The fluorescent lights of the emergency ward buzzed with a relentless, mechanical hum that mirrored the frantic beating of Baldric’s heart. He stood outside Trauma Room 4, his massive hands—calloused, scarred, and permanently stained with engine grease—gripping the sterile metal railing until his knuckles turned as white as the hospital walls.

While Derek faced criminal proceedings in federal court, Bertha Vance was fighting a very different kind of war in the civil courts of upstate New York.

With Ironwood Holdings freezing every liquidity channel connected to the Vance family name, Bertha’s personal assets, trust funds, and lavish properties had been placed into receivership pending multiple federal investigations into money laundering and tax fraud.

She sat in the cavernous, leather-paneled study of her temporary refuge—a borrowed estate belonging to a former society acquaintance who was now frantically trying to block Bertha’s phone calls.

Her cell phone buzzed violently on the mahogany desk. It was her chief legal counsel, a man who had once commanded a retainer of five thousand dollars an hour.

“Bertha, we have a major problem,” the lawyer said without a greeting.

“What is it now, Gerald? Did the appellate court grant our injunction or not?” Bertha snapped, swirling a glass of expensive scotch with a hand covered in heavy diamond rings.

“The injunction was denied with prejudice,” Gerald replied flatly. “Worse than that, the federal prosecutor just filed an expanded asset forfeiture motion. They’re claiming the estate you currently reside in was purchased using embezzled funds from the Ironwood logistics subsidiaries.”

Bertha’s face turned an ugly shade of purple. “That’s preposterous! That estate has been in my family for three generations! It has nothing to do with Baldric’s little freight company!”

“Bertha, listen to me very carefully,” the lawyer said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “Ironwood Holdings didn’t just own freight lines. Through complex shell corporations established in the nineteen-eighties, Baldric’s legal team proved that your grandfather’s initial capital injection came directly from a venture-capital fund that Baldric controlled under an alias. He literally funded your family’s rise from bankruptcy fifty years ago.”

The glass slipped from Bertha’s trembling fingers, shattering against the Persian rug as amber liquid soaked into the fabric.