Chapter 2 - The Eighth Day Discovery
By my eighth day at the Cross estate, an uneasy truce had settled over the second floor. Gabriel no longer threw highball glasses at my boots, though his barbed tongue remained lethal enough to strip paint off a wall. He spent fourteen hours a day surrounded by multiple monitor screens, barking coded orders into secure satellite phones, directing the vast international conglomerate of Cross Maritime while simultaneously keeping his clandestine underworld empire from tearing itself apart at the seams.
Every morning at precisely seven-thirty, I wheeled my cart into his quarters, swapped his linens, wiped down the mahogany desk, and ensured his private medical station was fully stocked.
Gabriel’s routine was rigid. His personal physician, Dr. David Byrne—a suave, silver-haired neurologist who arrived three times a week in a pristine Maybach—oversaw his heavy medication schedule. Gabriel took high-dose neuro-blockers, heavy muscle relaxants, and customized compounding capsules meant to suppress the severe chronic spasms caused by his spinal trauma.
"He shouldn't be working those hours," Dr. Byrne had remarked to me on my fourth day, adjusting his platinum cuff links as he left the suite. "His nervous system is on the brink of total collapse. If he pushes too hard, he will never regain motor control."
I had nodded politely back then. But on the morning of my eighth day, something felt entirely wrong.
Gabriel was asleep—or rather, unconscious in an unnatural, heavy stupor—slumped sideways against his oversized orthopedic pillows. His breathing was shallow, his pulse thready, his skin gleaming with a cold, sickly sheen of sweat. On the nightstand beside his bed rested a silver tray containing a glass of water and an amber pill bottle labeled Baclofen / Neuropathic Complex - 50mg.
I reached out to dust the marble tabletop when my sleeve brushed against the bottle, knocking it over. Three white, cylindrical capsules spilled out onto the dark stone.
I froze.
My mother had worked as a certified pharmacy technician for twenty-four years before cancer took her. As a teenager, I had spent hundreds of afternoons doing my high school homework in the back room of a licensed apothecary, memorizing pill markings, indentations, and chemical stamps out of pure boredom.
The label on Gabriel's bottle called for Compounded Baclofen-XR, which by standard pharmaceutical mandate bore a distinctive double-groove laser score with a faint blue imprint 'C-50'.
The capsules sitting on Gabriel’s nightstand had no imprint. Instead, near the seam of the gelatin casing, there was an ultra-fine, microscopic geometric imprint: a capital 'N' inside a faint hexagon.
Neuro-toxin suppressor. A rare, black-market chemical blocker known as N-Desmethyl. It didn't heal nerve trauma—it actively induced peripheral nerve paralysis, mimicking permanent spinal severance while destroying cognitive alertness.
Someone wasn't treating Gabriel Cross. Someone was chemically keeping him locked inside his own paralyzed body.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. My hands trembled as I quickly pulled my cracked smartphone from my pocket. Silencing the shutter, I took five high-resolution, macro photos: the counterfeit pills, the label on the bottle, the lot number, and the microscopic 'N' imprint under the morning sunlight.
Suddenly, a heavy, metallic click sounded directly behind me.
I spun around, nearly dropping the phone.
Standing in the doorway of the private ensuite bathroom was not Gabriel, but Julian Cross—Gabriel’s thirty-five-year-old cousin, a slick, impeccably tailored vice-president of Cross Development who was supposed to be managing the Manhattan real estate division.
Julian’s eyes weren't looking at my face. They were locked onto the open amber bottle in my left hand and the lit camera screen in my right.
May you like
"A diligent maid," Julian murmured, stepping into the room with a razor-thin smile that didn't reach his cold eyes. "Tell me, sweetheart... what exactly are you photographing in my cousin's private bedroom?"
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