My husband had been pretending to go to work for an entire week, but when I followed him to a secret building and saw who walked out beside him, I realized the person destroying my marriage was someone I trusted with my life…

Victor Sterling looked as impeccably groomed as ever. Even in the freezing seaside air, his silver hair was combed to perfection, and his tailored cashmere overcoat fell smoothly over his tall frame. In his hand, he held an unlit cigar.

"Daniel," Sterling's deep, baritone voice echoed across the empty pier. "I must say, I expected better from my brightest risk auditor. Taking a week off to play amateur spy with a fugitive?"

Daniel stepped squarely in front of me and Vivian, shielding us with his body.

"Let them walk, Victor," Daniel said, his voice dropping into a hard, dangerous register. "The files have already been queued for a dead-man's release to the U.S. Attorney's office. If anything happens to us, the servers upload everything automatically at dawn."

Sterling chuckled softly—a low, dry sound devoid of any humor.

"Do you really take me for an idiot, Daniel? Apex Archival? The storage unit you visited every morning this week? My men raided it two hours ago."

Vivian gasped, clutching Daniel's jacket from behind.

"You see," Sterling continued, taking a slow step forward while his armed guards raised their weapons, "you forgot that Meridian owns the fiber-optic infrastructure underlying that entire commercial district. The moment your terminal made an unauthorized handshake with the legacy mainframe, we traced the ping."

Sterling looked past Daniel's shoulder, his eyes landing on me. A sickening, patronizing smile touched his lips.

"Hello, Nora. You look so much like your father. Arthur had that same stubborn, tragic look in his eyes right before his heart gave out."

"You murdered him," I spat, my voice shaking with raw hatred.

"Arthur didn't understand the realities of high finance," Sterling said dismissively, waving a gloved hand. "He thought rules were absolute. But in our world, rules are written by the people with the capital."

Sterling turned his gaze back to Daniel. "Give me the flash drive, Daniel. The physical master key Vivian carried out of her father's safe. Hand it over, and I'll make sure the three of you disappear peacefully. Refuse, and your bodies will wash up in the bay by sunrise, ruled as another tragic murder-suicide."

"Don't give it to him, Daniel!" Vivian pleaded. "He'll kill us either way!"

"She's right," Daniel said quietly, his hand reaching into his pocket. "You never leave loose ends, Victor. That's your fatal flaw."

Daniel didn't pull out a flash drive.

He pulled out an industrial maritime flare he had snatched from an emergency box on the dock earlier. With a vicious, practiced motion, he struck the ignition cap.

A blinding, deafening burst of brilliant red fire and choking smoke erupted between us and Sterling’s men.