Eight months pregnant, I stood beside my billionaire father’s coffin when my husband walked into the funeral holding his mistress’s hand. He leaned close and whispered, “Your father is dead. You’re worthless now. I’m taking everything.” His mistress smirked as tears filled my eyes. But neither of them knew what my father had secretly left me. When his attorney approached the coffin and opened a black envelope, my husband’s smile vanished...

The private maternity wing at Mount Sinai was turned into a high-security bunker within twenty minutes of my arrival.

Four private security guards stood outside the double doors of the labor suite. Marcus was stationed directly at the nurses' station, cross-checking every badge, every vial of medication, and every medical professional who entered the corridor.

Arthur Vance had taught me that when a predator is mortally wounded, its final thrash is often the most dangerous. Caleb was in federal custody awaiting his bond hearing, but Vanessa Sterling was still loose. And Vanessa had sixty-eight million reasons to want me dead.

“Breathe, Eleanor. Just breathe,” Dr. Chen instructed, her voice calm, rhythmic, and reassuring.

I was lying in the delivery bed, sweat soaking through my hairline, my fingers digging into the firm mattress. The monitors beeped in steady, urgent intervals. The contractions were coming every three minutes now—intense, crushing waves that felt as though my pelvis was being split in two.

Beside me, Harrison Harlan stood by the window, his phone pressed to his ear, his face darker than thunder.

He ended the call and walked over to my bedside, leaning down so only I could hear.

“Caleb’s bond hearing is scheduled for noon,” Harrison murmured. “His defense attorney is claiming extraordinary circumstances—arguing that Caleb is the sole viable provider for an unborn child whose mother is currently suffering an acute mental breakdown.”

I gasped through a contraction, biting my lip until I tasted copper. “Let him... try.”

“That’s not the worst of it,” Harrison added, his eyes narrowing behind his glasses. “Vanessa Sterling posted bail thirty minutes ago. An anonymous corporate shell in Delaware posted her five-hundred-thousand-dollar bond. She’s out, Eleanor.”

A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with labor. “Where... where is she?”

“We’re tracking her phone, but she ditched it in a taxi near Queens,” Harrison said. “Marcus has double-locked the floor. No one gets in without my personal authorization.”

At that moment, the door to the suite opened.

A nurse entered, wearing standard blue scrubs, a surgical mask, and a low cap. She pushed a stainless-steel medication cart, her head down, her movements brisk.

“Time for the epidural top-up and the intravenous antibiotic drip, Dr. Chen,” the nurse said in a muffled, flat voice.

Dr. Chen didn't look up from the fetal heart monitor. “Thank you, Sarah. Set the IV bag on the stand. I’ll administer it once the current contraction subsides.”

The nurse nodded. She reached into the lower compartment of the cart, pulling out a clear IV bag containing a yellowish fluid.

I was in the middle of a blinding contraction, my eyes squeezed shut, but something felt wrong.

Arthur Vance had spent my childhood drilling observation into my skull. *“Watch the hands, Ellie,”* he used to tell me over chess. *“Liars always betray themselves with their hands.”*

I opened my eyes, panting heavily, and looked at the nurse’s hands.

She was wearing latex gloves. But beneath the edge of the left latex cuff, peeking out against the pale skin of her wrist, was a tiny, distinctive tattoo: a black crescent moon with three tiny stars.

My heart stopped.

I had seen that tattoo three weeks ago when Vanessa Sterling handed me a cup of decaf tea in my father’s executive office.

*“It’s a matching tattoo I got with my sister in college,”* Vanessa had giggled back then, acting the part of the devoted, innocent assistant.

The woman standing three feet from my IV line was not Nurse Sarah.

It was Vanessa Sterling.

The contraction was forgotten. Adrenaline slammed through my bloodstream like pure lightning.

Vanessa reached for the IV port on my arm, holding a syringe filled with an opaque, milky substance—succinylcholine or potassium chloride, enough to stop a heart in seconds and make it look like a tragic maternal embolism.

“Stop!” I screamed, using every ounce of breath in my lungs.

Marcus, stationed just outside the door, reacted instantaneously. He burst through the door, his massive frame clearing the distance in half a second.

Vanessa’s eyes flared wide with manic, homicidal fury. Realizing her cover was blown, she didn't run. She lunged forward, stabbing the syringe directly toward my neck!

“Die, you entitled bitch!” she shrieked.

I didn't cower. I didn't pull back.

Despite the eight-month belly, despite the crushing agony of active labor, I grabbed the heavy stainless-steel water pitcher from the bedside table with both hands and swung it with all the fury of Arthur Vance’s bloodline.

*CLANG.*

The metal pitcher struck Vanessa across the side of her skull with a sickening crack.

The syringe flew from her hand, shattering against the tile floor. Vanessa stumbled back, dazed, blood immediately blooming from her temple beneath the surgical cap.

Before she could regain her balance, Marcus slammed her into the tiled wall, twisting her arm behind her back with enough force to make her bones groan, forcing her violently to the floor.

“Down! Stay down!” Marcus bellowed, his knee pinning her spine.

The room erupted into absolute chaos. Dr. Chen scrambled back in horror. Hospital security alarms began blaring down the hall.

Vanessa writhed under Marcus’s weight, the surgical mask torn from her face, revealing her twisted, blood-streaked features. She spit on the floor, glaring at me with the eyes of a rabid dog.

“You ruined everything!” Vanessa screamed, her voice shrill, ragged, and completely insane. “Caleb was supposed to give me the European subsidiary! I worked him for two years! Two years playing the submissive whore to get that money, and you took it all in one morning!”

Harrison Harlan calmly stepped over the shattered glass of the syringe. He pulled out his phone, snapped a crystal-clear photograph of Vanessa pinned to the floor, and dialed.

“Captain Reynolds,” Harrison said into the phone, his voice as chillingly calm as a winter morning. “The suspect, Vanessa Sterling, has just attempted premeditated capital murder via lethal injection inside Mount Sinai Hospital. We have physical evidence, forensic eyewitnesses, and hospital surveillance. Send the SWAT team. And inform the federal prosecutor that Caleb Thorne’s bail is to be revoked immediately as a co-conspirator to attempted murder.”

Vanessa’s screams turned into hysterical wails as two NYPD officers rushed into the room, hauling her to her feet and slapping heavy iron cuffs onto her wrists.

As they dragged her past my bed, she looked at me—bleeding, ruined, her five-hundred-thousand-dollar freedom lasting less than forty minutes.

I leaned forward from the bed, breathing heavily through the sweat, my eyes boring into hers.

“You wanted my father’s empire, Vanessa?” I whispered, cold and venomous. “Now you get twenty-five to life in Bedford Hills. Tell the inmates Arthur Vance sent you.”

The door slammed shut behind her.

Dr. Chen rushed back to my side, her hands shaking slightly as she checked the monitor. “Eleanor... your heart rate is spiking! The baby is in distress! We need to deliver now!”

Another contraction hit me—this one sharper, deeper, impossible to stop.