Prove it.

The words were a death sentence. Dereck Campos wasn't a man who accepted excuses. He wanted evidence. Text messages were useless. He would see through them in a second.

Giselle's eyes darted around the room, searching for a weapon, a tool, anything. They landed on her desk. A bottle of DayQuil, still sealed in its plastic and cardboard prison. She had bought it last week, preparing for the New York winter.

A plan formed. It was desperate, but it was all she had.

She grabbed the phone and opened the voice memo app. She took a deep breath, trying to channel the weakness she felt in her bones. She let the fever do the work. She started to cough, forcing it deep from her chest until it hacked through her vocal cords.

"Daddy..." she rasped into the microphone, her voice raw and thin. "I really am sick... My head is spinning, and I feel so weak..."

She stopped the recording and played it back. It sounded fake. Too performative. She deleted it and tried again. And again. On the fourteenth take, she didn't act. She just let the exhaustion and the terror wash over her. The resulting voice was a frail, trembling whisper that sounded like a ghost.

Good. Now for the visual.

She picked up the bottle of DayQuil. The safety seal was intact. She placed the bottle in her right hand and gripped the cap. Instead of using her palm to apply pressure, she pinched the cap between her thumb and her index finger, digging her knuckles into the sharp plastic ridges.

She twisted. Hard.

The plastic bit into her skin. A sharp, burning sensation flared across her knuckles. She ignored the pain and twisted again. The cap didn't budge, but her skin did. The friction scraped away the top layer, leaving a raw, red patch that immediately began to throb.

She kept twisting for another ten seconds, grinding her bones against the plastic, until her fingers were trembling and the red patch turned an angry, blotchy purple.

She put the bottle down and looked at her hand. It looked pathetic. The skin was broken, the knuckles swollen and red. It looked exactly like the hand of a girl who was too weak to open her own medicine.

She held the phone over her hand, framing the shot carefully. The background was just a blur of white sheets, completely anonymous. She snapped the photo.

She attached the voice memo and the photo to the chat.

"Daddy, I don't know why you're scaring me," she typed, her thumbs flying across the screen. "I'm sick and alone, and now you're saying weird things. I can't even open my medicine bottle... Did I make you angry by cancelling our date? I'm sorry... I'm really sorry..."

She hit send before she could second-guess herself. She dropped the phone on the bed and slid down to the floor, her back against the frame. She pressed her injured hand against her forehead, the coolness of her skin a relief against the fever.

A minute passed. Two. Five.

Then, a chime. Not a text message notification. An email.

Giselle crawled onto the bed and opened her laptop. The email was from a generic banking address. Wire Transfer Confirmation from The Cayman Islands.

She opened it. The number on the screen made her vision blur. $150,000. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, transferred from an offshore account to the MoonCookie linked account. A line of text at the bottom read: Funds on hold pending recipient identity verification. An account she had the password to. An account that was currently empty because her ex had drained it.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Oero.

Find the best doctor in New York. I don't care what it costs. Consider this a down payment on your recovery. Don't refuse it. And I'm sending my driver to your building to deliver whatever you need.

The room tilted. The money was a trap. The driver was a firing squad. If she accepted the money by verifying her identity, she was a thief. If she let the driver in, he would see her face, see that she wasn't Carleigh, and report back to his boss.

She had to refuse. She had to reject the money from the most powerful man in New York. She logged into the linked bank account on her laptop, her hands shaking, and clicked the bold red button: DECLINE TRANSFER.

Then she picked up the encrypted phone. She couldn't let his driver or any doctor near her apartment.

"No! Absolutely not! Daddy, I appreciate you caring about me, but I don't need a doctor or your driver! I can't accept all this. It makes me feel... overwhelmed."

She was framing it as a moral objection. It was the only angle she had. A greedy sugar baby would take the cash. A girl who actually cared about the relationship might not.

"Please, I'm a big girl. I have my medicine now. Just let me rest. If you send anyone, I won't open the door. Please understand."

She hit send. She grabbed her own phone, the one with the cracked screen, and opened the CVS app. She ordered a bottle of NyQuil and a pack of Gatorade for delivery to her building. She paid the extra fee for one-hour delivery. She needed a real transaction to back up her story.

The silence from Oero's phone was deafening. She could feel him thinking, analyzing, calculating. She had just told a predator no.

Finally, the screen lit up.

Fine. Rest. We'll talk tomorrow.

Giselle let out a sob. She collapsed onto the floor, her body going limp. The cold sweat on her back soaked through her t-shirt. She had survived. For now.

She looked at her laptop screen, still showing the wire transfer. The money was a ghost-a massive sum she couldn't touch without revealing herself. The account itself, drained by her ex, was still functionally empty. The money wasn't gone; it was a trap waiting to be sprung. The debt, however, was very real.

She opened a new spreadsheet. She titled it Project Repayment. She had no money, no connections, and a million-dollar debt to a psychopath. But she had her brain. And she was going to use it to buy her life back.

The spreadsheet stared back at her, the blinking cursor in cell A1 a mocking reminder of her situation. Giselle took a deep breath and typed the number. $1,530,000. The sum of the wire transfers she could find in the chat history. The number looked obscene in black and white.

She moved to the next row. Assets. She listed them quickly. Columbia Engineering Full Scholarship. Proficient in Python, C++, MATLAB. Fluent in English, Spanish, and French. 3.98 GPA.

She stared at the list. It wasn't money, but it was capital. It was the only kind she had.

She opened the Columbia University student job portal. Her eyes scanned the listings, her brain automatically filtering out the low-paying campus jobs. She needed speed, not convenience.

Research Assistant, Quantum Computing Lab. $25/hr. Too time-consuming.

Library Desk Attendant, Butler Library. $18/hr. Steady, flexible.

Private Tutor, Physics 1200. $50/hr. This was it.

She jotted the details down in her notebook. Applying online would take too long; she would apply for them in person tomorrow to ensure she got the positions immediately.

She calculated the hours. It would take her years to pay off the debt at this rate. Decades. But it was a trajectory. It was a plan.

She closed the laptop and leaned back in her chair, a tiny sliver of control returning to her chest. She was no longer just a victim. She was a debtor. And debtors could work their way out.

The view from the penthouse suite at Clinique La Prairie was a wall of white. The Swiss Alps stood like frozen giants against the azure sky, but Dereck Campos wasn't looking at them. He was sitting in a wheelchair by the window, his left arm in a complex brace, his face a mask of bored frustration.

A month. He had been stuck in this glorified sanatorium for a month, recovering from a skiing accident that should have killed him. The only thing keeping him entertained was the small, black device in his hand.

His assistant, a man in a perfectly tailored suit who looked more like a secret service agent than a paper-pusher, approached the wheelchair.

"Sir," the assistant said, his voice low and respectful. "There was an issue with the wire transfer from the Cayman account. It was rejected and returned."

Dereck looked up, one eyebrow raised slightly. "Rejected?"

"Yes, sir. The recipient declined the funds."

Dereck took the phone. He scrolled through the chat history, reading the messages from the previous night. The whining voice memo. The photo of the bruised, red hand. The refusal of the doctor and the driver.

He played the voice memo again. The girl's voice was a fragile, breathy whisper, thick with congestion and something else. Fear? Or just a really good act?

He looked at the photo. The skin on her knuckles was scraped raw, the tiny smears of blood stark against the pale skin. It was a nice touch. Most scammers wouldn't go that far for authenticity.

"She refused the money," Dereck said, his voice a low rumble.

"Yes, sir."

"And the driver?"

"She explicitly stated she would not open the door for him."

Dereck leaned back in his chair, a strange sensation stirring in his chest. It wasn't concern. He didn't care about this girl. She was a thief, a catfish using another woman's photos. He had known that from the beginning. Carleigh Ramsey's face was famous in certain circles.

"Run a check on Carleigh Ramsey," he said. "Columbia student. I want her schedule and her current location."

The assistant nodded and stepped away. Dereck continued to stare at the photo of the hand. It was a small hand. Delicate. It didn't look like the hand of a calculating grifter.

The assistant returned a few minutes later. "Miss Ramsey is currently in the Hamptons. Her social media shows her at a party at a nightclub last night. She appears to be quite healthy."

Dereck's lips curled into a thin, cold smile. So, the girl in the apartment, the one with the fever and the scraped knuckles, was not the girl in the photos.

Someone else was playing MoonCookie.

A scammer who didn't want money. A liar who refused help. A thief who acted like a prude. It was a contradiction. And Dereck hated contradictions.

He tapped the screen, pulling up the chat window. He wasn't angry. He was intrigued. This wasn't a simple shakedown anymore. This was a game. And he was just starting to realize he had a new opponent.

"Find out who is behind that account," Dereck said, his voice soft and dangerous. "Not the face. The person typing."

He looked out at the snow-capped peaks, but he wasn't seeing them. He was seeing the raw, red knuckles. He was hearing the desperate, little cough. He was going to find her. And when he did, he was going to take her apart piece by piece, until he understood exactly what she was after.

Dereck was still staring at the phone when the door to the suite swung open. He didn't look up. The only person who would dare enter without knocking was the only person he tolerated.

Preston Shaw-Huxley sauntered into the room, a whirlwind of Savile Row tailoring and arrogant charm. He was already heading for the mini-bar, pulling out a bottle of Macallan 25 as if he owned the place. Which, in a way, his family almost did.

"What's the face for?" Preston asked, pouring a generous measure into a crystal tumbler. "You look like a kid who found a bug in his soup."

Dereck didn't answer. He just held out the phone.

Preston took it, his eyes scanning the screen. He read the messages, his expression shifting from amusement to disbelief. He played the voice memo, letting the raspy "Daddy" fill the silent room.

"Seriously?" Preston set the phone down on the coffee table with a clatter. "This is what's got you brooding? A catfish?"

"She refused a hundred and fifty thousand dollars," Dereck said flatly.

"She what?" Preston picked the phone up again, scrolling back through the chat. He read the refusal, his eyebrows climbing higher and higher. "Okay, now I know this is a scam. A good one, but still a scam."

He dropped onto the sofa opposite Dereck, swirling the whisky in his glass. "This is textbook PUA stuff, Dereck. Step one: establish the innocent, sick-girl persona. Step two: reject the money to make yourself seem different from all the other gold-diggers. Step three: make him feel guilty for doubting you. It's straight out of the internet playbook."

Dereck watched his friend, his expression unreadable. "You think it's an act."

"I know it's an act," Preston said, taking a sip of his drink. "Come on, man. This isn't you. You're Dereck Campos. You eat people like this for breakfast. You're just bored because you're stuck in this bed."

"Maybe," Dereck said, his voice noncommittal.

Preston leaned forward, his eyes suddenly serious. "You're not actually falling for this, are you? You forgot what happened with Lydia?"

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Dereck's hand, resting on the arm of the wheelchair, tightened into a fist. The knuckles went white.

Preston immediately held up a hand. "Shit. Sorry. I shouldn't have-forget I said that."

The silence stretched, thick and toxic. The name Lydia was a landmine, and Preston had just stepped on it. Lydia, who had smiled and lied and stolen. Lydia, who had turned Dereck into the cold, cynical bastard he was today, long before the accident that confined him to this wheelchair.

"Look," Preston said, his tone softer now, placating. "I'm just looking out for you. You're in a vulnerable state. You're isolated. It's the perfect setup for a con. Just let the legal team handle it. One letter from our lawyers, one trace on the IP address, and this 'MoonCookie' will be exposed in a few hours."

It was the logical solution. It was the Dereck Campos solution. A quick, surgical strike to remove the annoyance.

But Dereck didn't want to remove the annoyance. He wanted to play with it.

"No," he said. "That's boring."

Preston stared at him. "Boring? Since when do you care about boring? You're a results guy."

"I want to see where this goes," Dereck said, his eyes fixed on the phone. "She's different."

"Different how?" Preston scoffed. "Because she's playing hard to get? That's the oldest trick in the book!"

But even as he said it, Preston could see the change in his friend's eyes. It was a spark, a flicker of the obsessive, driven maniac who could dismantle a Fortune 500 company before lunch. Dereck wasn't just curious. He was fixated.

"Fine," Preston said, standing up and draining his glass. "If you won't end it, I will."

He walked over and snatched the phone off the table. "I'm going to test your little MoonCookie. I'm going to push a button and see if she squeaks or squawks."

Dereck didn't move to stop him. He just watched, a faint, predatory smile touching his lips. "Go ahead."

Preston looked at the screen, his thumbs hovering over the keyboard. He wasn't going to play nice. He was going to hit her with a sledgehammer. He was going to scare the truth out of this con artist, no matter what it took.