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.

Jason Mitchell had never walked three blocks in Manhattan in his life.

He had a dedicated Maybach, a driver named Frank who had worked for his family for twenty years, and a private elevator that took him from his underground penthouse parking garage directly to his office.

At two-forty-five that afternoon, he stood on the cold concrete steps of the Mitchell Medical building on Lexington Avenue.

He was carrying a single cardboard box containing a few family photographs, a gold desk clock his grandfather had given him, and his personal address book. His corporate phone had been confiscated by the IT security team on the forty-second floor. His corporate credit cards had been cut in two by Elena Rostova herself.

At the bottom of the twenty granite steps, a wall of fifty journalists, cameramen, and financial bloggers stood waiting behind metal barricades.

When the glass revolving doors clicked behind him, the shouting began.

"Mr. Mitchell! Did the board vote to remove you?"

"Jason! What do you say to allegations of clinical trial fraud?"

"Is it true your wife has assumed the role of interim CEO?"

"Where is Madison Brooks, Jason?"

Jason pulled the collar of his suit jacket up against the bitter November wind. He looked around wildly for Frank and the Maybach, but the curb was empty except for a line of yellow cabs that refused to pull over in the chaos.

He took a step down. His foot slipped on the wet granite, and the cardboard box tumbled from his arms.

The gold desk clock shattered against the stone. The photographs of him shaking hands with senators and tech moguls scattered across the dirty pavement, trampled beneath the shoes of aggressive cameramen pushing through the barricades.

Flashbulbs popped in a continuous, blinding wave.

From the forty-second floor, I stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the tiny, thrashing figure on the sidewalk below.

Daniel came up behind me, holding two porcelain mugs of black coffee. He handed one to me.

"The Department of Justice just filed a provisional freeze on all his individual domestic accounts," Daniel said quietly. "By four o'clock, his debit cards won't even buy him a sandwich at a bodega."

"And the Fifth Avenue penthouse?" I asked, taking a slow sip of the coffee.

"The lease is held in the name of Mitchell Medical Innovations LLC," Daniel replied with a thin smile. "As interim CEO, you signed the eviction notice thirty minutes ago. The locks are being changed right now. Madison Brooks was allowed twenty minutes to pack two suitcases under the supervision of a female marshal."

I watched the tiny figure of Jason Mitchell finally break through the crowd of reporters, ducking his head, fleeing down Lexington Avenue on foot like a common pickpocket escaping a crime scene.

"He told me I'd be begging on the streets before the month was out," I murmured.

"He projected his own destiny onto you," Daniel said. "Narcissists always do that. They describe their greatest terror and pretend it's yours."

"It's not over, Daniel," I said, turning away from the window. "Jason's father didn't build this empire with clean hands. Old man Mitchell is still in that private nursing home in Connecticut. And he still controls the family trust's voting shares in Mitchell Global Holdings."

"The father is eighty-eight, Iris," Daniel said, his brow furrowing. "He hasn't spoken publicly in five years."

"He doesn't need to speak," I said, setting the coffee mug down on the conference table. "He has the Mitchell family's dirty ledger. The one that predates my explosion. If Jason gets desperate enough, he’ll go to the old man to trigger the dead-man clause in the company's bylaws."

"What dead-man clause?"

I looked Daniel straight in the eye.

"The one that says if any Mitchell CEO is removed through corporate hostility, the entire patent library reverts instantly to a private foundation in Zurich—leaving Mitchell Medical an empty shell overnight."

Daniel’s face tightened. "He wouldn't destroy the company just to spite you."