Chapter 3

The body, having lost too much blood, could no longer feel the cold.

My consciousness is slowly sinking into the congealed black blood.

The air in the underground storage room was so thin it was suffocating. With a muffled "snap," the dim yellow light on the ceiling suddenly went out.

Not just this basement. In that instant, the entire Kent Private Hospital was plunged into absolute darkness.

This power outage was not a normal malfunction, but rather the entire building's main control system was physically disconnected by an external entity with extremely high privileges.

In the sudden darkness, a few extremely faint "thud" sounds could be heard from upstairs—the sound of a specially made firearm equipped with a top-of-the-line silencer precisely striking targets in the corridor. This was followed by a muffled thud of a heavy object falling to the ground, brief and rapid.

Squeak—

The rusty iron door to the storage room where I was was pushed open with remarkable ease.

A large number of armed personnel dressed in all-black bulletproof trench coats and without any identification signs poured in like a tide.

The man at the front suddenly took off his night vision goggles. It was Marco, my once most capable subordinate .

When he saw me lying on the gurney covered in mud and blood, with that horrifying steel bar still piercing my chest, the usually cold-blooded man's eyes tightened instantly.

"Medical team! Mini extracorporeal circulation machine! Immediately!" Marco roared in a low voice, turning around and kneeling beside my gurney, his voice strained, "Sir, we're late."

Several top private physicians from the family rushed over quickly , and a cold, stimulating agent was professionally injected into my vein. With the placement of a portable circulatory device, my consciousness, which was on the verge of collapsing, was forcefully pulled back.

" What's going on outside ...?" I managed to squeeze out a few bloody syllables from my throat.

“We’ve cut off the building’s communications and backup power,” Marco reported quickly while helping the doctor secure the steel bars in my chest. “To cover the rescue, we made a little noise in the lobby on the first floor. Chloe, the third daughter of the Kent family, was throwing a tantrum on the first floor when one of our men smashed her jaw with a rifle butt. She’s unconscious now.”

The brief report, however, made me realize that , from the perspective of the first floor of the hospital, it looked exactly like a terrorist attack targeting the Kent family.

associate a brutal raid with someone lying in an abandoned basement waiting to die.

Where is Claire?

Marco said , "Before cutting off the network, we intercepted surveillance footage from outside the VIP operating room on the top floor , but I don't think you should be watching that in your current physical condition... "

"I'm not that easy to die."

Marco had others support me, pulled a tablet out of his vest , the screen lit up, he pressed a button, and showed me the footage from the minute before the power went out.

I saw Claire.

She was holding Kyle's hand tightly as he was wheeled out; it was clear that Kyle's vital signs were gradually stabilizing .

Claire's eyes were filled with tenderness at having regained what she had lost.

Dr. Rick, the attending physician, rushed out of the operating room, his brow beaded with sweat : " Bring Mr. Enzo here quickly; he needs surgery immediately. "

Claire interrupted coldly: "What about Kyle?"

Rick was practically pleading: "Miss Claire, Mr. Enzo's condition is even more critical now. He could have cardiac arrest at any moment due to massive bleeding!"

On the screen, Claire gave the doctor a cold glance.

Even when faced with the news that I might die at any moment , her face remained completely expressionless.

“That’s his duty.” She interrupted the doctor mercilessly, her voice sharper than the cold wind on the icy plains. “Kyle isn’t completely out of danger yet ; all resources should be prioritized for Kyle .”

Looking at that heartless woman in the video, my heart went completely silent at that moment.

My voice was extremely weak , but incredibly firm : " Leave a corpse to finish things off, and don't let anyone know I'm still alive . "

" Understood. " Marco put away the tablet, stood up, and signaled to the medical team to transfer me to a professional mobile ICU stretcher .

He turned his head slightly, his gaze falling on a body outside the corridor.

guard who had tried to draw his gun and was shot dead during the clearing operation. His build was remarkably similar to mine.

Marco ordered his men to drag the body down : "Changing its clothes , disfiguring its face, draining the excess blood, creating the appearance of excessive blood loss and paleness , and finding a steel bar to make a penetrating wound in its chest ."

The two men immediately approached the corpse.

I struggled to remove the wedding ring with Claire's initials engraved on the inside of my left ring finger and tossed it into the tray beside me.

“Put it on him.” I closed my eyes briefly. “ Be ruthless when you smash his features. Claire saw what happened in the lobby ; she’ll only be convinced that the thugs who caused the car accident stormed into the building and brutally murdered me, who was stranded outside, in the darkness of the power outage. After you leave, destroy all the surveillance footage. ”

Fifteen minutes later, I lay in the temperature-controlled cabin of the medical helicopter. With a loud roar of the engine, the helicopter ascended into the stormy night sky , and my consciousness was plunged into darkness .

As we evacuated, the building's backup power automatically returned, and the stark white lights once again filled the hospital. The piercing alarm completely alerted Claire on the top floor. After confirming Kyle's safety, she stormed through the emergency exit into the lobby with a large group of elite bodyguards, her face contorted with rage, attempting to take control of the situation.

But the moment she stepped into the hall, all her anger and arrogance froze on her face.

The hall looked as if it had been brutally looted.

My men were well-trained and had already retreated and disappeared , leaving only a mess behind.

Her younger sister Chloe, her jaw twisted and swollen, lay unconscious in a pool of blood . The remaining bodyguards on the perimeter were all disarmed and groaning in pain.

Clearly, the Kent family viewed this as a follow-up attack to the car accident assassination.

"What's going on? Are all the security guards at the hospital dead?! What happened to my sister?!" Claire strode over in her high heels, her voice filled with extreme terror.

The fire door to the emergency exit was suddenly forced open from the inside.

A caregiver who had been sent to the basement to check the backup power supply scrambled out of the room. Under the light, he was trembling and his face was deathly pale.

    The caregiver's legs went weak, and she collapsed at Claire's feet, pointing at the stairs and screaming incoherently, "Dead...dead...so much blood..."

    Claire's heart skipped a beat for no apparent reason. She grabbed the caregiver by the collar and demanded sharply, "Who died?! What happened down there?!"

The caregiver's eyes widened in horror, his teeth chattering uncontrollably: "Mr. Enzo... Mr. Enzo is in the basement... dead!!!"