I stood, my bare feet silent on the marble, walked to the antique mahogany console table, and picked up my phone.

I bypassed the emergency contacts.

I bypassed my elite team of corporate lawyers and the heavily armed private security firms on my payroll. I scrolled to the very bottom of my hidden directory, to a number I hadn’t dialed in five long, meticulously peaceful years.

“Dominic,” I whispered into the receiver. The silence on the other end was absolute, heavy with the weight of our shared history. Dominic was Lily’s father.

He was also my estranged ex-husband—a man who had clawed his way up from nothing into the most feared power broker on the eastern seaboard, a man who owned judges’ favors, controlled information the way other men controlled money, and had ruined more empires before breakfast than most people build in a lifetime.

I had left him to give Lily a life in the light. Now the light had failed her. “They broke our little girl,” I said. The dial tone clicked dead instantly. No questions. No hesitation.

I set the phone down. Outside, the storm raged on, lightning fracturing the black sky. But in the distance, cutting through the thunder, I could already hear the faint, guttural roar of high-performance engines tearing down the coastal highway.