The false business trips were my only way of putting my bride to shame, but seeing her cruel smile as she attacked my mother made me bleed, until our brave domestic employee discovered the secret pills and forced me to confront the corrupt doctor right in front of her.

Time fractured into jagged shards.

In the fraction of a second before Audrey could swing the heavy crystal vase down onto Marta’s skull, my finger tightened on the trigger of my Glock. I didn't shoot at Audrey—not yet. Instead, I fired a single, deafening round straight into the thick reinforcement joint of the observation mirror.

CRACK.

The sound inside the soundproof room was a thunderclap, but outside, it registered like an earthquake. The massive one-way mirror shuddered, spiderwebbing instantly into a million milky fractures before collapsing outward in a cascade of glittering debris.

Audrey froze mid-swing, her eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated shock as a towering figure stepped out of the dark void of the wall, wreathed in gunsmoke and cold fury.

"Victor?" Audrey gasped, the vase slipping from her trembling fingers to shatter harmlessly against the marble floor. "You... you were supposed to be in London. On the flight to Heathrow..."

"Lies make for poor travel companions, Audrey," I said, my voice dropping into that low, flat register that used to make rival cartel bosses in Pilsen clear the room.

I stepped over the shattered glass, my boots crunching rhythmically against the floor. Marta was already shielding my mother with her own body, her eyes wide, clutching the bag of poison capsules against her chest. I ignored Audrey for a second, kneeling briefly beside the bed. I brushed a stray lock of silver hair from my mother’s damp forehead.

"You're safe, Ma," I murmured, my voice softening just an fraction before hardening back into steel as I rose to face my fiancée. "It’s over."

"Victor, listen to me," Audrey stammered, her high-society composure dissolving into frantic, cornered panic. She took a step backward, her hands fluttering defensively. "Your mother... her mind is going. She hallucinates things. She tries to choke herself, and this—this foreign woman, she’s been stealing her medication, trying to frame me! You know my father! Judge Caldwell will—"

"Judge Caldwell is about to receive a very interesting portfolio of digital evidence," I interrupted, pulling my burner phone from my breast pocket. "Every security feed from this room for the past ninety days. Every transaction log from the apothecary in River North where you purchased unlicensed paralytics."

Audrey’s face lost every trace of color. The sophisticated, untouchable daughter of the judiciary evaporated, leaving behind a terrified girl trapped in a nightmare of her own design.