My sister threw a mysterious pink liquid into my face at her wedding, laughing that it was just a joke, but when doctors identified the chemical burning my skin, the police discovered this was no accident.

*BANG.*

The deafening report of Liam’s rifle cracked through the library, echoing off the mahogany walls like thunder.

The bullet struck Connor’s right shoulder, the impact spinning him around like a rag doll. His pistol flew from his grip, skittering across the polished floorboards into the shadows beneath the grand piano. Connor collapsed against the stone fireplace with a pathetic, gurgling scream, clutching his shattered collarbone as blood poured through his designer sweater.

“CONNOR!” Evelyn shrieked, dropping to her knees in useless hysterics.

Miles slammed into my chest, his small arms wrapping around my neck with bruising force. I pulled him behind me, shielding his body with my own as Marcus materialized from the hallway, his weapon trained on the wounded man.

“I have him!” Marcus barked. “Clear the boy!”

I scooped Miles into my arms and ran through the grand doors toward the terrace, desperate to get him out into the rain, out of the crossfire.

Behind me, the sound of glass shattering exploded through the room.

Paige had kicked through the secondary terrace doors, sprinting out into the tempest. In her hand, she wasn't holding a gun.

She was holding a heavy glass canister filled with five liters of shimmering, iridescent pink liquid—the remaining reserve of *Rose-7* she had hidden in the mansion’s private vault.

She ran toward the cliffside overlook, where the stone balustrade hung two hundred feet above the raging Atlantic surf.

“PAIGE! STOP!” Liam’s voice boomed as he sprinted out onto the terrace behind her, rain soaking his clothes in seconds.

I set Miles down behind the heavy stone pillar of the portico. “Stay here, baby. Don't look. Keep your head down.”

I stepped out onto the drenched flagstones, the storm lashing against my bandages.

Paige stood at the edge of the abyss, the wind whipping her hair wildly across her face. The glass jug was cradled in her arms like an infant. Lightning fractured the sky, bathing her in stark, violent white light.

“Stay back!” she screamed, her voice competing with the roar of the ocean below. “If you take one more step, I break this against the stone! It will atomize in this wind! Every single person on this terrace will breathe it in! You’ll drown in your own blood, Nora!”

Liam froze ten paces away, his rifle lowered.

I walked past him.

“Nora, no!” Liam shouted, reaching for my arm.

“Let me go, Liam,” I said quietly, never taking my eyes off the woman who had tried to erase my family.

I walked forward until I was standing barely eight feet from the edge of the cliff. The spray from the ocean rose in a freezing mist, coating my skin.

Paige was panting, her chest heaving, the madness in her eyes fully unmasked. Beneath the arrogance, beneath the designer clothes and the stolen millions, she was nothing more than a cornered rat trapped against the dark water.

“Why?” I asked, my voice carrying cleanly through the howling gale. “Why Arthur? Why my son? What did we ever do to you, Paige?”

Paige let out a wild, ragged laugh that sounded like tearing metal.

“You existed!” she shrieked, her knuckles white against the glass handle. “You looked at me with those quiet, pitiful eyes, thinking you were better than me because you were 'decent'! Arthur looked down his nose at me! He told Connor I was a viper! He told Connor to divorce me!”

She took half a step backward, her heels skidding on the wet stone.

“I made Connor a man!” she wept, her mascara running down her cheeks in black rivulets. “I gave him everything! And your stupid, perfect little family sat there with your homemade cakes and your tiny house, pretending you were happy! You had nothing, Nora! NOTHING! And you still looked at me like I was cheap!”

“You are cheap, Paige,” I whispered.

My voice was quiet, but it hit her harder than any bullet.

“You’re an eight-hundred-dollar bag sitting in a fire pit,” I said, stepping an inch closer. “All that money, all that poison, and you’re still just empty leather and smoke.”

Paige screamed—a primal, animal shriek of total ego annihilation.

She raised the glass jug above her head, her muscles tensing to smash the five liters of corrosive death against the concrete terrace.

“DIE!” she roared.

She swung the jug downward.

A sudden, concussive flash tore through the night as police spotlights slammed into the terrace from the garden gates. The sudden glare blinded her for a single, fatal fraction of a second.

Paige’s heel caught the slick, moss-covered edge of the drainage grate.

Her ankle rolled with a sharp *crack*.

Her balance vanished. Her arms flailed.

The heavy glass jug slipped from her fingers, hurtling backward over the stone balustrade into the churning, black void of the Atlantic ocean below.

Paige gasped, her hands clawing desperately at the empty air as her body tipped over the low stone wall.

“LIAM!” she screamed.

Liam didn't move.

I didn't move.

We stood together on the wet stone, watching in absolute silence as gravity reclaimed what poison had built.

There was no theatrical scream on the way down. Just the sudden, violent crack of a body striking the jagged black sea rocks two hundred feet below, instantly swallowed by the roaring, hungry surf.