The ballroom windows exploded, and my husband threw himself over his mistress. Three floors above him, I was thirty-two weeks pregnant—and the guard outside our son’s nursery had just been ordered away.

The floorboards vibrated as another explosion detonated near the east conservatory.

I crawled across the carpet, dragging my heavy weight toward the nursery door. The contractions were coming every ninety seconds now, sharp and terrifying, tearing through my body like hot knives. Blood soaked through the hem of my silk evening gown, leaving a dark trail on the ivory rug.

"Adrien..." I gasped into the dark, but my phone was dead, its screen shattered when I had dropped it during the initial blast.

I reached the nursery threshold. The air was already thick with grey smoke, smelling of cordite and burning wallpaper. Across the room, the hidden panel behind the mahogany bookshelf stood slightly ajar—left unlocked by Simone when she had planted her wiretap.

Outside in the corridor, heavy, rhythmic footsteps approached. These were not the movements of house security. They walked with the slow, methodical stride of mercenaries clearing a target floor.

"Third floor clear," a raspy voice called out in the hall. "Where’s the target?"

"Victor said she’d be in the primary suite," another voice replied. "Check the nursery."

I slid behind the oak bookshelf, shoved my shoulder against the heavy wood, and collapsed into the narrow dark recess of the safe room just as the nursery door crashed open.

I pulled the steel door shut and turned the mechanical deadbolt from the inside.

Silence swallowed me. The safe room was a narrow vault built by my father thirty years ago when he constructed Blackthorn House. It was shielded by four inches of reinforced steel, independent oxygen scrubbers, and an analog recording system that didn't rely on the house network.

I fell against the concrete wall, clutching my belly, gasping for air.

On the small black-and-white monitoring screen built into the vault wall, I could see the nursery. Two men in tactical gear with unmarked black uniforms swept the room with rifle lights. One of them tapped his earpiece.

"Room’s empty. No sign of Mara Cole."

A voice replied over the comms speaker—a voice I knew better than my own husband’s.

It was Victor Hale.

"Burn the third floor," Victor commanded through the speaker. "Make sure nothing survives the sweep. Adrien is already in the basement bunker with Simone. He thinks Mara’s team evacuated her to the hospital."

"Understood, sir."

I pressed my back against the cold concrete wall as tears of rage and pain spilled down my face.

Adrien hadn't just chosen Simone—he had accepted Victor’s word without checking on me. He was sitting in an underground bunker twenty feet below the earth, holding his mistress’s hand, while the third floor of his ancestral home burned over his head.

My water had broken, and I was bleeding heavily in an isolated vault while the house burned above me.

I knew I couldn't stay here and die. If I died, my son died with me. The Cole legacy, the land titles my father had signed over to Adrien upon our marriage, and the truth about who had orchestrated tonight’s attack would be buried forever.

I dragged myself toward the back of the safe room, where an old iron lever was embedded in the masonry.

It was the secondary escape hatch—a steep, narrow spiral shaft that descended straight down through the house’s central chimney stack into the old wine cellars beneath the estate.

I pulled the lever.

The gears groaned, iron scraping against stone. Cold air rushed up from the dark abyss below.

I looked back at the small monitor screen one last time. The nursery was engulfed in roaring flames.