Chapter 218
Chapter 218:
The inside of the apartment was suffocatingly small and damp. Black mold crept up the corners of the ceiling. In the center of the tiny living room, a rusty oxygen concentrator hummed and rattled with violent persistence.
Mr. Miller lay on a stained mattress. He was skeletal. But what made June’s blood run cold was the color of his skin — not the pale jaundice of liver failure, but a sickening, unnatural grayish-blue. He coughed violently, spitting dark fluid into a rag clutched in his fist.
June’s medical instincts screamed. This was acute heavy metal toxicity.
She rushed to the bedside and looked up at the weeping woman. “Mrs. Miller, did you change his medication recently p>
Mrs. Miller covered her face with both hands and broke down into loud, agonizing sobs. “The insurance company cut us off,” she cried, her voice barely audible over the machine’s relentless noise. “Your pills were too expensive. We couldn’t afford them. A man on the patient forum told me about a generic version imported from India. It was only fifty dollars a bottle. I had to buy it p>
She pointed a shaking finger toward a small, overflowing trash can in the corner of the kitchen.
June’s heart slammed against her ribs.
𝗖𝗁і𝗻еѕ𝖾 𝗇𝗈𝘷𝘦𝗹𝘴 𝗍𝗋𝖺nѕ𝘭𝗮t𝗲𝖽 o𝗻
She ran to the trash can. Her instincts flared with immediate caution — biohazards, cross-contamination. She refused to touch the potentially infectious waste with bare skin. She grabbed a thick plastic grocery bag from the counter, wrapping it tightly over her right hand and forearm to form a makeshift glove. Only then did she plunge her shielded hand into the garbage, digging through bloody tissues and empty soup cans until her fingers brushed against a crushed cardboard box.
June yanked it out and pressed it flat against the kitchen counter, leaning in under the dim, flickering overhead bulb.
The design was a terrifyingly perfect replica. The Apex Bio logo, the font, even the holographic anti-counterfeit sticker looked legitimate to the naked eye.
But June was the creator.
She rubbed her thumb across the cardboard. It was cheap, porous paper — nothing like the medical-grade gloss stock they used. She flipped the box over and reached into her coat pocket for the small, high-powered UV penlight she always carried for quick chemical fluorescence checks. She clicked it on and swept the intense purple beam across the printed barcode. Authentic Apex Bio packaging used a proprietary fluorescent ink that glowed vividly under ultraviolet light. This box remained completely, devastatingly dark.
June ripped it open. A half-empty blister pack of capsules slid out. She popped one through the foil and squeezed the plastic casing until it cracked open in her palm. The powder inside was not the pure, crystalline white of her formula. It was a muddy, contaminated, toxic yellow.
This was the murder weapon.
June’s hands shook. A wave of pure, terrifying rage exploded in her chest.
“Mrs. Miller,” she said, her voice trembling with adrenaline, “you must stop giving him these pills immediately. This is not medicine. This is poison p>
Mrs. Miller’s knees buckled. She collapsed onto the filthy linoleum floor, screaming in absolute despair. “Oh my God — what have I done?! He’s going to die p>