The master bathroom of our Southlake condominium was supposed to be my sanctuary.

Before Marcus’s hands could reach my shoulders, the adrenaline that had been pooling in my muscles exploded.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t hesitate.

I brought my right knee up with every ounce of strength in my body, driving it directly between Marcus’s legs.

A sickening, breathless wheeze tore from Marcus’s throat. His eyes bulged as his hands instinctively flew to his groin. He doubled over, crashing against the stainless-steel tray table. Trays, scalpels, glass vials, and syringes went flying across the tiled floor with a deafening metallic clatter.

Vanessa lunged at me, holding a 20cc syringe filled with clear liquid.

“You miserable bitch!” she snarled, aiming the needle straight for my neck.

I rolled off the opposite side of the examination gurney, hitting the floor on my hands and knees. The ceramic tiles were freezing against my palms. Vanessa scrambled around the foot of the table, her face contorted into a mask of feral rage, the needle poised like a dagger.

“Grab her, you idiot!” Vanessa shrieked at Marcus, who was still groaning on his knees among the shattered glass.

I scrambled to my feet, grabbed a heavy stainless-steel rolling IV pole, and swung it with both hands like a baseball bat.

The hollow metal pole struck Vanessa squarely across the forearm. The syringe flew from her grip, shattering against the concrete wall, spraying paralytic fluid across the baseboards.

Vanessa shrieked in pain, clutching her fractured wrist to her chest, stumbling backward into a bank of refrigerated biological storage units.

“You’re dead, Sofia!” she hissed, her aristocratic accent shattering into raw, gutter fury. “Julian will bury you in a hole where nobody will ever find you!”

“Julian is going to federal prison, and you’re going with him,” I spat.

Behind me, Marcus was already recovering. He pushed himself up from the floor, his face purple with rage and humiliation.

“You think you’re smart, Sof?” Marcus growled, lunging toward me. “You’re not leaving this room!”

He threw his full body weight at me. I ducked, but his forearm clipped my shoulder, sending me crashing against the room’s supply cabinet. Glass jars of gauze and antiseptic shattered around me.

Marcus grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head back until my spine curved agonizingly.

“Julian!” Marcus screamed toward the hallway. “Julian, get in here! She’s loose!”

My blood turned to liquid nitrogen.

*Julian was here.*

The double doors of the room swung open with a resounding bang.

Julian stepped through. He had already shed his navy suit jacket, wearing only his crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. In his right hand, he held a compact, matte-black semi-automatic pistol.

He didn't look flustered. He didn't look panicked. He looked like an executive walking into a boardroom to fire a subordinate who had missed a revenue target.

“Let go of her hair, Marcus,” Julian said quietly.

Marcus released his grip, stepping back, panting heavily.

I fell to my hands and knees on the floor, glass shards biting into the palms of my hands, blood dripping onto the white tiles. I pushed myself up until I was sitting against the wall, staring up at the man I had shared a bed with for four years.

“Sofia,” Julian said, shaking his head with an expression of mild, disappointed pity. “You really should have just taken the water. It would have been so much easier for you. No pain. A comfortable private suite at a long-term care facility in Switzerland. You could have lived another ten, fifteen years peacefully.”

“You’re a monster,” I rasped, tasting copper in my mouth. “Forty-five million dollars. That’s what I was worth to you?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Julian sneered, lowering the gun until it was aimed directly at my forehead. “You were never worth forty-five million to me. Your father’s trust was. You were just the annoying administrative obstacle standing between me and Vance Capital’s solvency. Did you really think I loved you? A boring, neurotic little accountant with a billionaire father?”

He laughed—a short, ugly bark of genuine amusement.

“I spent four years playing the doting, patient husband while you cried about your spreadsheets,” Julian continued, taking a slow step toward me. “And now, because you couldn't just play your part and go quietly into dementia, you’ve forced my hand. Now we have to do this the messy way.”

“Julian, she has a camera!” Vanessa cried out, pointing a trembling finger at my chest. “Look at her coat! She was recording us!”

Julian’s eyes dropped to the horn button on my lapel. For the first time, a flicker of genuine panic cracked his polished facade.

“Where is the receiver?” Julian demanded, closing the distance in two strides and grabbing my coat collar, hauling me up until my feet barely touched the floor. He jammed the cold steel barrel of the pistol beneath my chin. “Who is watching this, Sofia? Who did you send the link to?”

I looked straight into his hazel eyes—the eyes that had once looked at me with simulated tenderness.

I smiled.

“Everyone, Julian,” I whispered.

Before he could pull the trigger, the piercing, ear-splitting scream of a high-decibel tactical siren detonated outside the warehouse.

Red and blue strobe lights blasted through the opaque frosted glass of the high warehouse windows, turning the white room into a swirling storm of police light.

*“FBI! DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND GET ON THE GROUND! THIS IS THE TEXAS RANGERS! THE BUILDING IS SURROUNDED!”*

Julian’s face went dead white.