Thirty-two weeks pregnant, I watched my husband walk into his family’s Christmas party with another woman wearing the diamond necklace he had secretly purchased during a hotel stay. Sixty guests were watching when I finally told him, “Since you brought someone, I brought someone too”—but Matthias had no idea that his infidelity was no longer the most dangerous secret I had uncovered.

The collision echoed off the concrete walls as Marcus Vance slammed Fiona Vale into the side of a heavy server rack. The crowbar clattered across the floor, spinning into the dark shadows beneath the cable trays.

Thick, invisible natural gas flooded the air, making my eyes sting and my throat burn instantly.

“Serena! Get out!” Marcus gasped, struggling to secure hand restraints around Fiona’s flailing wrists as she bit, kicked, and clawed at his face with maniacal desperation. “The gas concentration is too high! One static spark from these server cooling fans and this room turns into an oven!”

I stepped toward the main terminal console. The progress bar on the blue screen was at ninety-two percent: Data Purge Sequence: 92% Complete.

If the purge completed, the evidence of Fiona’s network, her corporate sabotage, and the true extent of the conspiracy would vanish. My daughter’s name would be forever tied to a disgraced, bankrupt family, and the real monsters behind the Hensley acquisition would walk free.

I grabbed the thick, braided master power cable running into the bottom of the main console.

“Don't touch that!” Fiona screamed from the floor, her voice high and hysterical as Marcus finally pinned her hands behind her back. “If you pull that cable while the drive is writing, it creates a voltage surge! It will ignite the gas!”

I paused, my hand gripping the cold rubber casing.

My baby kicked hard against my ribs—a sharp, reassuring rhythm beneath my heart.

I looked at Fiona lying in the dust, her diamond choker crooked, her dark eyes filled with pure, unadulterated fear. For all her talk of 'acceptable losses,' when faced with her own mortality, she was nothing more than a terrified parasite.

“I’m a trauma nurse, Fiona,” I said, my voice steady despite the stinging gas burning my lungs. “I know how to cut the power before the damage reaches the heart.”

I didn't yank the cable to cause a spark. Instead, I grabbed the emergency manual circuit breaker handle on the adjacent wall—the heavy rubber-insulated switch designed specifically to kill power safely during a gas leak—and threw the lever down with all my weight!

CLACK!

The blue LED lights instantly vanished into total blackness. The whirring server fans died. The digital purge sequence froze at ninety-eight percent—trapping the unencrypted evidence on the flash drive forever.

The room went dead silent, save for the violent hissing of the broken gas pipe.

Marcus hauled Fiona to her feet by her collar. “Move! Up the stairs!”

We scrambled out of the server room into the stone corridor, slamming the heavy iron fire door behind us to contain the escaping gas. As the heavy seal clicked shut, we collapsed against the wall, coughing and gasping for the cold, damp air of the lower hallway.