“You always ruin everything.” Those were my father's last words before he closed the curtains and left me lying twenty feet below his shattered second-floor window.

The wailing of the mansion’s interior security alarm deafened our ears as red strobe lights painted the walls in bloody hues.

“Through the laundry room!” Rosalind shouted over the noise, her grip on the handles of my wheelchair iron-clad as she shoved me forward. “There’s a secondary cellar access hatch leading out to the utility snow-tunnel!”

“Are you out of your mind?” Vance shouted, keeping his pistol raised as he scanned the corridor behind us. “A utility tunnel in sub-zero weather with an active spinal injury patient?”

“Do you want to explain to a private security squad why a detective and an old woman are looting Alaric Carver’s safe at one in the morning?” Rosalind snapped back, her eyes flashing with adrenaline. “Move!”

We burst into the laundry room. Rosalind heaved open a heavy wooden floor panel hidden beneath a braided rug. A steep set of concrete steps plunged down into darkness, illuminated only by the faint amber glow of emergency pilot lights from the building’s central heating boiler.

Vance didn't hesitate. He scrambled down the steps first, sweeping his flashlight across the subterranean concrete corridor. “Clear! Send her down!”

Rosalind locked the wheels of the chair, scooped me up into her arms with surprising strength—fueled by pure panic and adrenaline—and carefully carried me down the steps, handing me off to Detective Vance at the bottom.

We scrambled through the narrow concrete tunnel just as heavy footsteps thundered overhead in the kitchen.

“Security detail! Property check!” a gruff voice echoed through the floorboards above us.

We dragged ourselves through the sub-zero utility corridor, the biting air stinging our lungs. At the far end of the tunnel sat an iron maintenance door leading directly out to the timberline behind the property, away from the front security gates.

Vance threw his shoulder against the rusted latch. It gave way with a loud pop, and we tumbled out into the deep, knee-high snow of the Alaskan forest.

The freezing air hit me like a physical wall. My injured wrist screamed in protest as I dragged myself across the snow-packed ground, but Rosalind and Vance were right there, lifting me into the backseat of the unmarked police sedan hidden down an old logging track fifty yards away.

Vance slammed the car door, threw the transmission into drive, and tore down the logging road without turning on his headlights until we hit the main highway.

Inside the car, the heater blasted full throttle, but I was still shivering uncontrollably from the shock of the cold. I looked down at my canvas tote bag resting securely in my lap.

Inside were the three leather-bound ledgers containing my father's entire criminal empire.

“Well,” Rosalind panted, brushing snow out of her gray hair as she sat in the front passenger seat. “I’d say that went better than expected.”

Detective Vance gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white, though a wild, reckless grin was plastered across his face. “If Internal Affairs ever finds out I participated in a black-bag burglary of a prominent businessman’s mansion, I’m going to spend the next ten years directing traffic in Barrow.”

“Relax, Detective,” I said, catching my breath as the warmth finally began to thaw my fingers. “You didn't break into the safe. I did.”

Vance glanced back at me in the rearview mirror, his expression sobering. “Fallon, these ledgers are incredible evidence. But obtaining them through an unauthorized midnight raid means my legal team is going to have a hell of a time getting them admitted into court without exposing how we acquired them.”

“Then we don't present them in a standard courtroom motion,” I said, leaning forward between the front seats.

“What do you have in mind?” Vance asked.

“We give them to Arthur Pendelton.”

Vance raised an eyebrow. “Alaric’s chief financial officer? Why would he help us? If he sees those ledgers, he’ll know he’s implicated in corporate fraud right alongside your father.”

“Exactly,” I said, my voice hardening. “Pendelton has a family. He has two daughters in college. Alaric is using him as a human shield to take the fall if federal investigators uncover the cooked books. If we show Pendelton that Alaric has documented every single illegal transaction with his own handwriting, Pendelton will realize he’s about to be thrown under the bus.”

“Self-preservation is a powerful motivator,” Rosalind noted, nodding in agreement.

“Precisely,” I continued. “We give Pendelton a choice: hand over the ledgers to the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Attorney’s office voluntarily as a cooperating witness, or go down as Alaric Carver’s primary co-conspirator while Alaric catches a flight to the Cayman Islands.”

Detective Vance stared at me for a long moment, the cogs turning in his head as he weighed the legal and tactical implications of the plan.

“It’s a massive gamble,” Vance said finally. “If Pendelton panics and tips off Alaric instead, your father will scrub every digital asset, liquidate his offshore accounts, and flee the country before sunrise.”

“Alaric won't flee,” I said with absolute certainty.

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because of ego,” I replied, remembering the look of cold fury on my father's face as he pushed me out the window. “Alaric Carver has spent his entire life believing he is the smartest man in the room. He thinks he is untouchable. He would rather go down fighting than admit defeat, and he certainly won't walk away from a five-million-dollar deal with Sterling Health Network until the ink is dry on the contract.”