HER SISTER-IN-LAW PUSHED HER PREGNANT BODY—STILL STRAPPED TO A WHEELCHAIR—INTO A DEEP POOL! BUT WHEN A BRAVE WOMAN JUMPED IN TO SAVE HER, THE SISTER-IN-LAW DID SOMETHING EVEN MORE SHOCKING...

"She's going into respiratory arrest!" Maya yelled, ripping open the tactical medical bag Marcus carried. "Marcus, call the EMT escort! We need neostigmine and atropine immediately!"

Clara’s vision began to blur. The edges of the room dissolved into swimming shadows of gray and white. She tried to draw a breath, but her chest felt as if a solid slab of granite had been placed over her ribcage. Her vocal cords locked; she couldn't scream, couldn't tell Julian to protect their son. Her fingers clawed weakly at Julian’s forearm as she suffocated in the open air, paralyzed while fully conscious.

On the floor, pinned under Marcus’s weight, the woman wearing the prosthetic makeup of Evelyn Drake began to laugh. A horrifying, rasping laugh. Blood bubbled from her split lip, but her eyes were wild with triumphant madness.

"You're too late, Julian!" she hissed, her voice morphing from the elderly facade into a harsh, mocking drawl. "You think I came here to kill your brat today? No! I came to make Clara feel what I felt every second in that prison! The paralysis! The helplessness! Watching the dark swallow you whole!"

Julian didn't even look at the woman. His hands were shaking as he tilted Clara’s head back, pinching her nose, forcing his own breath into her lungs. "Breathe, Clara! Look at me! Don't you dare close your eyes! Clara!"

Maya ripped open an auto-injector of emergency adrenaline, slamming it directly into Clara’s thigh through her jeans. "Come on, Clara! Fight it! Leo needs you!"

The surge of epinephrine slammed into Clara’s heart like an electric defibrillator. Her lungs spasmed violently. She gasped, a ragged, desperate inhalation tearing through her throat as her vision snapped back into focus. Coughing violently, tears streaming down her pale cheeks, she reached blindly until her hand found Leo’s blanket. The baby was crying at the top of his lungs, terrified by the commotion.

Julian gathered Clara into his arms, his tears mixing with the cold sweat on her forehead. "I've got you. You're alive. You're breathing."

Across the room, Marcus ripped off the woman’s wig and silicone prosthetics, exposing the bruised, unrecognizable face of an accomplice—not Victoria, but a woman hired and surgically altered to match Victoria’s commands.

"Who are you?!" Julian snarled, striding over to the bleeding woman on the floor, his eyes blazing with murderous rage. "Where is Victoria?!"

The woman spat blood onto Julian’s polished leather shoes, grinning through broken teeth. "Victoria is already where you can never touch her. She’s at the beginning, Julian. Where the water first took her soul. And tonight... she takes the rest of the Montgomery bloodline."

Before Marcus could search her mouth, the woman crunched down hard on a molar. Her body violently stiffened, foam erupting from her lips. Within four seconds, her eyes rolled back into her head, lifeless. A cyanide capsule.

Julian stood frozen in the center of the shattered penthouse, the silence of death hanging thick in the air.

"The beginning," Maya whispered, her eyes wide with dread. "Julian... where did Victoria’s hatred for Clara truly begin?"