At 2:17 in the morning, forty-three dollars sat in my checking account when a bleeding woman in a cream coat stumbled into the café and whispered, “Please don’t let them find me.”

We didn't take the stairs down. Dante knew that in a corporate high-rise lockdown, stairwells were nothing more than vertical concrete killing funnels.

Instead, Dante led us through the private maintenance shafts behind the executive suites—narrow, grease-stained catwalks that followed the building’s pneumatic HVAC lines. For two hours, we navigated the steel spine of Thorne Tower in absolute darkness, Dante guiding us by touch and night optics until we reached the third-floor mechanical bay.

From there, we slipped out through a subterranean freight loading dock into an unmarked laundry van driven by one of Dante’s vetted private contractors.

By 2:00 PM, the chaos of Michigan Avenue was behind us, but the city felt more dangerous than ever. The news networks were running non-stop coverage of the car bomb outside Thorne Tower, labeling Marcus Holloway’s murder as a “suspected gangland retaliation.” The media had no idea that the real war was being fought for control of an ancient bio-genetic project.

We didn't go to Lake Forest. Dante insisted that until we flushed out the mole who had poisoned my water glass, going anywhere near Toby was a fatal risk.

“There is only one person who knows how Alexander Cross operates,” I told Dante as the van wove through the industrial rail corridors of the South Loop. “One person who knows the names of the syndicate’s field commanders.”

“Julian,” Carmela said, her face grim. “He won't talk to you, Maya. He hates you. You took his fortune, his freedom, and his legacy.”

“He hates me,” I agreed, staring at my reflection in the dark van window. “But he fears Cross more. And Julian is a coward. Cowards always bargain when the executioner starts sharpening the axe.”

Twenty minutes later, Dante’s federal law enforcement credentials—forged through top-tier private intelligence connections—got us through the high-security gates of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago.

MCC Chicago was a brutalist, triangular concrete fortress rising twenty-seven stories into the sky, designed to hold federal detainees awaiting trial. The air inside smelled of industrial floor stripper, cold brass, and the sour sweat of hundreds of caged men.

I sat in a small, windowless interrogation room on the fourth floor, separated from the prisoner’s chair by a thick pane of scratched, bulletproof Plexiglas. Dante stood against the back wall, his arms crossed, watching the two armed federal corrections officers stationed at the door.

The heavy steel door on the opposite side rattled, and Julian Thorne was shoved into the room.

The man who had terrorized my mother, who had hunted me through the back alleys of Chicago, looked completely broken. The bespoke Italian suits were gone, replaced by a faded orange jumpsuit that hung loosely off his gaunt frame. His once-immaculate silver hair was unwashed and wild, and his right cheek was purple with deep, mottled bruising.

He sat down heavily on the metal stool, the chains around his wrists and ankles clinking against the concrete floor.

He looked up, his bloodshot eyes meeting mine through the glass. For a second, a flicker of his old, vicious arrogance flared in his gaze, but it was quickly extinguished by a deeper, hollow terror.

“Look at you,” Julian rasped, his voice raw, like two stones grinding together. “The coffee-shop orphan playing CEO. Did you come here to gloat, Maya? Did you come to see the great Julian Thorne in chains?”

I picked up the telephone receiver connected to the intercom. Julian hesitated, then slowly lifted his receiver to his ear.

“Marcus Holloway was blown into a thousand pieces outside Thorne Tower three hours ago,” I said calmly.

Julian flinched. The color drained from his lips. His chained hands began to tremble against the steel counter.

“Marcus is dead?” Julian whispered.

“A car bomb,” I replied. “And twenty minutes before that, someone put twenty milligrams of liquid ricin on my water glass in the boardroom. Cross is cleaning the ledger, Julian. He’s removing every loose end who knows about the covenant.”

Julian let out a ragged, hysterical laugh that turned into a wet, violent cough. He pressed his forehead against the Plexiglas, his breath fogging the surface.

“You fool,” Julian whispered, his eyes wide and frantic. “You stupid, arrogant little girl. You think Marcus was a loose end? Marcus was an ant. Alexander Cross doesn't clean house with car bombs. Cross is an artist. He doesn't destroy Thorne Global—he needs Thorne Global!”

“Then who put the bomb under Holloway’s car?” I demanded.

Julian leaned closer to the glass, his eyes darting toward the two federal guards behind him as if the concrete walls themselves had ears.

“There are two factions inside the Meridian Syndicate, Maya,” Julian breathed, his voice barely audible over the phone line. “Cross represents the Architects. They want the science. They want the gene sequence your mother stole from the lab. But the other faction... the Founders... they don't care about the science. They want the bloodline wiped out. They want the debt paid in ash.”

“Who leads the Founders, Julian? Give me a name.”

Julian swallowed hard, his throat clicking. He raised his chained hands, pointing a trembling finger directly at my chest.

“Look in the mirror, Maya,” Julian whispered. “Your grandfather didn't have one daughter. He had two.”

My heart stopped. “What are you talking about?”

“Victoria was the golden child,” Julian hissed, a twisted, bitter smile stretching across his cracked lips. “The brilliant scientist. The perfect heir. But there was another sister. An older sister who was cast out, disinherited, and erased from the family registry thirty-five years ago because she was deemed too unstable, too ruthless, too hungry for blood.”

“Her name, Julian!”

“Cassandra,” Julian whispered, the name tasting like poison on his tongue. “Cassandra Thorne. She took the name Ward after she married into the port authority cartels.”

My blood ran cold. The image of the boardroom flashed before my eyes—Cynthia Ward sitting silently to Holloway’s right, looking down at her hands, refusing to speak, her green eyes cold and calculating.

*Cynthia Ward.* Not a corrupt board member.

My aunt.

“Cynthia didn't kill Holloway to silence him,” Julian rasped, his eyes bulging with sheer panic. “She killed him because he failed to poison you! She’s taking the empire by force, Maya! And right now... right now she knows where the boy is.”

My grip on the telephone receiver tightened so hard the plastic cracked in my palm.

“What did you say?”

“The leak didn't come from your staff, Maya,” Julian sneered, tears of terror mixing with the sweat on his face. “It came from the Department of Justice. Arthur Pendelton gave up the Lake Forest safehouse two hours ago to save his own skin! Cynthia’s strike team is already at the perimeter!”

I dropped the phone. It dangled by its coiled metal cord, banging against the concrete wall.