Chapter 3 - The Empty Grave
I grabbed Thomas fiercely by his coat collar and slammed him against his rusty sedan.
"What exactly do you mean you watched him die?" I demanded furiously over the howling wind.
Thomas had been the chief attending physician at the private hospital before he abruptly retired to become an investigator.
"Marcus brought the boy in with massive internal trauma, and nothing we did could save him," Thomas explained quickly.
Thomas swore that he personally signed the medical charts declaring Ethan officially deceased.
"If that was not my grandson in the hospital bed, then who did we bury in the family cemetery?" I asked coldly.
Thomas shook his head in absolute horror as the dark realization washed over him.
He remembered that the dying child had a distinct birthmark on his right wrist, which Ethan did not possess.
Marcus had deliberately swapped Ethan with a terminally ill orphan to perfectly fake his own son's death.
I felt sick to my stomach, realizing Marcus was capable of unimaginable evil.
I ordered Thomas to drive us immediately to the private cemetery to inspect the family plot.
We arrived at the freezing graveyard and used heavy shovels to dig through the frozen earth.
It took an agonizing hour to finally reach the small wooden casket buried six feet deep.
I used a steel crowbar to pry the locked lid open with brutal, necessary force.
The silk-lined interior of the coffin did not contain the body of a tragic orphan.
Instead, the casket was completely filled with heavily encrypted hard drives and stacks of foreign passports.
May you like
Suddenly, the blinding headlights of a dozen black SUVs completely illuminated the dark graveyard.
Dozens of red laser sights instantly appeared on our chests as an amplified voice commanded us to freeze.
