The massive steel door of Freezer Vault 7 shuddered under another ferocious blow from the outside.

Three weeks had passed since the night in Vault 7.

Clara was discharged from the hospital, returning to her apartment—a modest, sunlit place overlooking the city park where the autumn leaves were beginning to turn golden and red. The nursery, which Victor had so meticulously built while plotting her murder, had been completely gutted and redecorated. Victoria had personally overseen the contractors, filling the room with warm pastel colors, soft organic cotton linens, and state-of-the-art baby monitors.

The twins, named Leo and Lily, were thriving, sleeping in rhythmic tandem and filling the apartment with the sweet, anchoring sounds of new life.

Yet, despite the peace, a lingering shadow remained.

Victor was currently sitting in a maximum-security pre-trial detention facility awaiting federal arraignment. His defense attorneys were frantically trying to negotiate a plea deal, but the mountain of evidence compiled by Victoria’s forensic accountants and the federal investigators was insurmountable.

However, corporate crime in Chicago rarely operated in a vacuum.

On a crisp Tuesday afternoon, Clara sat at her kitchen island feeding Leo a bottle when her phone buzzed with an encrypted message alert.

It wasn't from Victoria. It was an unknown international number.

Clara tapped the screen, opening a digital document file.

Inside was a scanned copy of a ledger dating back to 2018—long before she had even met Victor. It detailed a series of shadow transactions between Meridian Pharmaceuticals and an offshore shell company registered in the Cayman Islands under the name Apex Holdings.

Attached was a single text message: “Victor was small fish, Clara. The freeze was just a rehearsal. If you want to know who really ordered the audit cover-up, look at who signed his promotion approval last January.”