Vanessa locked Noah in a dog cage because he refused to call her “Mom.”

I lunged forward before she could react. I grabbed her wrist. The gun went off—once, the shot echoing deafeningly off the metal walls—missing me by inches. We struggled. The men shouted. Olivia screamed behind her gag. Vanessa was strong, fueled by desperation, but I fought with the strength of a father protecting his child. I twisted the gun from her hand and sent it skittering across the floor.

One of the men charged. I ducked, drove my shoulder into his chest, and sent him crashing into the crate. The laptop shattered. The drive snapped beneath a boot. The second man hesitated—glancing at Vanessa, then at me—and in that hesitation, I saw it. He did not want to be there.

“Walk away!” I shouted over the chaos. “She is going to prison! Do not throw your life away for a lost cause!”

He looked at Vanessa. Then at the broken drive. Then he turned and ran.

Vanessa screamed his name. She lunged for the gun. I caught her arm. We fell together, rolling across the concrete, striking the ground hard. She clawed at my face, spat at me, fought with a wild, terrifying strength.

“You cannot win!” she shrieked. “My father will find you! He will destroy you! He will take Noah and you will never see him again!”

“Your father cannot save you!” I said, pinning her down. “Not this time. Everyone heard the recording. Everyone knows what you are. It is over, Vanessa. It is finally over.”

She went still beneath me. Her chest heaving. Her eyes wild and glassy. And then she looked past me, toward Olivia. A strange, calm expression crossed her face.

“He will not let it end here,” Vanessa said softly. “My father. He told me… if everything fell apart… there could be no witnesses. No loose ends. Not you. Not Olivia. Not even me.”

My blood ran cold. “What are you saying?”

She smiled—a broken, terrible smile. “He never intended to let me stand trial. He never intended to let any of us survive this. He sent those men to make sure the evidence was destroyed… and that none of us walked out of here alive. I was the sacrifice. All along.”

Before I could speak, a second gunshot rang out. From the shadows. Toward the entrance. And Vanessa’s body jerked. She gasped once, a ragged, terrible sound, and her eyes widened in shock. Blood bloomed dark across her chest. She looked down at herself, then back up at me.

“He… wanted… Noah…” she whispered. And then her eyes closed.

I scrambled backward. Olivia screamed. From the darkness at the warehouse entrance, a figure stepped forward—not one of the men, but someone I knew. Robert Sterling’s personal attorney. The man who had sat silently in the back of the courtroom. Holding a smoking gun.