While I was bleeding at thirty-one weeks pregnant, my husband was six days into a trip with his mistress

Under the cover of night, Marcus and I entered the private basement vault of the St. Regis residences under the authority of a newly granted emergency court subpoena. The air was thick with the scent of polished bronze and dustless concrete.

The safety deposit box labeled 409 clicked open.

Inside sat a matte-black encrypted hard drive alongside a stack of counterfeit passports under Julian's name, several deeds to unlisted villas in the Cayman Islands, and a small, handwritten notebook bound in black leather.

I picked up the notebook. Inside were Julian’s meticulous notes, written in his sharp, arrogant handwriting. He had kept a ledger of every bribe, every backdoor negotiation with Apex Crest, and every offshore account used to hide Vale Meridian's operating capital.

"My God," Marcus murmured, looking over my shoulder at the screen of his tablet as the drive decrypted using Chloe's passcode. "It’s all here. The entire transaction history. Julian didn't just borrow money from Roman Vance; Vance paid Julian a thirty-million-dollar personal incentive fee to trigger this default deliberately."

"It's corporate extortion," I said, my heart pounding with cold clarity. "Roman Vance didn't just want the patents. He shorted Vale Meridian’s publicly traded subsidiary through an offshore hedge fund. When the default hits Friday, Apex Crest stands to make nearly half a billion dollars on the market crash."

"This is insider trading and wire fraud on a global scale," Marcus said, looking up in disbelief. "If we take this to the Securities and Exchange Commission right now, they'll freeze Apex Crest's assets."

"No," I replied, closing the notebook with a sharp snap. "A regulatory freeze takes weeks. Roman Vance will still foreclose on our patents before the feds finish their paperwork. We aren't going to the SEC just yet."

"Then what are you going to do?"