I went to the airport only to say goodbye to a friend. I never expected to see my husband there, embracing the woman he insisted was “only a coworker.”

The sound was subtle, almost imperceptible to anyone who hadn't lived in this old Victorian house for decades. It was the specific, high-pitched protest of the white oak floorboard right outside the study door—the one floorboard my father had intentionally left ungreased when he restored the upstairs hallway, calling it his natural burglar alarm.

Someone was upstairs.

My pulse spiked, flooding my veins with adrenaline. The private security guards Marcus mentioned hadn't arrived yet; it had only been twenty minutes since he drove away.

I slipped my phone into my pocket, keeping the burner phone tightly gripped in my left hand. Reaching carefully behind the entryway coat rack, my fingers wrapped around the smooth, heavy ash wood of my father's old baseball bat—a relic from my childhood that had sat in that corner for ten years.

I didn't call out. Calling out only gave the intruder information. Instead, I kicked off my heels, staying in my stocking feet, and stepped onto the staircase, pressing my back against the wall where the steps creaked the least.

Step by step, I ascended into the dark upper level of the house. The hallway was pitch black, save for the faint moonlight filtering through the stained-glass window at the far end. The door to the master study was slightly ajar, a tiny slit of yellow light spilling across the dark runner rug.

Whoever was inside was using a narrow penlight, systematically searching behind the oil paintings that lined the walls.

I crept closer, holding my breath, my knuckles turning white around the wooden bat. Through the gap in the door, I saw a figure dressed entirely in black tactical gear, crouching near the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. In their hand was a small, battery-powered electronic decoder attached to the heavy iron keypad of the wall safe behind my father’s portrait.

It wasn't Julian. Julian was sitting in a holding cell downtown.

And it wasn't Sarah. The figure was broad-shouldered, tall, and operated with the cold, deliberate efficiency of a professional criminal.

Beep. Beep. Click.

The heavy steel door of the concealed wall safe popped open with a dull metallic thud.

The intruder reached inside, pulling out a heavy, matte-black encrypted hard drive and a thick leather-bound ledger stamped with a gold seal I had never seen before.

"Looking for something?" I said, throwing the study door fully open and flicking on the main overhead light switch.

The intruder whirled around instantly, a suppressed pistol clearing his holster before I could even bring the bat up. The small, cylindrical silencer was pointed straight at my chest.

"Don't move, Mrs. Vance," a gravelly voice rasped from behind a black ski mask. "Or this gets very messy, very fast."

I stood my ground, though every instinct in my body screamed at me to run. The sight of a barrel pointed at my heart brought a surreal, icy calm over me. "Who sent you? Sarah?"

The man gave a soft, humorless chuckle. "Sarah is a mid-level manager, sweetheart. She doesn't call the shots. Now drop the wooden stick before I put a hole in your lung."

I let the baseball bat slide from my grip. It fell onto the thick rug with a muted thud.

"Smart girl," the man said, sliding the encrypted hard drive into his tactical vest. "Your husband made a lot of promises to people you don't want to meet. He pledged assets he didn't own, and he laundered money through your late father's charitable foundations without your knowledge. You think you won today because you kept your house? You have no idea the debt you just inherited."

My mind raced. Laundered money through my father's foundation? My father had established the Vance Children's Hospital Fund a decade ago. Julian had taken over as the board treasurer two years ago under the guise of saving on administrative costs.

"He didn't touch the foundation," I said, my voice trembling for the first time. "That money is audited every six months!"

"Audited by firms Sarah Sterling owned," the intruder countered, stepping toward me with the gun still trained on my torso. "Julian wasn't just stealing your house, Clara. He was using your father's pristine reputation to clean dark money from international syndicates across South America and Eastern Europe. Seven million came through last month alone. And now that you've frozen the accounts and brought the federal authorities into the picture, those people want their capital back. Or they want blood."

The man reached out with his free hand to grab my arm, clearly intending to take me with him as collateral.

"I don't think so," I whispered.

Before he could lay a finger on me, I smashed the heavy glass paperweight I had quietly snatched off the desk near the door directly into his face.

The heavy crystal struck him right across his jaw through the mask. He grunted in pain, staggering backward, his gun firing once. The suppressed shot made a quiet pfft sound, blowing a hole through the drywall right beside my ear.

I didn't wait for him to recover. I threw my entire weight against the study door, slamming it shut, and shoved the heavy oak library chair under the brass doorknob to jam it.

Downstairs, heavy footfalls suddenly pounded through the front entrance, followed by loud, authoritative voices shouting.

"POLICE! SECURITY! IS ANYONE INSIDE?"

It was Marcus's hired security team along with local officers responding to a silent alarm I had triggered from my phone while standing on the stairs.

Behind the study door, the intruder cursed violently. The sound of breaking glass echoed out as he threw himself through the study's second-story glass window onto the garage roof below to escape into the night.