The night air was sharp, biting against the lingering dampness of balsamic dressing on Elena’s skin. As she stepped past the grand iron gates of the Vance estate, she didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. Behind her, inside the cavernous marble dining room, the silence was still deafening—broken only by the dripping of red wine from her husband Julian’s ruined suit and the hysterical gasps of his mother, Victoria Vance.

Driven to total madness and despair, Victoria Vance finally cracked. She refused to accept that her life of luxury had vanished overnight. If she was going down, she was going to make the woman who did this to them pay in blood.

Late that evening, inside a dilapidated motel room on the outskirts of the city—the only place Julian could afford with the small amount of cash left in his wallet—Victoria opened a dark web forum on an old laptop.

"What are you doing, Mother?" Julian asked numbly from the bed, staring blankly at the stained ceiling.

"I’m fixing this," Victoria hissed, her eyes wild and bloodshot. "That orphan bitch thinks she’s untouchable because she has security guards and billions of dollars. But flesh and bone still bleed, Julian."

"Mother, stop," Julian whimpered, fear creeping back into his voice. "If she catches us—"

"She ruined us!" Victoria screamed, slamming her fists on the desk. "She humiliated me in front of Arthur Sterling! She made me lose my home! She turned you into a laughingstock! I would rather spend the rest of my life in a prison cell knowing she’s six feet under than live another day in this filth!"

Victoria placed a wire transfer using the very last of her hidden offshore emergency funds—$200,000—to hire a mercenary team operating in the underground network. Their instruction was simple: Eliminate Elena Ritter before sunrise.

What Victoria didn't know was that Apex Titan’s cybersecurity division monitored every single IP address linked to the Vance family 24 hours a day. The second the transaction went through, an alert pinged directly to Marcus's phone inside Elena’s executive penthouse.

Marcus rushed into Elena’s office. "Madam Chairwoman, we have a red-level breach. Victoria Vance just placed a hit contract on you through a darknet broker."

Elena didn't even flinch. She slowly set down her pen, taking a calm sip of her tea.

"Did they accept the contract?" Elena asked quietly.

"No," Marcus smiled darkly. "Because the darknet brokerage firm they used... is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apex Security Solutions. We own the network."

Elena looked out at the city skyline, a small, cold smile forming on her lips. "Good. Tell the hit team to accept the job. Give Victoria a meeting location to confirm the target's whereabouts."