443 Victoria Montgomery smiled as she pressed the pillow harder against her daughter-in-law's face inside a private hospital room in Manhattan. The blinds were half open, and the sharp scent of disinfectant mixed with the expensive perfume she always wore.

Within forty-eight hours, the Montgomery legal machine fought back. High-priced defense attorneys flooded the courts, utilizing every loophole money could buy. By the third day, a sympathetic judge granted Victoria and Ethan bail under strict house arrest at their Upper East Side townhouse, pending trial.

Emily knew the townhouse well. It was a beautiful, gilded prison.

"They're going to try to scrub the remaining evidence," Emily told Marcus Vance, the private investigator who was now acting as her personal security detail. "The digital files we grabbed are huge, but the physical ledgers—the real proof of who owns 'The Vanguard Trust'—are hidden inside the townhouse. There's a hidden safe behind the portrait of the family patriarch in the library."

"Emily, you're in a full body cast," Marcus reminded her gently. "You can't go in there. And the police can't get another warrant without more specific proof."

"I don't need to go in," Emily murmured, looking at her smartphone. "But Ethan is weak. He's a coward who hides behind his mother's skirt. Now that he's trapped in that house with her, knowing his life is over, he will break. We just need to give him a push."

Using a secure, untraceable phone line, Emily dialed her husband's private number.

It rang three times before Ethan answered, his voice frantic and breathless. "Emily? Is that you? Look, you have to believe me, I didn't want any of this! Mother forced me! She said you discovered the missing funds from the foundation—"

"I know exactly what you did, Ethan," Emily interrupted, her tone icy and calm. "And I know about The Vanguard Trust. I know who really owns it."

There was a sudden, sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. But it didn't come from Ethan.

"You think you’re so clever, you little gutter rat," Victoria's voice suddenly cut in, her tone dripping with venom. She had picked up the extension. "You survived the fall, and you survived the hospital. But you won't survive the truth. The Montgomery name cannot be destroyed by someone like you."