MY HUSBAND THREW CASH AT MY FEET—UNTIL ONE PHONE CALL FROZE HIS BILLION-DOLLAR EMPIRE

The taxi dropped us off behind a derelict strip mall in Queens.

The rain was coming down in sheets. Ellie was shivering against my chest.

“It’s okay, sweetie. Mommy is here,” I whispered, hurrying toward a rusted metal door with a flickering neon light above it.

Dr. Aris Thorne ran an underground, off-the-books trauma clinic for people who couldn't afford to exist on a grid. My father had funded his clinic decades ago. He was the only doctor I could trust.

I pounded on the door. A sliding peephole opened, then the deadbolts clicked.

Aris, an older man with tired eyes, pulled us inside. “Mara? Good God, you’re bleeding. What happened?”

“They’re coming for Ellie,” I said, stripping off my wet coat. “Aris, I need you to draw Ellie’s blood. Right now. Check for toxins, check her DNA, check everything.”

Aris didn't ask questions. He quickly drew a small vial of blood from Ellie’s arm while she slept on a cot, then fed it into his rapid-sequencing centrifuge.

I paced the concrete floor, staring at the file on my phone.

Ten years ago, my older brother Julian—the true heir to the Kingsley empire—was murdered in a yacht explosion. His death handed the entire fortune to Silas.

“Mara,” Aris called out, staring at his computer monitor, his face completely pale. “I ran the biometric markers against the Kingsley private genetic registry you gave me.”

“Is there poison in her blood?” I asked, terrified. “Has Grant been hurting her?”

“No,” Aris said, adjusting his glasses. “She’s perfectly healthy. But Mara... the paternal DNA match just came back. Grant is absolutely not the father.”

“I know,” I said, my voice shaking. “Vanessa swapped the samples at the clinic. Who is the father, Aris?”

Aris looked at me, sheer terror in his eyes.

“The paternal DNA belongs to Julian,” Aris whispered. “Ellie is your deceased brother’s biological daughter.”

Before I could even process the horrifying reality that Silas had used my dead brother’s frozen genetic material to create an heir through me, the heavy iron door of the clinic suddenly shuddered.

Someone was outside, welding the deadbolts shut.

And then, thick yellow smoke began pouring through the ventilation shafts into the room.

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