7 MONTHS PREGNANT, SHE CAUGHT HER HUSBAND WITH HIS NURSE MISTRESS—THEN HE SLAPPED HER TO PROTECT HIS LOVER! BUT WHEN THE HEAD NURSE EXPOSED WHAT THEY'D DONE TO HER UNBORN BABY'S RECORDS, EVERYTHING CHANGED...

Chaos erupted instantly.

The two tactical guards flanking Dr. Sterling hesitated, their eyes darting upward toward the shuddering ceiling. In that split-second fracture of focus, Claire struck.

She dropped low, firing two rounds into the reinforced deck plating near the lead guard’s combat boots. The ricochets shrieked off the steel, one slug embedding itself in the guard’s knee. He collapsed with a howl of agony.

The second guard raised his submachine gun, but a concussive blast blew the forward cabin doors apart. Daniel burst through the smoke, his military carbine raised, firing three controlled, suppressed bursts that dropped the second guard instantly.

"Claire! Get down!" Daniel roared.

Dr. Sterling, showing the feral survival instincts of an old predator, lunged forward with surprising speed. He didn't grab for a weapon—he grabbed the emergency fuel-purge lever mounted on the bulkhead wall.

With a savage pull, he wrenched the red lever down.

"If the Vance lineage ends tonight," Sterling snarled, blood spraying from his lips as Daniel tackled him to the deck, "then we all go to the bottom together!"

A deep, subterranean thud shuddered through the hull. Alarms shrieked in deafening unison as sea valves opened in the bilge. Thousands of gallons of freezing Atlantic seawater began violently flooding the lower decks.

"The scuttle charges!" Daniel yelled, wrenching Sterling’s arms behind his back and snapping plastic cuffs over his wrists. "He blew the through-hull fittings! This boat is going down in three minutes!"

"Ryan!" Claire yelled, turning toward the operating table.

Seawater was already surging over the drainage tiles, swirling around their ankles, freezing cold and black with grease. The electrical panels behind the surgical lights began to shower violent white sparks, the main monitors short-circuiting with violent pops.

Ryan was screaming hysterically, thrashing against the leather straps. "Claire! Don't leave me! Unlock me! I'll tell you everything! The Swiss accounts! The offshore clinics! I have sixty million in gold in Zurich! It's yours! All yours! Just don't let me drown!"

Claire walked up to the edge of the rising water, looking down at the man who had tried to steal her baby’s life before he had even drawn his first breath.

She looked at the leather restraints. Her fingers touched the release buckle.

She could unlatch him. She could drag him up the stairs with Daniel.

Then, she looked into his eyes. In the reflection of the short-circuiting emergency lights, she didn't see a husband. She didn't even see a human being. She saw the machine that had planned to butcher her child.

"You told me once, Ryan," Claire said, her voice completely calm amidst the shrieking alarms and rushing ocean water, "that in our family, sacrifices have to be made for the greater good."

Ryan’s eyes widened with pure, paralyzing horror. "Claire... no... please..."

Claire unclipped the master safety shears from the wall—and threw them straight into the black water flooding the bilge, where they sank instantly to the bottom.