostly pale, beads of cold sweat dotting his forehead. His hand was clamped fiercely over the center of his chest.
"Silas?" Hazel asked, panic spiking in her chest.
Silas looked at her, his dark eyes losing their sharp focus. "The vitamins," he choked out, his breathing ragged. "The slow-release capsule... I took it this morning."
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Dr. Sterling’s micro-dosed poison had finally hit his bloodstream.
Before Hazel could react, Silas Thorne’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed heavily onto the floorboard of the moving SUV. His heart was stopping.
