Chapter 16 - The Doctor's Demise
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The swiftness of Audrey’s arrest made headlines the next morning. The tabloids fed on the scandal: Elite Socialite Arrested in Mafia Matriarch Murder Plot. The media painted it as a tragic story of a greedy fiancé driven mad by debt. Judge Sterling publicly disowned her, playing the heartbroken, betrayed father to absolute perfection.
But I wasn't finished cleaning house.
Two days later, Dr. Elias Thorne arrived at his shadow clinic in the Bronx. He expected a quiet morning. Instead, he found the front doors unlocked and the lights off.
When he stepped inside, the heavy metal security gate slammed shut behind him, locking electronically.
Elias spun around, panic setting in. “Hello?”
I stepped out of the shadows of his examination room, flanked by Hector and three massive syndicate enforcers.
“Victor,” Elias stammered, dropping his medical bag. “I gave you the confession! You said if I gave you the confession, I was free!”
“I said if I ever saw your face in New York again, the confession wouldn't matter,” I corrected him, my voice a lethal, quiet rumble in the dark clinic. “You had forty-eight hours to pack your bags and leave the state, Elias. You chose to stay.”
“I have patients! I have a life here!” Elias cried, backing against the locked metal gate. “I was forced into this! You know I didn't want to hurt Sylvia!”
“But you provided the weapon that almost stopped her heart,” I said, walking slowly toward him. “A doctor who sells poison to kill the innocent is not a doctor. He is a liability.”
I didn't shoot him. That would attract too much attention.
I gestured to Hector.
“The medical board received an anonymous package this morning containing irrefutable proof of your illegal prescription ring, your malpractice cover-ups, and your ties to the Russian mob,” I explained calmly as Hector stepped forward. “Your license is permanently revoked. The DEA is raiding your home right now.”
Hector grabbed the terrified doctor by the collar.
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“We aren't going to kill you, Elias,” I whispered, standing inches from his trembling face. “But my men are going to break your hands. So completely and thoroughly that you will never hold a scalpel, write a prescription, or synthesize a poison ever again.”
His screams echoed through the Bronx, but no one came to help him. In my city, justice is served in the shadows.
