"The woman wearing the emerald satin suit had just shoved me toward a table of broken glass when my unborn baby kicked hard enough to make me gasp. I was seven months pregnant, secretly married to the family’s missing heir, and standing in front of two hundred guests as his father’s fiancée called me a thief. Then a silver locket slipped from beneath my uniform, and the man who owned the mansion went completely still.

Nolan sat across from me, his laptop glowing in the dim cabin light as he reviewed the facility blueprints. Up front, two of his most trusted security specialists communicated in low, coded murmurs over encrypted channels.

"Oakridge Sanitarium is built like a fortress," Nolan said without looking up from his screen. "It was originally a private psychiatric asylum built in the fifties. Thick concrete walls, reinforced security doors, and a private security force that answers directly to the administrator—a man named Dr. Alistair Vance, who happens to be Vivian’s first cousin."

My stomach tightened. "A family operation."

"Exactly," Nolan nodded. "Which is why we aren't going in with a battering ram or a police escort that Vivian could buy off with a single phone call. We're going in through the administrative wing using the master security override code Eleanor registered into the Whitaker trust database before she passed."

He closed the laptop and looked at me. "Are you sure you want to do this? Once we walk through those doors, there's no turning back. Vivian will know within the hour, and the legal war will begin before sunrise."

I set the thermos down in the cup holder and rested both hands over my bump. The baby gave a gentle, reassuring kick, as if echoing my resolve.

"When Vivian threw me into that glass table tonight, she thought she was breaking me," I said, my voice steady and cold. "She thought I would pack my bags and run away crying like the nurses and housekeepers she terrorized for years. She didn't realize that every bruise she gave me was just another reason to finish what she started."

Nolan studied me for a long moment, a look of profound respect replacing the cold corporate armor he usually wore. "My nephew has terrible taste in women when it comes to social circles, but it seems he had exceptional instincts when it came to his wife."

"Caleb didn't care about social circles," I smiled faintly, remembering the chaotic, passionate artist who had swept me off my feet in a cramped downtown gallery two years ago. "He just wanted to paint and be left alone by his family."

"Well," Nolan muttered, looking back out at the dark pine trees rushing past the window. "He's about to find out that having a Whitaker name comes with enemies, but it also comes with a very protective family."

The SUV slowed down, turning off the main highway onto a narrow, winding access road choked with overgrown brush and rusted chain-link fencing. Ahead of us, half-hidden behind a dense curtain of pine trees, stood a looming, grey-stone Victorian gothic structure with barred windows casting sickly yellow light onto the wet ground.

Oakridge Sanitarium.

The vehicle glided silently into the rear service bay, parking in the deep shadows beneath an overhanging loading dock.

Nolan’s head of security, a hulking man named Marcus, turned around from the front passenger seat. "We're clear, Mr. Whitaker. The interior patrol just completed their rotation. We have six minutes before the next sweep."

Nolan opened his door, stepping out into the freezing sleet. He pulled his dark wool overcoat tight against his chest, then reached back to help me out of the vehicle.

"Stay close to me," Nolan instructed quietly, his hand steady under my elbow. "The air inside is damp, and I don't want you slipping."

We moved toward a heavy metal side door marked Authorized Personnel Only. Nolan pulled a black digital access key from his pocket and pressed it against the security scanner.