Chapter 8 - Blood on Marble
Gunfire flared in the narrow corridor, muffled by silencers. Naomi ducked behind a heavy oak pillar as Dominic moved like a whirlwind of lethal precision.
Marcus panicked, firing wildly into the dark. Dominic dodged the shots, closed the distance in a heartbeat, and grabbed Marcus by the throat, driving him violently into the floor.
"I told you what would happen if you came near her again," Dominic growled, his hand tightening around Marcus's throat until the young man's face turned purple.
"Dominic, stop!" Naomi called out, stepping out from behind the pillar. "If you kill him now, his father will lock down the hotel before we can download the Apex server files!"
Dominic paused, his eyes glowing with dark fury. He looked at Naomi, then down at Marcus. With a terrifying coldness, Dominic snapped Marcus’s uninjured arm at the elbow with a sickening crack.
Marcus screamed into the empty hall before passing out from shock.
"He lives for now," Dominic said coldly, standing up and taking the encrypted keycard from Naomi. "Let's finish this."
They rushed down the private elevator into the subterranean level of the hotel, where Apex Holdings maintained its primary data server. Naomi used Dr. Vance’s stolen keycard, and the heavy steel door hissed open, revealing a high-tech control center filled with servers and glowing monitors.
"Downloading the master files," Dominic said, plugging an encrypted drive into the central terminal. "Names, financial trails, victim registries... everything."
On the monitors, thousands of files began copying over. Naomi’s eyes swept across the screens until she froze.
"Dominic... look at this file," she whispered, her voice trembling.
Dominic leaned over her shoulder. On the screen was a medical file dated six years ago.
May you like
Patient: Clara Vale. Cause of Death: Induced Cardiac Arrest. Ordering Physician: Dr. Howard Patterson. Sponsor: Arthur Reed.
Naomi’s breath hitched. Her sister hadn't fallen down the stairs. She had been murdered in St. Catherine's ER by the very hospital director Naomi had worked alongside for six years.
