I saw my husband’s hand on another woman before I saw his face.

The sound of that voice sent a paralyzing shiver straight through my spine. It was not a memory, and it was not a nightmare conjured by the shadows of the Aegean. It was Richard.

My husband. The man whose wedding band had gleamed on his finger while his palm rested on the exposed waist of a younger woman in a roadside diner outside Boston. The man who had liquidated my family’s coastal holdings, signed off on the hostile takeover of Vance Maritime, and supposedly boarded a private jet to Zurich when the federal indictments began falling like hail.

"Richard," I breathed, the word like broken glass in my throat.

Julian immediately stepped between me and the overhead speaker, his hand dropping instinctively to the tactical knife holstered at his belt. His eyes were wide, scanning the reinforced concrete seams and the steel ceiling above us. "He’s tapped into the external junction box," Julian whispered, his jaw set in a hard, protective line. "The island's relay antenna was active before we touched the vault."

From the metallic grille of the 1960s intercom, Richard’s laughter rasped, full of that arrogant, familiar cadence that had once charmed boardroom investors and hollowed out my entire life.

"Did you really think the Cassian family worked alone, Emily?" Richard’s voice was smooth, edged with the toxic pride I knew all too well. "Helena was merely the regional hammer. Who do you think financed her blockade of the Levant? Who do you think showed her how to bypass the sovereign maritime trusts Arthur spent forty years burying in the Aegean?"

"You sold my father out," I said, my voice rising, steadying itself on the pure fury running through my veins. "Even after you stripped Vance Maritime to the bone, you followed him here."

"I followed *you*, darling," Richard replied softly. "You were always so sentimental. I knew the moment Helena pressured you in Venice, you would chase Arthur’s breadcrumbs straight to Delos. And like a dutiful little wife, you brought the third key. Now, you’re locked inside fifty tons of naval-grade steel, sixty feet below sea level. The air scrubbers in that bunker haven’t run in half a century. You have maybe ninety minutes before the oxygen depletes."

"What do you want, Richard?" Julian interrupted, his voice like iron, cold and devoid of fear.

"Ah, the noble Captain Julian," Richard sneered. "The savior of Cap Ferrat. How poetic. What do I want? Emily slips the master deed and the sovereign port charters into the pneumatic transfer tube on the north bulkhead. Once I verify the seals, I release the hatch lock. Emily walks up the stairs. You, Julian... you stay down there to rot with the rest of Arthur’s antiquated dreams."

"I would rather burn every parchment in this room," I shouted into the intercom.

"You have eighty-nine minutes to reconsider, Emily," Richard purred. "Tick tock."