Chapter 10 - THE TOXICOLOGY REPORT
Elowen spun the brass dial of the subterranean safe.
CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
The heavy locking bolts retracted with a deep, metallic thud. Elowen pulled the heavy steel door open, exposing a shallow concrete niche lined with velvet.
Inside lay a single, dark blue leather binder stamped with the official gold crest of Thorne Global Logistics.
Julian reached into the safe, his hands trembling as he lifted the heavy binder. He flipped open the cover.
Glued to the first page was an official medical document signed by the chief coroner of the state hospital—dated the exact night of Arthur Thorne's death.
Julian’s eyes scanned down the technical medical text, stopping at the highlighted red lines near the bottom:
CAUSE OF DEATH: ACUTE CARDIAC ARREST INDUCED BY SYNTHETIC NEUROTOXIN. NOTE: BRAKE LINE FAILURE ON VEHICLE OCCURRED POST-MORTEM.
Julian gasped, the blood draining completely from his face. "He was poisoned... before the crash even happened."
"Victor poisoned your father in his own office," Elowen revealed, tears brimming in her eyes. "Then he had his security team place Arthur’s body in the car and send it off the cliff to make it look like an accident. When I threatened to bring this report to the district attorney, Victor used you as leverage. He told me that if I released this file, he would make sure you suffered the exact same 'accident' as your father."
Julian stared at the yellowed paper, his heart hammering against his ribs like a sledgehammer. Twenty-five years of lies, twenty-five years of believing his mother had abandoned him, twenty-five years of honoring a monster as his beloved uncle—all collapsing into ash in a dark basement.
Suddenly, the heavy iron door at the top of the basement stairs burst open with a deafening screech!
CLANG!
Industrial floodlights mounted on the upper catwalks snapped on, bathing the basement in an intense, blinding white glare.
May you like
Standing on the upper iron catwalk twenty feet above them, looking down with a victorious, lethal smile, was Victor Thorne—flanked by six heavily armed private security guards.
"I must thank you, Elowen," Victor’s voice boomed down from the catwalk, echoing off the concrete walls. "I spent twenty-five years looking for that binder. And you just handed it right to my nephew."
