Grace turned the heavy brass latch, the click echoing like a gunshot in the sterile quiet of Suite 704. Her breath came in frantic, shallow rasps as I sat straight up in the hospital bed, pulling the cardiac bypass wire I had spent four painstaking days secretly recalibrating. The heart monitor continued its steady, slow beep, mocking the chaos in the room.

The paralytic raged through my bloodstream, freezing my diaphragm like liquid nitrogen. My lungs burned for oxygen, my vision narrowing to a pinpoint of suffocating darkness. In the quiet solitude of my penthouse, I could hear the second hand of the clock ticking away the final seconds of my life.

Grace was gone. My empire was signed away. My breath stopped.

Then, the floor-to-ceiling glass panel on the western balcony shattered into ten thousand glittering shards.

Nico burst through the curtains, covered in glass dust, carrying an emergency tactical trauma kit. He didn't waste a second asking questions. He knew the signs of nerve-agent toxicity from our days in the European underworld. With ruthless speed, he slammed an autoinjector of atropine and pralidoxime directly through my shirt into my thigh.

A wave of violent agony tore through my central nervous system. My heart kicked like a struck engine, and I gasped, pulling in a ragged, burning chestful of air as I collapsed onto the floor, vomiting black bile onto the Persian rug.

"I followed her," Nico grunted, hauling me up by my collar and dragging me toward the hidden elevator behind the bookshelf. "She had three perimeter guards posted down in the lobby, Boss. She’s locking down the city."

"She thinks... I'm dead..." I choked out, my voice sounding like broken glass as the antidote fought the toxin in my veins.

"Let her think it," Nico snapped, jamming the keycard into the elevator control. "By tomorrow morning, Grace Miller will control every bank account, every dock, and every politician in New York. If you show your face now, she’ll blow your head off on live television and call it self-defense."