tablet under my blanket.

I pressed play.

The CCTV footage from the hotel’s underground parking garage was grainy,
timestamped an hour before the “incident.” But the audio, captured by a
microphone near the elevator bank, was devastatingly clear.

The screen showed Vivian, slightly unsteady on her feet, leaning against
Marcus’s chest.

“I can’t do it, Marc,” Vivian’s voice hissed through the tiny speakers. “What if
I hit my head? What if I actually die?”

“You won’t die, Viv,” Marcus’s voice replied, cold and irritated. “You fall
against the edge, just like we practiced. I’ll make sure the blood packs burst.
You want half of Vale Auction House or not? Because the only way you get it is
if she’s sitting in a cell.”

I paused the video. My thumb hovered over the screen, tracing the blurry image
of my husband’s face. My breathing slowed. My hands, which had trembled for
months, were perfectly, utterly still. The weapon was forged. Now, all I had to
do was wait for the gate to open.

The apartment Celeste had rented for us in Queens was a far cry from my
penthouse on the Upper East Side. The wallpaper was peeling, the radiator
clanked aggressively, and the view consisted of a brick wall and a rusted fire
escape. But to me, it was the most beautiful command center in the world.

For seventy-two hours straight after my release, I did not sleep. I lived on
black coffee, stale bagels, and a burning, singular focus.

The flash drive I carried contained raw, disorganized data Celeste had managed
to scrape from the Vale Auction House servers before she was officially locked
out. Marcus thought he had scrubbed the systems clean. He had deleted the