THE MAN WHO CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD

The guards dragged Gabriel down the dark hallway.

He fought them, his fists flying, but the lingering weakness from the oxygen chamber made his movements sluggish. A rifle butt to the ribs dropped him to his knees, and they pulled him out the exit.

“Dad!” Elena screamed, running toward the doors.

“Elena, stop!” I grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back. “They’ll kill you. We have to help Hale. If he dies, we lose the only person who knows where they’re taking him.”

She choked on a sob but nodded, her pragmatic nature fighting through the panic.

Adrian sat in his wheelchair, staring at the blood pooling under the doctor. “He deserves to die.”

“Maybe,” I said, dropping to my knees and pressing my hands hard against Hale’s wound. “But not tonight.”

Hale coughed, a thin line of blood spilling from his lips. His breathing was shallow, his skin graying rapidly. The bullet had missed his heart but hit something major in his abdomen.

“Katherine,” Hale gasped.

“Don’t speak. Save your energy,” I ordered.

“You… you don’t understand,” he whispered, grabbing my wrist with shocking strength. “Thomas doesn’t just want the business. He wants the bloodline.”

I pressed harder. “What are you talking about?”

“The treatments…” Hale choked. “The oxygen therapy… it caused a genetic deterioration. Anthony didn’t know. I didn’t know. Thomas is dying. His organs are failing.”

Elena knelt beside me. “So he needs my father for a transplant?”

“No,” Hale wheezed. “He needs Gabriel’s mind.”

I froze. “That’s medically impossible.”

“Not a brain transplant,” Hale said, his eyes rolling back slightly. “A replacement. Thomas wants to erase Gabriel entirely. He wants to wipe Gabriel’s memories and implant his own history, his own ruthlessness into your father. He’s going to turn Gabriel into him.”

The absolute insanity of the mafia’s medical experiments made my blood run cold.

Hale’s hand went limp. He was losing consciousness.

“Where did he take him?” I demanded, shaking his shoulder. “Raymond! Where is the lab?”

He didn’t answer. His eyes fluttered shut.

“Help me check his pockets,” I told Elena.

She dug through his suit jacket while I maintained pressure. Her hand emerged with a crumpled piece of paper.

She unfolded it.

It wasn’t a map or a blue-print.

It was a child’s drawing.

Crayon on construction paper. A crude sketch of a house with a red door, a large oak tree, and a small boy holding hands with a tall man with a scarred face.

At the bottom, written in messy, six-year-old handwriting: For Daddy. Love, Leo.

Adrian stared at the drawing. His face went completely pale.

“That’s impossible,” Adrian whispered.

“Who is Leo?” I asked.

“Thomas doesn’t have a child,” Adrian said, his voice shaking. “Because the treatments made him sterile at age fifteen.”

Elena looked closely at the drawing. She flipped it over.

There was a Chicago address stamped on the back. A pediatric clinic.

“Then whose child is this?” Elena asked.

Adrian looked up, his eyes welling with tears. “Mine. Thomas stole him from my wife before he locked me in this place.”

I stared at the address on the back of the drawing. We had a location.

But as the emergency backup generators suddenly kicked on, flooding the hallway with bright fluorescent light, Elena’s phone began to ring.

It was Gabriel’s number.

She answered it on speaker.

“Dad?”

It wasn’t Gabriel.

It was Thomas.

“I forgot to mention one detail, Elena,” Thomas’s raspy voice echoed through the speaker. “If you call the police, I won’t just kill your father. I’ll kill the boy.”

A sharp, terrified cry of a small child echoed through the phone.

Then, the line went dead.

Elena looked at me, terrified.