For five years, billionaire Grant Mercer had searched for his missing wife without finding a single answer. Then one night, he heard his new maid singing their daughter to sleep—and froze. It wasn’t just the same private lullaby his wife used to sing. Nora knew every pause, every breath, every tiny variation no outsider could possibly know. When Grant demanded to know where she learned it, Nora looked at the old music box in his hand and whispered, “From the woman who said that box should have gone home with her daughter.”

Before the guards could grab her, Nora reacted with violent instinct. She yanked the heavy fire extinguisher from the elevator wall bracket and slammed it with all her strength into the knee of the first guard.

The man roared in pain, collapsing to the floor. Nora sprayed the second guard directly in the face with cold chemical foam, blinding him instantly.

"Grant! They’re moving her!" Nora screamed into her communicator as she lunged past Dr. Sterling, sprinting down the hallway of Ward 3.

Behind her, alarms began to blare—a loud, piercing klaxon that echoed off the concrete walls. Red emergency lights bathed the corridor in a blood-colored glare.

Nora sprinted toward Room 304. The reinforced steel door was wide open. Inside, a gurney stood empty, its restraints dangling over the side.

"Mara!" Nora called out, panic gripping her chest.

She turned toward the far end of the hallway just in time to see two men wheeling a covered gurney toward the rear loading dock elevator. A slender, pale hand dangled from beneath the white sheet—a hand wearing a simple gold wedding band.

"She’s heading for the basement loading dock!" Nora yelled into her mic, taking off in hot pursuit.

Outside the facility, a massive black armored truck burst through the wooden gates of St. Jude’s. Grant Mercer himself was behind the wheel, his face set in a look of lethal fury. Vance and four heavily armed private security operatives jumped out before the vehicle had even come to a complete stop.

"Breach the doors!" Grant roared, drawing a heavy tactical handgun from his shoulder holster. "Leave no one standing!"

Vance fired a specialized explosive charge into the frame of the rear service doors. A deafening boom shook the building, blowing the doors off their hinges in a shower of sparks and twisted metal.

Grant charged through the smoke into the subterranean loading dock.

Fifty feet away, Dr. Sterling and Julian’s chief security officer were frantically forcing the gurney into the back of a black transport van.

"Sterling!" Grant’s voice thundered through the concrete garage like a force of nature.

Dr. Sterling froze, turning around to face the blinding tactical lights attached to Grant’s rifle. The doctor reached into his coat for a weapon, but Grant didn't hesitate. He fired a single, non-lethal shot into Sterling’s shoulder. The doctor screamed, dropping to the floor, his gun clattering across the pavement.

The remaining security guards threw their weapons down, raising their hands in terror as Vance’s tactical team surrounded them.

Grant threw his weapon aside and ran toward the back of the open transport van.

His hands shook uncontrollably as he reached out and gently pulled back the white sheet covering the gurney.

There, pale and fragile, her dark hair streaked with grey, lay Mara. Her eyes fluttered open, struggling to focus through the haze of heavy medical sedatives. She looked up at the tall, dark-haired man towering over her, tears streaming down his face.