Chapter 5 - The Bribed Doctor
At 0330 hours, headlights swept across the living room curtains.
I stood at the top of the stairs, hidden in the shadows, holding Leo in a front-facing tactical baby carrier strapped tightly across my chest. His warm body rose and fell against my armor plate.
Downstairs, the front door clicked open.
A small, balding man in a drenched yellow raincoat walked into the foyer, carrying a black leather medical bag. It was Dr. Richard Harrison—our family’s physician for twenty years, and a man who had lost his medical license in two adjacent counties due to prescription fraud before my mother bought him a small private clinic in town.
"Where is he?" Harrison whispered nervously, shaking the rain off his umbrella.
Mother emerged from the kitchen, holding a fresh cup of coffee. "Upstairs with the baby. He’s suspicious, Richard. He found something in her hand."
Harrison froze, his pale face turning gray under the chandelier light. "What do you mean, something in her hand? You said she was clean! You said she didn't have time to write anything down!"
"It was a small memory card," Caleb chimed in, sitting on the sofa with a fresh glass of liquor. "Daniel took it. But he doesn't know what's on it yet. He's probably sleeping. He's been awake for thirty-six hours straight coming back from the Middle East."
Harrison pulled a stack of official state death certificates from his bag. "I can't sign this if there's physical evidence, Margaret! If the state police do a toxicology screen and find the potassium chloride I gave you—"
"Shut up!" Mother hissed, grabbing Harrison by his coat lapels. "You take the fifty thousand dollars we wired to your offshore account and you sign the damn paper! The funeral van will be here in one hour. Once the body is cremated at the private facility in Newark, there won't be any toxicology screen to worry about!"
"Fifty thousand dollars?"
My voice echoed down from the top of the staircase, heavy and slow like a iron bell.
All three of them jumped. Harrison dropped his medical bag, sending bottles of antiseptic and syringes clattering across the polished floor.
I walked down the steps slowly, step by step, my boots making deliberate, thunderous thuds against the wood.
"That's a steep price for a death certificate, Dr. Harrison," I said, reaching the bottom step and stepping into the warm light of the chandelier.
Harrison backed away until his shoulders hit the front door. "Daniel... son... you misunderstand... I was just explaining to your mother the administrative costs—"
"Save it," I said.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out a small Bluetooth speaker, and placed it on the side table near the coffin. I tapped my phone screen.
A recording played through the room—loud, crisp, and unmistakable.
"...If the state police do a toxicology screen and find the potassium chloride I gave you..."
Harrison’s knees buckled. He slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, staring at the speaker as if it were a venomous snake.
"You recorded me..." Harrison whimpered.
"My house has eight hidden audio-visual feeds linked to a military cloud server," I said flatly. "Every word spoken in this room for the last forty-eight hours has already been transmitted to a federal judge."
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Mother’s face turned from pale white to a deep, ugly crimson. She stepped toward me, her hands curled into claws. "You despicable, ungrateful little brat! We raised you! We gave you everything! And you set a trap for your own blood?!"
"You aren't my blood," I said, looking her dead in the eye. "You're just the monster who was wearing my mother's skin."
