At 2 A.M., my husband beat me bloody on my parents’ kitchen floor while my mother told me to stop making a scene—but neither of them knew the FBI agent they were attacking had one emergency alert left to expose them all.

The transition to Washington, D.C., was swift and merciless. Within a week of closing the Cleveland sweep, I was seated behind a massive mahogany desk on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, reviewing encrypted ledger fragments pulled from international cryptocurrency nodes linked to Grant’s syndicate.

My office was sleek, sterile, and entirely mine. No family portraits. No whispered warnings about keeping the peace or avoiding scenes. Just dual-monitor displays, encrypted terminals, and the quiet, rhythmic hum of federal servers.

There was a knock at the frosted glass door, and Rafael stepped in holding two cups of coffee from the basement kiosk.

"Briefing with the Deputy Director starts in ten," Rafael announced, setting a cup on my desk. "How’s the new jurisdiction treating you?"

"It’s quiet," I admitted, taking a sip. "Too quiet. Without my mother telling me I’m overreacting every time I solve a transnational fraud case, I almost feel like I’m missing something."

Rafael chuckled, leaning against the doorframe. "Trust me, you’ll get plenty of drama soon enough. The pre-trial motions for the Quinn-Miller case dropped this morning. Grant’s defense lawyer is trying to cut a plea deal. He’s offering to hand over the names of every overseas shell-company operator in exchange for dropping the cyber-terrorism enhancement."

I stared at the rotating security badge on my desk. "And my parents?"

"Your mother refused the initial plea offer," Rafael said, his tone softening slightly. "She’s still maintaining that she had no idea what Grant was doing with the accounts, despite the bank logs with her digital signature on them. Your father is blaming Grant for coercing them under financial duress."

"They're still trying to script the narrative," I murmured, shaking my head. "Even facing twenty years, they believe that if they just manage the optics well enough, reality will bend to fit their story."

"Well, reality doesn't care about their optics anymore," Rafael said firmly. "You broke the cycle, Mara. You hit the duress alert when they expected you to stay down on the floor. That changes everything."