Elena: I caught her! She tried to drop baby Lily!

By midnight, the storm outside had settled into a steady, rhythmic rain against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Carter mansion's private study.

The house was dead quiet. Baby Lily was fast asleep in her nursery upstairs, under the direct, physical watch of two armed security guards David had stationed outside her door.

Mark sat behind his massive mahogany desk, his face buried in his hands. The whiskey in the crystal glass beside him remained untouched. The reality of the past twelve hours hit him in waves—the betrayal of the woman he had married two years ago, the realization that his home had been a gilded trap, and the terrifying knowledge that his baby daughter had almost been stolen from him forever.

A soft knock at the open double doors broke the silence.

Elena stood in the doorway, holding a silver tray with a steaming mug of chamomile tea and a plate of warm toast. She had changed out of her stained maid's uniform into a simple, neat sweater and dark trousers.

"I thought you might need something to calm your nerves, Mr. Carter," Elena said gently, her voice low and soothing.

Mark looked up, his bloodshot eyes softening the moment he saw her. "Elena... please, come in. And for the hundredth time tonight, stop calling me 'Mr. Carter.' You saved my daughter's life today. You're not just an employee in this house anymore."

Elena walked into the study, setting the tray gently onto the desk. "Old habits are hard to break, Mark. How is Lily?"

"Sleeping like an angel," Mark smiled faintly, though the fatigue in his face was palpable. "The doctor checked her over again an hour ago. No bruises, no trauma. Thanks to your reflexes."

He looked at her hands, noticing the slight red swelling along her wrist where she had slammed against the edge of the cradle while catching the baby.

"You hurt yourself," Mark said, reaching across the desk and gently touching her fingers.

Elena pulled back slightly, a modest blush rising on her cheeks. "It’s just a small sprain. It’s nothing compared to what could have happened."

"Sit down, Elena," Mark insisted, gesturing to the leather armchair opposite him. "We need to talk. David ran a deep background check on Victoria and Eleanor three hours ago. He found something that doesn't make sense."

Elena sat down, leaning forward slightly. "What kind of something?"

Mark pulled out a thick blue ledger from the bottom drawer of his desk—a document David’s cyber unit had extracted from Victoria’s encrypted cloud drive right before her phone was seized by the police.

"Victoria wasn't acting alone," Mark revealed, flipping open the pages filled with financial entries, shell company registrations, and offshore account numbers. "Her mother, Eleanor, has been insolvent for over three years. The Vance estate was completely bankrupt. Victoria didn't marry me because she loved me, Elena. She was placed in my social circle by Eleanor to systematically drain the Carter corporate reserves."

"I knew she was greedy," Elena murmured, her jaw tightening. "She complained constantly about her monthly allowance, even though it was fifty thousand dollars."

"It gets worse," Mark’s voice lowered, growing dangerous. "Look at these bank wire transfers from five years ago. Long before I met Victoria. Long before my late wife, Clara, passed away."

Elena’s eyes widened. Clara—Mark’s first wife and Lily’s biological mother—had died in a tragic car accident eighteen months ago, an event that had left Mark broken until Victoria stepped into his life as a comforting friend.

"What are you saying, Mark?" Elena breathed, terror gripping her chest.

"Clara’s car didn't suffer a mechanical failure," Mark said, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of grief and rage. "The garage that serviced her vehicle two days before the crash received a two-hundred-thousand-dollar transfer from an anonymous holding company registered in the Cayman Islands. A company whose sole beneficial owner... is Eleanor Vance."

Elena gasped, covering her mouth with both hands. "My God... they didn't just target Lily. They murdered Clara!"

"They cleared the path," Mark whispered, tearsFinally breaking past his lashes as he looked at the ledger. "They killed my wife so Victoria could step into her shoes, marry me, take control of the family trust, and then eliminate my baby so they could harvest the insurance and the inheritance."

Before Elena could speak, the heavy landline phone on Mark’s desk rang with a sharp, piercing chime.

Mark picked up the receiver, pressing speaker. "Mark Carter."

"Mark, darling," Eleanor’s cold, triumphant voice echoed through the dark study. She wasn't crying. She sounded completely composed, almost cheerful.

"Where are you, Eleanor?" Mark growled.

"Somewhere safe, dear," Eleanor laughed softly over the line. "I know you have my ledger. I know you’re looking at Clara’s files right now. But you see, Mark... you’re playing chess against a grandmaster. You think putting Victoria in a jail cell stops me? Victoria was just a piece on the board."

"I will hunt you down to the ends of the earth, Eleanor," Mark vowed, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the desk. "You will die in a federal prison."

"Oh, I don't think so," Eleanor replied smoothly. "Because if you give that ledger to Detective Vance, your sweet little maid Elena won't live to see tomorrow morning. Check her background, Mark. Ask her why her real name isn't Elena... and ask her why her father died in the same prison my family owns."

The line went dead with a sharp click.

Mark froze, slowly lifting his head to look at Elena.