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.”

The collective gasp of three hundred people seemed to suck all the air out of the Grand Ballroom.

The deputy police superintendent blinked, looking between Cynthia and me, his brow furrowing in deep confusion. “Cynthia? Did she just call you... Cassandra?”

Cynthia’s jaw clenched, a muscle jumping along her sharp, aristocratic jawline. With smooth, terrifying poise, she placed her champagne flute on the dais table and turned to the officials surrounding her.

“Gentlemen, if you will excuse us for a moment,” Cynthia said, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “My niece has suffered a severe emotional trauma today. The pressure of inheriting her mother’s estate has clearly unhinged her grip on reality.”

She waved her hand dismissively, and the city commissioners, sensing the lethal family tension, quickly excused themselves, melting into the crowd.

Four men wearing gold maritime lapel pins immediately closed in, taking positions at the corners of the dais, their right hands buried inside their tuxedo jackets, their eyes locked on me.

Cynthia stepped down from the platform until she was standing less than two feet from me, her emerald eyes glittering with unadulterated venom.

“You have your mother’s arrogance, Maya,” Cynthia whispered, her voice low enough that only the two of us could hear. “Victoria always thought she could walk into a room of lions with nothing but a lecture on morality. Look where that got her. Buried in an unmarked grave while Julian stole her furniture.”

“Where is my brother, Cassandra?” I asked, keeping my hands resting loosely on the clutch containing the black journal.

“He’s safe,” Cynthia smiled, a cold, empty stretch of lips that didn't reach her eyes. “For another six minutes. At 8:15, my helicopter leaves the roof. If I am not on it with that black journal in my hands, my men will drop Toby into the icy waters of the harbor basin from five hundred feet up. He won't even have time to scream.”

My knuckles went white, but I didn't break eye contact.

“You killed your own sister,” I said softly. “You backed Julian’s coup twenty-three years ago, watched him murder your family, and stole the maritime docks just to hoard dark-money shipping routes. Why? Was grandfather’s approval really worth that much blood?”

Cynthia let out a soft, venomous hiss.

“You know nothing about our father,” she sneered, leaning in so close I could smell the expensive lavender perfume masking the sour stench of her rage. “Father built this city with blood! He gave Victoria the crown because she was brilliant, while he treated me like a broken vessel. When Victoria discovered the synthetic gene sequence—the cure that saved your pathetic, sickly life—she wanted to give it to the world for free. She wanted to file public patents!”

Cynthia’s eyes narrowed into slits of green ice.

“Do you have any idea what the patent for cellular immortality is worth on the global black market, Maya? Trillions. Kings, dictators, and hedge-fund titans would surrender their sovereign wealth just to buy five extra years of life. Alexander Cross understood that. I understood that. Victoria was weak. She thought love could protect you.”

“My mother was stronger than you will ever be,” I said, pulling the black journal from my clutch and holding it up between us.

Cynthia’s breath hitched. Her hand instinctively reached out, her fingers trembling with desperate, insatiable greed. “Give it to me.”

“Call your men in the penthouse,” I said. “Tell them to release Toby to Dante. The moment my man confirms Toby is safe in the armored transport, you get the book.”

Cynthia looked at the book, then looked at me, a cruel, mocking laugh bubbling up in her chest.

“Do you really think you're in a position to negotiate?” Cynthia whispered. She raised her left hand, adjusting the diamond earring on her lobe—a signal to her men.

Instantly, the four security guards stepped forward, encircling us, the bulges of their concealed weapons unmistakable beneath their tuxedos. The guests at the nearby tables began to murmur in alarm, slowly backing away as the atmosphere in the room turned suffocatingly violent.

“Take the book from her,” Cynthia commanded her men. “And shoot her through the heart. We’ll call it self-defense against an unstable trespasser.”

The first guard reached out, his heavy hand moving toward my arm.

*Crack.*

The sound wasn't gunfire. It was the sharp, concussive shatter of the hotel’s massive skylight sixty feet above our heads.

A heavy tactical flashbang grenade dropped like a stone from the ceiling, detonating twenty feet above the dais with a blinding, five-million-candlepower white flare and a deafening 170-decibel boom that blew out the crystal pendants of the chandeliers.