I thought my husband was protecting me when I passed out at his parents’ house, until I heard his father say, “We gave her a little more this time.”

“You always were too curious for your own good, Claire.”

The sudden voice cut through the dark study like a razor blade.

I spun around, slamming my back against the open safe, clutching the red folder against my chest.

Daniel was standing in the doorway.

He was wearing his black silk dressing gown. In his right hand, he held a sleek, silver smartphone. The screen was illuminated, displaying a real-time feed from the motion sensor hidden inside the safe.

He hadn't been asleep. He had been waiting for me to take the bait.

“Daniel…” I whispered, my voice trembling so hard I could barely articulate his name. “You… you’re using me. This baby… it’s a medical experiment for your father.”

Daniel walked slowly across the room, stepping into the pale square of moonlight. His face wasn't angry. It was filled with a chilling, detachment—the cold, calculating expression of a scientist observing a laboratory rat that had managed to chew through its maze wall.

“My father is dying, Claire,” Daniel said flatly, pulling a chair out from the desk and sitting down, crossing his legs. “Huntington’s variant. He has eighteen months to live. The stem cells from a standard donor are useless. But a child created from our combined genetic profile—modified with the Zurich sequence—holds the exact cellular key to rebuild his neural tissue.”

“It’s a life!” I screamed, tears flooding my eyes. “This is a baby! Our baby!”

“It is an insurance policy for an empire!” Daniel barked, his voice finally cracking with dark intensity. “Do you have any idea what happens to the Hale Group if my father dies before the restructuring is complete? We lose everything! The banks take the assets, the board splits the shares, and I am left with nothing!”

“So you turned your wife into a lab animal?” I choked out. “You’re going to let me die in four weeks?”

Daniel looked at me, a flicker of something resembling regret passing across his eyes, only to be swallowed instantly by cold ambition.

“You weren't supposed to suffer,” he said softly. “The Sedatol was designed to keep you comfortable. To keep you sleeping through the whole process. When the time came, Dr. Reeves would have performed the procedure. You wouldn't have felt a thing, Claire. We would have buried you in the family plot with full honors. I would have mourned you. I would have raised our daughter as a devoted widower.”

A wave of pure, unadulterated nausea washed over me. The monster sitting three feet away from me wasn't a man who had lost his way. He was a sociopath who had meticulously planned my murder down to the floral arrangements at my funeral.

Outside, a violent gust of wind slammed against the reinforced glass windows. Lightning flashed across the night sky, throwing harsh, jagged shadows over Daniel’s face.

“Give me the folder, Claire,” Daniel said, extending his hand. “It’s time to take your injection.”

“No,” I whispered.

I didn't run toward the doorway—Daniel was blocking it.

Instead, I grabbed the heavy brass desk lamp beside me and smashed it with all my strength against the floor-to-ceiling glass panel behind the desk.

CRACK.

The reinforced safety glass didn't shatter into pieces, but a massive spiderweb of white fractures bloomed across the pane, breaking the seal. The howl of the Atlantic gale screamed through the cracks, blowing papers and curtains violently into the room.

Daniel jumped up from his chair in alarm. “Are you insane?!”

Taking advantage of his moment of distraction, I lunged forward, thrusting the corner of the heavy red folder directly into his eye.

Daniel let out a roar of pain, stumbling back, clutching his bleeding face.

I sprinted past him out of the study, down the grand spiral staircase, into the dark, echoing foyer of the house.