Eleven dollars and forty cents was everything I had, and the baby formula in front of me cost nineteen dollars and twenty-six cents.

For the next seventy-two hours, I took complete control of Mercer Enterprises' financial nerve center.

I set up a secure command post in the corner office adjacent to Daniel’s private suite. My team worked in shifts around the clock, decrypting thousands of wire transfers, corporate emails, and offshore bank accounts linked to the company's executive board.

Daniel spent hours sitting across from my desk, watching me work.

He was a man who ruled through fear and absolute loyalty, but watching me disassemble a complex sixty-million-dollar corporate fraud scheme with the precision of a surgeon left him quietly astonished.

"You didn't just survive, Lily," Daniel said late on Wednesday night, holding two cups of fresh espresso as he walked into my office. "You built yourself into a tank."

I took the cup, smiling softly. "I had good motivation."

"The foundation?" Daniel asked, leaning against the edge of my desk. "Leo told me you figured out where the grant money came from when you were eighteen."

"I knew the night it arrived," I admitted, looking up at him. "Foundations don't deliver fresh electric heaters and baby formula at eleven o'clock on a freezing night in December."

Daniel let out a quiet, rumbling laugh. "I suppose they don't."

His expression turned serious. "I kept my distance because I wanted you to have a normal life. I wanted those boys to grow up away from the blood and darkness that follows my name."

"You saved my family, Daniel," I said, dropping the formal title for the first time. "Without you, my brothers would have ended up in foster care, and I would have been swallowed by the street. You gave us a ground to stand on."

Before he could answer, my computer monitor flashed red. A series of rapid automated alerts began filling the screen.

"I found it," I said, tapping the keys frantically.

Daniel stepped closer, leaning over my shoulder. "What do you have?"

"Your CFO, Richard Hayes, and your Vice Chairman, Marcus Vance—Leo’s cousin—have been operating a joint shell company registered in the Cayman Islands," I explained, bringing up the ownership documents. "They’ve been shorting Mercer Enterprises stock while feeding confidential trade route data to Victor Rossi's old associates, who are now backed by the Moretti family from Philadelphia."

Daniel’s jaw tightened, his eyes darkening into pure, lethal rage. "Marcus. I brought him into this company twenty years ago."

"They've scheduled a secret board vote for tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM," I continued, highlighting a encrypted calendar invite. "They plan to present a forged audit report claiming that you embezzled two hundred million dollars of company funds into personal accounts. With that report, they can legally strip you of your voting control and hand the company to Moretti."

"Can you prove the report is forged?" Daniel asked, his voice deathly quiet.

I looked up at him, my eyes flashing with absolute conviction.

"I can do better than that," I said. "I can prove that Richard Hayes and Marcus Vance stole forty million dollars from your workers' pension fund to finance Moretti's drug operations in New Jersey. By eight o'clock tomorrow morning, they won't be taking over your company. They'll be choosing between a federal prison cell and your judgment."