Chapter 2 - The Stolen Secret
Chaos erupted instantly in the massive hospital lobby as confused security guards sprinted toward the front desk.
Daniel knew with absolute certainty that Marcus had framed him, and the corrupt manager would ensure he took the fall.
Acting purely on survival instinct, Daniel dove across the slippery marble floor and snatched Arthur’s dropped gold phone.
He narrowly dodged a heavy baton swing from a security guard and bolted directly through the automatic sliding glass doors.
The freezing Chicago rain hit Daniel’s face like tiny needles as he sprinted wildly down the darkened city streets.
He ducked into a narrow, filthy alleyway, his heart hammering violently against his ribs as police sirens began wailing in the distance.
Daniel leaned heavily against a brick wall, trying desperately to catch his breath while staring at the locked golden device.
To his immense shock, the phone’s advanced facial recognition scanner recognized his face and immediately unlocked the home screen.
"How is that even mathematically possible?" Daniel whispered out loud to the empty alley.
An urgent, encrypted text message suddenly popped up on the bright screen, sent from an unknown, untraceable number.
The message simply read, "Target one is neutralized, proceed immediately to the apartment to eliminate the daughter."
Daniel’s blood ran completely cold as he realized the assassins were actively targeting someone else connected to Arthur.
He quickly opened the billionaire’s private photo gallery to see who the mysterious daughter was.
The very first photo was a highly classified, decades-old surveillance image of a young woman holding a baby.
The woman in the old photograph was unmistakably his own mother, Sarah Brooks.
His entire life had been an elaborate lie, and his fragile mother was currently sitting completely defenseless in their cheap apartment.
Daniel shoved the phone into his wet pocket and ran faster than he ever had in his entire life.
He reached his crumbling apartment building in exactly ten minutes, bypassing the broken elevator to sprint up six flights of concrete stairs.
He violently kicked open his own front door, only to find his mother’s favorite rocking chair completely smashed to pieces.
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A massive man in a dark tactical suit was holding Daniel's terrified mother at gunpoint against the kitchen counter.
The assassin slowly turned his head, aiming a second weapon equipped with a heavy silencer directly at Daniel’s chest.
