If you ever touch Selina again, I swear to God I will kill you.”

The days leading up to the gala were an agonizing test of endurance.

Under Dr. Sterling’s strict supervision and Liam’s airtight security protocol, I was secretly transferred from Mass General to a private, heavily guarded residence in the coastal town of Marblehead. The official hospital records were altered with the help of the hospital’s board chairman—an old friend of Liam’s father—listing me as “comatose and in critical decline.”

Julian and Selina took the bait completely.

Believing I was on the brink of death, Julian signed off on the emergency temporary conservatorship paperwork prepared by Arthur Finch, transferring my voting shares in the firm and our joint estate directly to his control. He never once came back to visit me. Selina had convinced him that appearing at the hospital would only generate negative press.

In the safety of the Marblehead estate, Liam brought in Marcus Chen, a legendary private investigator and cyber forensic analyst.

Marcus sat at a wide mahogany dining table covered in laptops and multiple external monitors. “Nora, you need to see this,” he said, waving me over.

I walked slowly, supporting my midsection with a supportive medical brace beneath an oversized sweater. The sharp, tearing pain had settled into a dull, manageable ache, and a morning ultrasound had confirmed that the hematoma was shrinking. My baby was holding on.

Marcus clicked a key, pulling up high-resolution video footage. “This is the security feed from the service elevator of your penthouse building on the afternoon you were attacked.”

I leaned in, my heart pounding. “Julian said the building cameras were down for maintenance.”

“They were down for the public server,” Marcus said with a grin. “Julian paid the building superintendent twenty thousand dollars to delete the hard drives. But he didn’t know the elevator manufacturer installed an independent, encrypted cloud-blackbox system last year for liability insurance.”

The video footage began to play.

The time stamp read *3:38 p.m.*—four minutes before Selina walked into my penthouse.

Selina stood alone inside the elevator, admiring herself in the mirrored wall. Then, she pulled a small utility box cutter from her designer handbag. With cold, mechanical precision, she pressed the blade against her own left forearm and dragged it down, creating a thin, shallow red scratch.

She didn't flinch. She didn't cry. Instead, she pulled out a tissue, dabbed the blood to make it smear across her skin, looked directly into the mirror, and smiled.

“My God,” I whispered, nausea rising in my throat. “She planned every single second of it.”

“It gets worse,” Liam said, stepping up behind my chair and laying a thick financial dossier on the table. “We tracked the wire transfers. Julian didn't just transfer the firm’s capital to Selina’s offshore account. Six months ago, Selina took out a five-million-dollar accidental death insurance policy on your life, Nora. Julian co-signed the policy as the primary beneficiary, with Selina designated as the secondary trustee.”

The pieces fell into place with brutal clarity.

Julian had never been torn between two women. He had been completely consumed by greed and manipulated by a sociopath who understood his deepest insecurities. Selina had played on his nostalgic obsession with their past, stroked his ego, and convinced him that getting rid of me wasn't murder—it was an "investment."

“They’re presenting the merger tonight at the Vanguard Gala,” Liam said, checking his watch. “Julian is scheduled to speak at 9:00 p.m. at the Boston Harbor Hotel. The room will have six hundred guests, including the Governor, the Attorney General, and every major media outlet in the state.”

I looked at my reflection in the dark glass of the terrace doors. The pale, fragile woman who had begged for her husband’s mercy on the floor of her living room was gone. In her place stood someone forged in blood and betrayal.