He ignored my calls while his newborn daughter cried, never dreaming an unknown number was sending me the exact proof I needed to destroy him.

The cold struck Aaron like a physical blow the moment she pushed the nursery’s French door open.

The November rain swept across the stone terrace in a freezing mist, smelling of damp earth, decaying oak leaves, and the metallic tang of city smog drifting up from the south. The wind whipped her loose hair across her face, stinging her eyes, but she immediately pulled the thick wool of her coat tighter around Sophie, shielding the infant's face completely within the warm cavern of her chest.

Underneath the layers of wool, Sophie let out a soft, questioning grunt, but the warmth of Aaron’s body and the steady rhythm of her heartbeat kept the child from crying out.

Aaron stepped onto the wet flagstones.

Her Chelsea boots found purchase on the moss-slicked stone, but every step sent a dull, throbbing ache radiating through her pelvic floor. Her surgical incision pulled viciously against her movements, a burning sensation that felt as though the skin were being stretched across hot wire. She clamped her teeth together until her jaw clicked, refusing to stop.

She moved along the western balustrade, keeping her back pressed against the dark limestone wall of the mansion.

Below her, forty yards across the sloping lawn, the two-story glass greenhouse glowed with a faint, greenish hue beneath the estate’s security floodlights. Beyond it lay the dense, tangled treeline of the Milwaukee River ravine—a wall of black, skeletal oaks thrashing in the gale.

To her left, half a mile down the main asphalt driveway, the south gatehouse stood illuminated in amber. Through the rain-streaked darkness, she could see the silhouette of a guard through the bulletproof glass, his head bent over a glowing tablet.

Twelve minutes, she reminded herself. Just get to the greenhouse.

She reached the top of the curved exterior stone staircase that wound down from the third-floor terrace to the private gardens below. The steps were steep, narrow, and slick with a thin film of ice forming in the freezing drizzle.

She took the first step, her left hand gripping the wet wrought-iron railing with white-knuckled intensity, her right hand clamped firmly over the bundle on her chest.

One.

The wind roared around the corner of the house, nearly tearing her coat open.

Two.

Her boot slipped an inch on a patch of wet lichen. She caught herself with her forearm against the balustrade, her breath hitching in a silent gasp of terror, her body absorbing the shock so Sophie wouldn't shift.

Three.

She was halfway down the staircase when a sound sliced through the roar of the rain.

It wasn't thunder.

It was the heavy, rhythmic rumble of a high-displacement engine turning off the public road onto the estate’s private lane.

Aaron froze against the wet stone, her entire body locking into paralysis.

Through the bare branches of the driveway’s maple trees, twin shafts of brilliant, high-intensity xenon light cut through the black sheets of rain.

The vehicle was moving fast—far too fast for a routine delivery or a municipal patrol car. The headlights swept across the curved asphalt, illuminating the heavy iron gates that were already beginning to swing open without the guard ever stepping outside to check the credentials.

It wasn't a utility truck.

It was a convoy.

A black, armored Cadillac Escalade, followed closely by two unmarked Chevrolet Suburbans, their tires screaming against the wet pavement as they accelerated up the private driveway toward the mansion’s front portico.