My husband thought he had won everything after draining our accounts and transferring our fortune into his name, so he brought his mistress to court to humiliate me—but the moment I removed my coat, the judge leaned forward in shock, his face turned ghost white, and for the first time in ten years, I smiled.

Richard’s face drained of what little color it had left. "The... the ledger? You knew?"

"I always knew," I replied, gesturing to Marcus, who cut the zip-ties binding Richard’s wrists to the iron frame. Richard slumped forward, coughing violently onto his knees, gasping for air as the circulation returned to his battered limbs.

"You don't understand," Richard groaned, clutching his fractured ribs. "Cadence... they aren't just businessmen, Katherine. The man Marcus just shot? That’s Lucian Vane. His family has controlled European banking cartels since the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They don't lose. If you take that ledger to court, they won't just kill you. They’ll erase your Institute. They’ll kill every doctor who ever worked for your father."

I turned my back on him and walked over to Lucian Vane, who was writhing on the floor, his teeth gritted in a savage snarl of pain.

I knelt beside him, picking up the fallen syringe of potassium chloride. I tapped the barrel with my index finger, watching a single air bubble rise to the needle’s tip.

"Monsieur Vane," I said, speaking fluent, unaccented French. "Your father was the patron of the Blackwood bio-initiative in 1994, wasn't he?"

Vane’s eyes widened through his grimace. "You... you have no idea what you’re meddling with, little girl."

"I am Dr. Katherine Mitchell," I said calmly, pressing the cold steel tip of the needle against the carotid artery of his neck. "I hold the intellectual property rights to the future of neurological medicine. You thought you could use my cowardly ex-husband to siphon my life’s work, bankrupt my family, and lock me in an asylum under a fabricated diagnosis."

"It was business," Vane hissed, sweat pouring down his pale forehead. "Your father was going to distribute the formula open-source. For free! He was going to give it to public universities! Billions of dollars in potential therapy pipelines... eradicated! We couldn't allow an idealist to destroy the market!"

"So you paid Richard to burn down his lab," I whispered, the final puzzle piece locking into place with a terrifying, absolute clarity.

Richard, still on the floor, froze. His breathing stopped entirely.

I didn't turn around. I kept my eyes locked on Vane. "Richard told me my father dropped an ether beaker during an automated synthesis. He told me it was an accident. But it wasn't, was it?"

Vane let out a wheezing, cruel laugh. "Ask him. Ask your devoted husband how much thirty pieces of silver cost in modern currency. Two million dollars into a Swiss numbered account, three weeks before the explosion."

The silence in the concrete chamber was absolute. Even Marcus and his men stood motionless, their rifles lowered, their breath suspended in the cold air.

I stood up slowly. I walked over to Richard.

He was trembling so violently that his teeth chattered against each other. He crawled backward like a crab, pressing himself against the damp concrete wall, his hands held up in supplication.

"Katherine... please... I didn't know the fire would kill him!" Richard shrieked, tears and snot streaming down his bruised face. "They told me the building was empty! They said Arthur was in Boston for a conference! They swore it was just for insurance fraud to force a corporate restructuring! I didn't know he was working late in the basement! I swear to God, Katherine, I loved your father! He was a mentor to me!"

"You stood beside me at his funeral," I said, my voice completely devoid of inflection. "You held my hand while they lowered his urn into the earth. You told me you would take care of me. You moved into his office the following Monday. And six months later, you began slipping neurotoxins into my morning tea to make me appear unstable to the board."

"I was trapped!" Richard wailed. "They owned me! If I didn't do it, they were going to kill me!"

"Where is the ledger, Richard?" I asked.

He pointed a shaking, bloody finger toward the iron drainage hatch beneath the primary pump station. "In the secondary grease trap. Inside a titanium waterproof cylinder. The combination is your birthday. It was always your birthday, Katherine... please... you have to believe me, I never wanted you to get hurt—"