At the wedding altar, the groom squeezed my hand and sneered, “From today on, you belong to me. Know your place.”

"Down! Get down!" Burke yelled, grabbing my tactical vest and throwing me behind the heavy oak desk just as a spray of high-caliber bullets shredded through the bedroom door.

Wood splinters and drywall exploded into the air like lethal confetti. Celeste shrieked in absolute terror, curling into a ball near the fireplace as glass shattered all around us. The scent of ozone and burnt gunpowder filled the room instantly, thick and suffocating.

"Is it the Feds?!" Celeste screamed hysterically, covering her bleeding ears.

"Not a chance!" Burke barked back, popping up over the edge of the desk to return fire. Three sharp shots echoed from his suppressed weapon, followed by a heavy thud and a groan from the hallway. "That's a clean-up crew! Thorne isn't waiting for the seventy-two hours to expire!"

My mind kicked into high gear, adrenaline burning away every trace of fear. Thorne realized I was hunting for the Zurich drive. He knew that if I got my hands on the raw data linking him to Vale Meridian's forced bankruptcy, his entire global empire would be exposed to federal prosecution. He wasn't just trying to recover his eighty million—he was burning the evidence, along with anyone who held it.

"Burke, we can't hold this room!" I shouted, holding the gold pocket watch tightly against my chest. "They have numbers and heavy armor!"

"Balcony's our only exit!" Burke yelled back, slamming a fresh magazine into his handgun. "On my mark, you run for the glass doors! I'll cover!"

"What about her?!" I pointed at Celeste, who was sobbing uncontrollably on the carpet, her silk robe ruined with dust and soot.

"She stays! She's not my priority, Elena!"

"I'm not leaving her to be executed!" I snarled. I crawled across the floor, dodging a volley of wall-penetrating rounds, and grabbed Celeste by her collar, dragging her toward the shattered balcony doors. "Move your legs, Celeste, or you die right here!"

Shock snapped Celeste out of her panic. She scrambled to her feet, clinging to my jacket like a child as we burst out onto the second-floor balcony into the driving rain and howling ocean wind.

Below us, the dark ocean waves crashed violently against the jagged rocks at the base of the cliff.

"Go! Go! Jump for the pool terrace!" Burke ordered, firing two rounds back into the room to suppress the advancing shooters.

The drop was fifteen feet down to the lower stone deck. I didn't hesitate. I shoved Celeste over the railing, catching her as best I could before tumbling down after her. We hit the wet stone hard. Pain shot up my left ankle, hot and sharp, but I ignored it, pulling Celeste under the cover of the concrete overhang just as bullets chipped the stone steps above us.

Burke vaulted over the railing, landing gracefully on his feet, and led us through the darkened garden toward the breached perimeter fence.

Behind us, a massive orange fireball suddenly detonated from the master suite. The shockwave threw us to the ground as the second floor of the mansion exploded into a towering pillar of flame. Thorne’s men had firebombed the house to ensure complete destruction.

"Get in! Get in the truck!" Naomi screamed from the driver's seat of our armored SUV, throwing the side door open as we stumbled through the woods.

Burke shoved Celeste and me into the back, slamming the door just as round after round slammed into the reinforced ballistic glass with loud, dull thuds. Naomi slammed her foot on the gas, the tires screaming against the asphalt as the heavy SUV tore down the dark coastal highway, leaving the burning estate behind in a cloud of thick black smoke.

Inside the vehicle, the silence was deafening, broken only by Celeste’s ragged sobbing and the heavy panting of our security team.

"Are you hit?" Naomi asked frantically, looking back at me through the rearview mirror.

"I'm fine," I breathed, wiping a mixture of rain and dirt from my face. I pulled father Vale's gold pocket watch from my pocket. It was scratched, but intact.

I popped open the back casing using the edge of my pocketknife. Inside, embedded neatly within the antique mechanical gears, was a sleek, silver micro-flash drive—the Zurich master key.

"Did we lose them?" I asked Burke, who was watching the dark road behind us through a thermal scope.

"They aren't following," Burke confirmed, lowering his scope. "They think we died in the fire. They saw the room blow."

"Good," I said, my voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register. I plugged the micro-drive directly into Naomi’s encrypted laptop. "Because now it's our turn to go on the offensive."

The screen flashed to life, displaying thousands of encrypted files, voice logs, and bank routing numbers spanning a decade. The files didn't just contain evidence of Thorne's predatory loans to Adrian—they contained a complete, unredacted registry of every corrupt politician, judge, and federal regulator on Thorne’s payroll across North America.

Celeste stared at the screen, her eyes wide as she saw her late husband's name listed alongside dozens of the most powerful figures in the country.

"My God..." Celeste whispered, her voice trembling. "Julian Thorne doesn't just run an equity firm... he owns the government."

"He owned it yesterday," I corrected her, tapping the keyboard to initiate an encrypted upload to a secure server hosted by the United States Department of Justice and the International Criminal Court. "Tonight, we sell him out."

Naomi looked at me, a cold, triumphant smile forming on her lips. "The file transfer will take three hours to complete through the federal secure firewalls."

"We don't have three hours to sit around," I said, pulling out my personal phone and dialing a private number I had memorized hours ago. "I'm going to set up a meeting with Mr. Thorne."