The silence that followed the dial tone was deafening. The fire crackled in the hearth, but the room felt as cold as an icebox.

Nicholas stared at the glowing screen of his phone, his jaw locked tight. “He died,” Nicholas said, his voice barely a rasp. “I identified the wreckage myself. The coast guard found the plane. They found…”

“They found what he wanted them to find,” I said, my fingers already flying across the keyboard, pulling up the biometric signature log embedded in the Vance Logistics account. “Look at the IP address attached to this authorization from three days ago. It wasn’t routed through an offshore VPN to mask his location. It was sent from a private server right here in New York.”

Nicholas stepped closer, staring over my shoulder at the coordinates resolving on the screen. “An estate in Bedford. It’s registered under a shell corporation my father set up in the nineties.”

“He never left,” I whispered. The blood in my veins turned to ice as the pieces fell into place with terrifying precision. “Alex wasn’t acting alone when he married me, Nicholas. Think about it. My father was the chief tax auditor for the State Treasury before he died. The files he left me—the ones I thought were just old family records in our attic…”

“They weren’t family records,” Nicholas realized, his eyes darkening. “They were your father’s evidence against Arthur.”

“Arthur didn’t just fake his death to escape federal prosecution,” I said, looking up at Nicholas. “He used Alex to get to me. Alex married me to find out if I knew what my father had hidden in those boxes. When they realized I was completely oblivious, I became a liability. The life insurance policy wasn’t just to cover Alex’s debts—it was Arthur funding his second life, using my father’s ultimate secret to clear his path forever.”

Before Nicholas could answer, the heavy glass windows of the study shattered inward in a spray of blinding shards.

Thump. Thump.

Smoke grenades bounced across the hardwood floor, instantly spewing thick, grey clouds into the air.

“Get down!” Nicholas roared, grabbing my arm and pulling me flat onto the floor behind the heavy mahogany desk just as a suppressed burst of gunfire tore through the leather chairs where we had been sitting seconds before.

The security alarms in the brownstone began to blare, red emergency lights flashing through the smoke. Through the haze, I saw three heavily armed figures clad in black tactical gear moving swiftly through the shattered window frames.

“They aren’t here for Alex’s ledger,” Nicholas muttered, pulling a sleek, matte-black handgun from a hidden drawer under the desk and flicking off the safety. “Arthur is burning the evidence. That means us.”

“The laptop!” I gasped, reaching up toward the desk.

“Leave it!”

“No! I transferred the Bedford server keys to a flash drive—it’s plugged into the side port!” I reached up, my hand scrambling through glass dust and papers until my fingers closed around the tiny metal drive, yanking it free just as a bullet splintered the wood inches from my hand.

Nicholas fired three controlled shots through the smoke, sending one of the intruders stumbling backward with a heavy thud. He grabbed the back of my jacket, dragging me toward a door concealed within the bookshelf wall.

“Keycard!” he shouted over the deafening alarm.

I slapped the silver keycard he had given me earlier against the hidden reader. The panel clicked, swinging open into a narrow, dark stairwell leading down into the foundations of the brownstone.

Nicholas shoved me inside and slammed the reinforced steel door shut behind us, locking it from the inside just as heavy boots kicked against the other side.

We raced down the spiral stairs, our lungs burning from the stray smoke, until we hit the bottom level—a subterranean garage holding a single, unbranded SUV.

Nicholas hit the wall button, and the heavy iron gate leading to the alleyway began to grind upward. “Get in!”

As the engine roared to life, he slammed the car into reverse, tires screeching against the concrete as we burst into the rainy alleyway. Bullets pinged harmlessly off the reinforced bulletproof glass of the rear windshield as Nicholas spun the wheel, sending the vehicle plunging out into the midnight traffic of Manhattan.

I leaned back against the headrest, gasping for air, clutching the cold metal flash drive tightly in my fist.

“Where are we going?” I asked, watching the red taillights of the city blur in the heavy rain.

Nicholas glanced at me, his face set in stone, a dark smear of soot across his cheekbone.

“We’re done playing defense, Emily,” he said, stepping on the gas. “We’re going to Bedford.”

Continue read next >>> PART  6