Chapter 10 - The Underground Garage
Rachel followed Daniel through the side corridor.
Samuel shouted for her to stop.
She kept running.
Daniel entered a service elevator and descended to the courthouse garage. Rachel reached the stairs and took them two at a time.
Her heart pounded violently.
Her legs shook.
But for the first time in months, weakness did not control her.
She found Daniel beside a silver sedan.
He held the dark bottle in one hand and a lighter in the other.
“Stay back.”
“That bottle is your prison sentence.”
He laughed.
“Without it, you have a contaminated blood test and three criminals blaming each other.”
“Vanessa is telling the truth.”
“Vanessa has lied for twelve years.”
He opened the bottle and poured some of the liquid onto a stack of papers.
Rachel noticed the chemical had no smell.
No visible color.
Nothing that would have warned her while she slept.
“You touched my hair every night,” she said. “You told me you loved me.”
“I did love you.”
“No. You loved what my father left me.”
Daniel’s face hardened.
“Your father humiliated me. He knew I was smarter than every executive he hired, but he treated me like a guest in your life.”
Rachel remembered the tension between them.
Her father had never trusted Daniel.
Daniel stepped closer.
“I spent eleven years waiting for you to understand that wealth should belong to the person strong enough to use it.”
“You mean cruel enough.”
He flicked the lighter.
Before the flame reached the papers, Vanessa drove the black SUV into the garage.
She struck Daniel’s sedan, pinning him against the open door.
The bottle flew from his hand.
Rachel caught it before it hit the ground.
Daniel pulled a gun from beneath his jacket.
Vanessa ducked.
Rachel ran behind a concrete pillar.
A gunshot echoed.
Daniel limped toward her.
“Give me the bottle.”
Rachel secretly opened her phone’s voice recorder.
“Why? So no one learns what you used?”
He laughed.
“They’ll never connect it to me. Elaine ordered the compound through her clinic. Vanessa delivered it. Hale approved your treatment. Every road leads away from me.”
Red laser sights appeared across his chest.
Federal agents surrounded the garage.
Daniel raised his hands.
Then he smiled at Rachel.
May you like
“You think this is over? Ask your father’s lawyer why he waited until today to help you.”
👉 Daniel was finally arrested with the poison beside him, but his warning forced Rachel to question the man who had just saved her fortune.
