August Halloway didn't look like a man who had just returned from a board meeting. He looked like a man who had spent the last three hours watching a house burn down from a safe distance and was now arriving to check if the foundation was still warm.

I didn't hesitate. Forgetting my pregnancy, forgetting the pain in my lower back, I ran up the stairs right behind him, dropping the hand towel and pills onto a step.

When we reached the top landing, Thaddeus was lying on his side, his breath coming in shallow, wet rattles. His skin was turning a terrifying shade of blue around his lips.

"Clear his airway!" I yelled at August, dropping to my knees beside the old man. I rolled Thaddeus onto his back, checking his pulse. It was thready, weak, and wildly erratic. "He’s in SVT—supraventricular tachycardia! His heart rate is over two hundred! Call an ambulance!"

"The phone lines are dead," a voice said from the bottom of the stairs.

We looked down.

Julian Vance was standing near the front entrance. In his hand, he held a sleek black device—a signal jammer, its tiny red LED light glowing brightly. Beside him, Celeste was hurriedly packing her designer handbag, her eyes darting toward the door like a trapped rat.

"Julian, what the hell are you doing?!" August growled, his hand reaching inside his suit jacket toward the leather holster tucked beneath his arm.

"Don't, August," Julian said calmly, pulling a small silver pistol from his coat pocket and pointing it casually up the stairs. "You always were too sentimental. Just like your mother. You thought you were running the family business for the last five years? You were running the legal front. I was running the revenue."

"You poisoned him," August spat, his body tense, ready to spring despite the gun aimed at his chest.

"I gave him just enough to keep him quiet while I transferred his overseas assets into a Swiss trust," Julian admitted, his voice entirely devoid of remorse. "He was supposed to die quietly three months ago. But then she arrived." Julian glared at me with pure hatred. "You and your pathetic medical care. You kept him alive. You noticed the subtle changes in his blood pressure. You altered his diet. You ruined a four-hundred-million-dollar timeline, Clara."

"And the baby?" August demanded, his dark eyes shifting to me, a sudden, terrifying complexity swimming in their depths. "What did he mean by the baby?!"

Julian smirked, a cruel, mocking smile. "Ask your nurse. Ask her why she volunteered for the private egg donor program at the fertility clinic five years ago when she needed money for her mother’s cancer treatments. Ask her who bought those eggs."

My blood ran instantly cold. The air left my lungs as if I had been punched in the stomach.

Five years ago... St. Jude’s Fertility Clinic. I was twenty-two, desperate, drowning in my mother’s medical debt. I had undergone a private, anonymous egg retrieval procedure. They had told me the recipient was an anonymous couple in California.

"No..." I whispered, clutching my stomach. "No, that’s impossible..."

"Thaddeus wanted a pure heir," Julian sneered. "He didn't trust you, August. He thought you were too soft, too reluctant to take over the family’s true operations. So he secretly used his own preserved genetic material and hired a surrogate agency... but the agency failed. The surrogate died in early pregnancy. So he tracked down the original biological mother—the brilliant, selfless young nurse with the immaculate genetic history—and had his operatives... arrange a little encounter."

My mind spun into a terrifying vortex. Seven months ago. The night after my nursing license was revoked. I had gone to a private dinner party to clear my name, offered a drink by a man I thought was a medical board member... I woke up in a hotel room, confused, sick, with no memory of the night. Two weeks later, I tested positive for pregnancy.

I thought I had been assaulted by a stranger.

"You..." I choked out, tears finally breaking through my resolve. "You monster..."

"It wasn't me, Clara," Julian laughed softly. "It was old Thaddeus! He wanted an heir he could raise from scratch. A blank slate. But he had his stroke before he could collect you. So I brought you here as his caregiver to keep you close... until the baby was born. Once the child was delivered, you were going to have a tragic postpartum accident."

"Enough!" August roared.

He moved with terrifying speed.