The cabin lights flickered back to life, casting a pale, clinical yellow glow over the rows of first class. The overhead oxygen masks dangled like dead vines, swaying gently with the residual shudder of the aircraft. But nobody was reaching for them.

Before dawn broke over the Boston harbor, my satellite phone buzzed against the mahogany bedside table.

I rolled out of bed without waking Elena, who had finally collapsed into a deep, exhausted sleep on the chaise lounge near the foot of the bed. Lila was still tucked safely between us, clutching a corner of the duvet.

I grabbed the phone and walked out into the private hallway, sealing the heavy oak door behind me.

"Report," I ordered.

Marcus’s voice came through the encrypted line, crisp and devoid of emotion.

"We traced the ping on the federal database query from three years ago. The dirty agent inside the U.S. Marshals office was a guy named Agent Vance. He retired early, moved to a penthouse in Miami, and started living well above a civil servant's salary."

"And?" I prompted, my voice cold as ice.

"We picked him up two hours ago from his home in Coral Gables. He's currently sitting in a soundproof shipping container off the Florida coast, courtesy of our Latin American division." Marcus paused. "He confessed within ten minutes, Boss. He sold Elena's SSN and location updates to a middleman working for Viktor's remaining crew."

"Who is the middleman?"

"A guy named Grigori. One of Viktor’s primary enforcers who slipped the net after the federal raid five years ago. He’s operating out of a heavily guarded warehouse district in Queens, New York. And Boss... you’re not going to like the rest of it."

My grip on the phone tightened until my knuckles turned white. "Talk."

"Grigori didn't just want Elena for leverage against you," Marcus said, his voice dropping lower. "Word leaked out six months ago through an informant in our own corporate real estate division that you had a hidden trust fund set up under a dummy corporation—a trust fund explicitly designated for an unnamed heir."

My stomach dropped. A leak in my own inner circle.

"Someone inside my company sold me out," I said quietly.

"Yes, Boss. One of your senior vice presidents—David Vance, no relation to the federal agent—has been quietly feeding financial data to Grigori’s syndicate. They figured out that you were still searching for Elena. They knew she had a child. And they were planning to snatch Lila the moment she stepped foot back in New York."

A profound, terrifying silence settled over the hallway.

For six years, I had believed my biggest enemy was external—rivals trying to carve up my real estate empire, syndicates trying to settle old scores. But the rot was inside my own house. A traitor sitting in a glass-walled corner office on the fifty-fifth floor of Moretti Tower, plotting against my blood.

"Where is David Vance right now?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, laden with a lethal promise.

"He's currently scheduled to fly into Boston this morning for a routine regional property acquisition meeting," Marcus replied. "Landing at Logan at 9:00 AM."

I looked at my watch. It was 6:30 AM.

"Don't touch him yet," I ordered. "Let him land. Let him check into his hotel. Let him think he’s the smartest man in New York."

"Understood, Boss. What about the girl and her mother?"

"Move them to the safehouse in Vermont," I said without a moment's hesitation. "Armored transport, full detail. Nobody breathes a word about where they are."