Once the money had been transferred, Alex took Cam into a private room at the clinic to begin the procedure. He began with acupuncture, which immediately relieved the pain, and then once the Harmony Healing ointment had been applied, Cam was well on his way to recovery.
The whole procedure had taken about three hours, and after a further few hours of resting, Cam finally asked Lachlan and Donny to take him home.
On the way, Donny couldn't contain his anger and said, "Alex is obviously a shady guy. He's taking advantage of your situation. Couldn't you have bargained with him? Twenty million is way too much!"
"Shut up!" Lachlan snapped. "Isn't your uncle's life worth twenty million dollars?" He was furious at the whole situation, and Donny was only making it worse.
"Don't scold him, Lachlan," Cam said. "He's right. It's a lot of money—maybe too much. But I needed this treatment, and even more than that, I needed to get Alex on our side."
He paused as he stared out the window and sighed. "We underestimated him, and now we're paying the price."
Donny disagreed. "He might be a decent doctor, and his martial arts skills are good, but he's no match for you. His only real strength is that he has Sawyer on his side."
His arrogance went unchallenged, as was often the way with children from powerful families.
"Without Sawyer around," he continued, "it'll be easy to kill Alex. We can squash him like a bug. Riley defeated him in business, and I think it's fair to say that he's disheartened. Now, if Sawyer leaves him, no one will be able to save him."
Donny held a deep resentment for Alex because it was humiliating to be forced to be his driver.
"Don't be a fool," Cam retorted. "You're young, ignorant, and arrogant. Who do you think created the healing powder—Alex or Riley?"
He already knew the truth, as Damon King had admitted to him that Alex had invented Golden Health. He just wanted to test his nephew's intelligence. As he waited, he touched his healing wound. The pain and itching had already dissipated, and he was no longer worried about dying before the end of the year.
Donny thought for a moment and said, "In my opinion, most of the healing powders were made by Alex."
Lachlan was pleased that Donny had figured it out on his own, but he didn't let it show.
"Naysmith Healing Powder was the original product," Donny said, puzzling it out. "It's been popular for many years in the medical community, so it wouldn't make sense for them to invest so heavily in a market they had already conquered.
"Quality Pharmaceuticals is an old company under the control of the Naysmith family. Riley spent a lot of money to acquire and transform it. From what I can tell, he was seizing the opportunity to compete with Alex and Maryann. I think he rushed to patent it before Alex could and tried to ruin Alex's reputation in the process."
He frowned. "Once Riley had made his move, Alex wouldn't have been able to prove anything. Even if the secret recipe had eventually been shown to belong to Alex, it would have been too late. He would already have lost a lot of money and gone into debt." He shook his head. "Alex has proved that he has great skill in terms of science and medicine, but I think Riley is far more cunning to have pulled this off."
He smiled. "You said that we underestimated Alex, but I think we overestimated him and gave him too much credit."
He already hated Alex, but knowing that Riley had bullied Alex in such a way that he couldn't fight back made Donny view Alex with contempt.
Then Cam said, "You think Alex is disgraceful for losing all that money, and you think he's stupid because Riley was able to steal the secret recipe using his wit. But think about it—maybe Alex deliberately let Riley steal the recipe."
Donny found that idea preposterous, and he laughed, saying, "There's no way he let that happen. Why would he intentionally lose all that money and future revenue to a competitor?"
"Maybe there's a problem with the recipe," Cam replied, his tone becoming sharp. "What if all the patients who have used Dynamic Health have experienced the same problems I did? What if they're in agony?"
Donny's smile faded. "You think that Alex sabotaged him? That he used Riley's greed against him?"
Cam was quiet for a moment, watching the sunset outside the window, and then he said, "Wait and see. Norman is finished, and so is Riley."
Back in the conference room at Quality Pharmaceuticals, Norman Fuller, the man in charge, was sitting at the head of the table, signing a contract. They had come a long way, and everything was going very smoothly.
After the roaring success of Dynamic Health, he had gone to his factory and set up an office space in one of the meeting rooms. From there, it would be more convenient to receive customers while also urging his employees to work overtime.
He was grateful that Riley had schemed his way to getting the secret recipe, as it was going to make him a lot of money.
He was smiling at that thought when he heard a gentle knock on the door and in walked his assistant, Jess, looking very smart with her cropped hair and pencil skirt.
Norman looked over at her and asked, "Did the fire department get back to you?"
"Yes, they've bumped up their offer, sir," she replied. "And they've added a little something extra." She slid an envelope across his desk.
"Move them to the top of the list and put aside three thousand units of Dynamic Health powder once they're ready," he ordered, taking the envelope and slipping it into a drawer. "We have so many orders, and they came along rather late, but let's make sure they're taken care of."
Jess nodded. "Okay, Mr. Fuller. No problem."
"And how is the acquisition coming along?" he asked. "I want all the other pharmaceutical companies under our control as soon as possible." He picked up his coffee and took a sip.
"It's going very well, sir," she replied. "All the manufacturers of the healing powders were happy to sign the contracts when they heard that we were the buyers."
"They know they can't compete," he said. "We have the capacity to make thirty thousand units of the powder per day."
Jess shook her head. "Replace the old equipment, and we can make far more than that."
"You don't have to worry about changing the equipment," he said. "Just make sure our people are working hard and fast. We've got such high demand; we don't want to disappoint anyone and have them complain about us."
Norman's eyes lit up when he added, "My next plan is to purchase the Robinson Group's factory. We'll begin negotiations with Alex and Maryann soon, and then we'll make them finally give us their R&D center for next to nothing."
"Yes sir, that's a great plan," Jess said, trying to butter him up for what she was about to say. "Everything is going great so far, thanks to your genius ideas." Her expression became somber as she added, "There's just one thing though—there's been some bad news going around recently."
"What news?" he asked, taken aback. "I'm sure there are plenty of rumors going around because everyone wants to get their hands on our powders. They're wildly popular and sought after."
Jess called through the open door to someone waiting in the lobby, and a man from the marketing department walked in, looking worried. He was holding a laptop, and he had some bad news to report.