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.

August didn't flinch. Before Julian could pull the trigger a second time, August pulled his own weapon from beneath his jacket and fired twice.

BANG! BANG!

The shots were deafening in the enclosed space.

Julian screamed, dropping his pistol as a bullet ripped through his shoulder, spinning him around. He fell backward against the marble floor, pool of dark blood immediately expanding beneath his charcoal suit. Beside him, Celeste shrieked in terror, dropping to her knees with her hands over her ears.

"Clara! Get him into the panic room! Now!" August shouted, striding down the balcony toward us, his gun held low and steady.

"He’s in cardiac arrest!" I screamed back, my hands pressed firmly against Thaddeus’s chest, performing compressions. "If I move him now, his brain will be deprived of oxygen! He’ll die in two minutes!"

"If we stay here, Julian’s men will be at the gates in five!" August snapped, reaching us and grabbing the back of Thaddeus’s wheelchair. "The signal jammer was a trigger. When his signal drops, his security team outside knows to purge the house!"

As if on cue, the heavy iron gates at the end of the long driveway groaned loudly, followed by the crunch of heavy tires on gravel.

"Help me!" August commanded.

Together, using all our strength, we lifted Thaddeus’s limp, heavy body back into the reinforced wheelchair. August slammed a hidden button hidden behind a wall sconce. A section of the oak wall slid open smoothly, revealing a heavy steel elevator.

We shoved the wheelchair inside just as the grand glass front doors of Halloway House were blown inward by a breacher charge.

BOOM!

The force of the explosion shook the floorboards. Glass shattered into millions of sparkling diamonds, falling like rain over the scattered pills on the marble below.

The elevator doors closed, cutting off the sound of alarms and shouting men, plunging us into a smooth, silent descent into the earth beneath the cliffs.

When the doors opened again, we were in a sub-basement built directly into the granite of the sea cliff. The room was lined with floor-to-ceiling glass, looking out into the dark, churning waters of the Atlantic Ocean crashing against the rocks outside. In the center of the room stood a massive steel desk, banks of security monitors, and a heavy, ancient iron safe.

I immediately dropped back to my knees beside Thaddeus, opening the emergency medical kit mounted on the wall.

"Epinephrine... I need epinephrine!" I demanded, my hands flying through the medical box. I found an ampoule, snapped the glass top off, drew the clear liquid into a syringe, and plunged it straight into Thaddeus’s thigh. "Come on, Thaddeus! Come back! Tap for me! Tap!"

I began chest compressions again. One, two, three, four...

August stood over us, his suit jacket torn, his gun pointed at the elevator doors, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He looked down at me—at my face wet with sweat and tears, at my hands desperately trying to save the life of the man who had secretly orchestrated the violation of my body.

"Why are you trying to save him?" August asked, his voice raw. "You heard what Julian said. He ruined your life. He treated you like an incubator."

"Because I'm a nurse!" I sobbed, pushing down on Thaddeus’s sternum. "Because I don't decide who lives and dies! And because... because he’s the only one who knows the truth!"

Gasp!

Thaddeus’s chest rose suddenly with a violent, air-starved gasp.

His eyes snapped open. His left hand flew up, clutching my apron with terrifying strength. His oxygen-starved eyes locked onto mine.

"The... tape..." Thaddeus choked out, his voice a thread of air. He turned his eyes slowly toward the iron safe in the corner of the glass room. "Combination... 10... 14... 22..."

August immediately strode to the safe, spinning the heavy brass dial. Click. Click. Click. The heavy locking bolts retracted with a deep metallic thud. He pulled the heavy door open.

Inside lay no gold bars. No stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

Only a single, vintage reel-to-reel tape recorder, its red light blinking slowly, and a thick leather ledger marked with the Halloway crest.

August grabbed the tape recorder and hit PLAY.

A heavy, static-filled hiss filled the glass room, followed by the voice of Julian Vance, clear and calculating, recorded six months ago:

"Don't worry about the nurse, Celeste. The accident with her mother will break her. She’ll take the hush money and sign the confession. Once she’s discredited, no court will ever believe her if she figures out who the father is. And as for old Thaddeus... two more doses of the potassium compound, and the entire Halloway estate will pass to you as August’s proxy. August thinks he’s in control, but he’s just a figurehead. We own him."