542 They told me I could never have children, yet a soaking-wet little girl appeared at my front door holding a newborn wrapped inside a black trash bag and calmly announced he was my son. Minutes later, a hidden letter shattered everything I believed about my past, and before I could even catch my breath, I discovered the real enemy had been living much closer than I ever imagined.

The rain had turned into a thick, low-hanging fog as my SUV cut through the dense pine forests of Blackwood Road.

I hadn't gone entirely alone. Marcus and two of my highest-trained private security operatives were trailing three hundred yards behind me in an unmarked dark van, tracking my phone’s GPS signal in real time.

The old St. Jude’s Fertility Clinic was a derelict, three-story brick building covered in wild vines and rusted iron bars, abandoned ten years ago after a corporate bankruptcy.

I pulled up to the rusted front steps, killed the engine, and slipped a compact 9mm pistol into my coat pocket.

Inside the building, the air was cold, damp, and smelled heavily of mold and ozone. Flashlight in hand, I navigated the dark, debris-littered hallway, following the faint sound of a heart monitor beeping rhythmically from somewhere in the basement.

I descended the concrete stairs to the lower level.

At the end of a long corridor lit by a single flickering battery-powered fluorescent tube was an old operating room.

Lying on a medical gurney in the center of the room was a pale, unconscious woman attached to an IV drip and a portable heart monitor.

"Jocelyn!" I whispered, rushing over to the gurney.

Jocelyn Cooper’s face was thin, bruised, and exhausted. She opened her heavy eyelids slowly, squinting through the glare of my flashlight.

"S-Spencer...?" she rasped, her lips cracked and dry. "Is... is my baby...?"

"Dexter is safe, Jocelyn," I said quickly, checking her vitals. "He’s at my mansion under heavy guard. He's fine. Charlee saved him."

Tears streamed down Jocelyn’s pale cheeks. "Thank God... thank God... Victoria... she took him from the delivery room three days ago... she told me he was born dead..."

"I know," I said, pulling a wire cutter from my coat to free the restraints holding her wrists to the bed. "I know everything now, Jocelyn. We're getting you out of here."

"I'm afraid no one is leaving tonight, Spencer."

A cold, familiar voice echoed from the doorway of the operating room.

I spun around, stepping between Jocelyn’s gurney and the door.

Standing in the doorway was my stepmother, Victoria Warren. She was wearing a heavy trench coat, holding a sleek silver revolver pointed directly at my chest. Standing behind her were two heavy-set mercenary guards carrying tactical shotguns.

"Victoria," I said calmly, slowly keeping my hands visible. "It's over. The police know about Julian. The DNA tests are verified. You can't murder your way out of this."

Victoria laughed—a bitter, unhinged sound that echoed off the damp concrete walls.

"You think this is about money, Spencer?" Victoria spat, her eyes flared with wild madness. "Your father ruined my life thirty years ago! He forced me to sign a prenuptial agreement that left me with nothing if he died! He loved that maid Florence! He loved your dead mother! He never loved me!"

"So you stole my biological son?" I demanded. "You tried to let a newborn freeze to death in a garbage bag?!"

"That baby was the key to eighty million dollars!" Victoria shrieked. "With Jocelyn dead from a staged medical complication and the baby gone, I would have inherited the Cooper holdings! I was supposed to win!"

Victoria raised her revolver, aiming straight between my eyes. "And now, you, Jocelyn, and that bastard baby’s record will burn together in this basement."

"Drop your weapon!" Marcus’s voice boomed from the doorway behind Victoria.