A black private helicopter descended from the gray Manhattan sky. The massive rotors whipped the wind into a frenzy as it landed on the helipad of the midtown skyscraper.

Cristofer stepped out of the chopper. His face was like thunder. He walked straight to the private elevator and pressed the button for his penthouse.

The silver doors slid open.

The penthouse was dead silent. The air felt cold. The usual scent of Corrine's citrus candles was gone.

Cristofer threw his suit jacket onto the velvet armchair. He marched toward the kitchen.

"Patty!" he yelled. His voice bounced off the high ceilings.

Inside the servant's quarters, Patty Doyle jumped. She had been frantically deleting photos from her phone-pictures of her drinking at a bar in Brooklyn last night with her boyfriend.

She smoothed down her gray uniform and practically ran into the living room. She kept her head bowed, terrified to look at her boss.

"I pay you one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year to watch my wife," Cristofer said, his voice dangerously quiet. "Where the hell were you last night?"

Patty's stomach dropped. She knew the rules. If Cristofer found out she had abandoned her post while his pregnant wife was home alone, she wouldn't just be fired. She would be blacklisted from every wealthy household on the East Coast.

She had to protect herself. She had to blame the wife.

Patty dropped to her knees on the hardwood floor. She forced tears into her eyes.

"Mr. Clarke, please! It's not my fault!" Patty sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "It's Mrs. Ratcliff! She... she's lost her mind!"

Cristofer stopped pacing. He looked down at the weeping nanny. He twisted the watch on his left wrist.

"Lost her mind?" he repeated coldly. "Explain."

Patty swallowed hard. She pointed a shaking finger toward the kitchen.

"Her pregnancy hormones have made her completely unstable," Patty lied smoothly. "She has terrible paranoia. She thinks the private chef is trying to poison her!"

Cristofer's eyes narrowed.

"She took the organic salmon and the caviar we prepared for her yesterday and threw it all down the garbage disposal!" Patty cried.

Cristofer's chest tightened. He paid a fortune for that diet plan to ensure his heir got the best nutrients possible.

She scrambled to her feet. "I can show you! Please, follow me." Patty led him swiftly down the hall toward Corrine's master suite. She bypassed the pristine bedroom and went straight into Corrine's walk-in closet. Patty dug deep into a small, hidden wicker trash can tucked behind a row of unused designer shoes. She pulled out a crushed, yellow cardboard box.

She turned and held the box up to Cristofer's face. It was a cheap, two-dollar box of microwaveable Macaroni and Cheese.

"This is all she will eat!" Patty said, shaking the box. "She refuses to let me buy fresh vegetables. She locks herself in her room and eats this garbage. When I try to stop her, she throws things at me!"

Cristofer stared at the greasy, processed food box. A muscle in his jaw twitched violently.

"Last night, she just snapped," Patty continued, tears rolling down her cheeks. "She ran out the front door. I tried to physically stop her, but she threatened to have me fired if I told you!"

The lies were perfectly crafted. Patty used Corrine's quiet, isolated nature against her.

Cristofer looked at the box again. He thought about Corrine's pale skin. Her constant silence. He had always thought she was just introverted. Now, looking at this trash, he saw something else.

Sickness.

In the world of old money, a mother's mental stability was everything. It dictated the quality of the bloodline.

A deep, sickening feeling of disgust washed over him. He had been tricked. He had married a crazy woman.

"She is unfit to be a mother," Cristofer spat. The words tasted like poison in his mouth.

He turned away from Patty. He walked down the long hallway, heading straight for Corrine's master closet. He needed to see this for himself. He needed to find the proof of her insanity.

Patty stayed on her knees. As soon as his back was turned, she let out a long, silent breath of relief. She had survived.

Cristofer's phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Cole.

"Sir, we found a hotel registry under her name at a cheap motel near Central Park," Cole reported.

Cristofer sneered. "Call off the cars. Don't pick her up."

"Sir?"

"She's a lunatic," Cristofer said coldly. "Let her sleep in the dirt. When she gets hungry enough, she'll crawl back here on her own."

He hung up the phone. He stood in front of the heavy double doors of Corrine's closet. He grabbed the brass handles and shoved them open.

The motion-sensor lights flickered on, illuminating the massive, hundred-square-foot walk-in closet.

Cristofer stepped inside. The space immediately made him angry. It was too empty.

On his side, rows of custom Italian suits and expensive watches lined the walls. But on Corrine's side, there were only a few plain, cheap maternity dresses hanging limply on the racks. The high-end designer gowns his mother had sent over were shoved into a dark corner, the price tags still attached.

To Cristofer, this wasn't modesty. It was an insult. It was a silent rebellion against his wealth.

He walked deeper into the closet, his eyes scanning the shelves like a detective looking for a murder weapon.

His gaze landed on a large velvet storage bench pushed against the back wall. The lid was slightly ajar. A strange, bright yellow color peeked out from the gap.

Cristofer walked over. He grabbed the edge of the velvet lid and ripped it open.

His pupils shrank. His breath hitched in his throat.

The bench wasn't filled with winter coats or blankets. It was packed with crushed, empty boxes of Macaroni and Cheese. There were dozens of them-easily a month's worth of hidden meals. He knew Corrine occasionally went out for coffee with Eleanor, and it was obvious now that she had been using those rare, unchaperoned hours to smuggle this garbage back into the penthouse.

The faint, artificial smell of powdered cheese and preservatives drifted up into his nose.

Cristofer's brain short-circuited. Patty's words echoed in his ears. This is all she will eat.

"She is actually feeding my child this toxic waste," Cristofer whispered. His hands curled into tight fists. His fingernails dug into his palms.

He didn't know the truth. He didn't know that Corrine suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum. He didn't know that every time she tried to eat the rich, heavy food the chef made, she threw up until her throat bled. He didn't know that this cheap pasta-the same food she ate growing up in the orphanage-was the only thing her stomach could keep down.

And he certainly didn't know that Patty had been pocketing the grocery money and forcing Corrine to eat the cheap meals.

Cristofer's vision went red. He didn't see a struggling mother. He saw a malicious woman intentionally starving his baby.

He lifted his leg and kicked the velvet bench as hard as he could.

The heavy bench tipped over. Hundreds of empty yellow boxes spilled out, cascading across the expensive Persian rug.

Cristofer stepped forward. His leather dress shoe crushed one of the cardboard boxes. The loud crunch echoed in the quiet closet. It sounded like bones breaking.

He pulled his phone out again. He dialed Cole's number.

"Change of plans," Cristofer barked. His voice was devoid of any human emotion.

"Yes, Mr. Clarke?"

"Call the NYPD commissioner. Activate our private investigators and the cyber team. I want this city torn apart brick by brick until you find her."

"Understood," Cole said, his voice tight with stress.

"Check every underground clinic, every shady hospital, and every homeless shelter in the five boroughs," Cristofer ordered.

He stared down at the crushed boxes at his feet.

"When you find her, do not bring her here. Send a medical transport helicopter. Take her directly to the Clarke family's private psychiatric facility in upstate New York."

Cole gasped quietly on the line. "Sir... the psychiatric facility?"

"I want a full toxicology panel and a complete psychological evaluation forced on her," Cristofer said, his tone brutal. "If those doctors find out she has caused even a fraction of a percent of damage to my child's development..."

Cristofer paused. He twisted his watch dial again.

"Have the legal team draft the papers to strip her of all parental rights. She will spend the rest of her life locked in a padded room."

"I will get it done immediately, sir," Cole said.

Cristofer ended the call. He looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror. His face was a mask of pure, aristocratic cruelty.

He turned around and walked out of the closet. His shoe stepped on a box with a cartoon smiley face on it, grinding it flat into the carpet.

He had just sentenced his wife to hell. But miles away, another group of vultures was already circling her hospital bed.

Outside the NICU at the private hospital, Eleanor stood with her forehead pressed against the cold glass. She watched the tiny chest of Corrine's daughter rise and fall in shallow, agonizingly slow movements.

Down the hall, inside the nurse's breakroom, Sharon Mills sat on a plastic chair. She was holding her phone under the table.

Sharon loved the proximity to wealth her job provided. She loved trading secrets.

She opened an iMessage chat with a wealthy Upper East Side housewife she knew from a pilates class.

You will not believe who is in the ICU right now, Sharon typed rapidly. Corrine Clarke. She almost bled to death having twins last night. The husband is nowhere to be found.

She hit send.

The gossip spread like a virus. It jumped from group chat to group chat, moving through the elite circles of Manhattan faster than a wildfire.

Within thirty minutes, the message reached a sprawling, century-old estate in Long Island.

Inside the glass sunroom, Madeleine Clarke sat on a velvet chaise lounge. She held a gold-rimmed bone china teacup, taking a delicate sip of Darjeeling tea.

Her daughter, Sloane Clarke, sat across from her. Sloane was scrolling through her phone. Suddenly, she let out a sharp gasp.

Sloane jumped up and shoved her phone screen directly into her mother's face.

Madeleine read the text message. Her perfectly botoxed face hardened into a mask of pure fury. She slammed her teacup down onto the glass table. Hot tea sloshed over the rim, staining the imported lace tablecloth.

"She had the heirs in secret?" Madeleine hissed. "What is this filthy orphan trying to pull?"

Sloane crossed her arms, a vicious smirk playing on her lips. "Isn't it obvious, Mother? She's trying to hide them. She wants to use the babies as leverage to extort more money out of the trust fund."

Madeleine stood up. She smoothed down her Chanel tweed skirt. Her eyes were cold and calculating.

She had always hated Corrine. She hated her lack of pedigree. She firmly believed Corrine had deliberately avoided the family's approved medical team to hide something sinister.

"Mom," Sloane said, her voice dripping with poison. "Think about it. They're premature. Who knows if those little monsters even belong to my brother?"

Madeleine's eyes widened slightly. That was the ultimate nightmare. The Clarke bloodline tainted by a commoner's infidelity.

She pressed the intercom button on the wall.

"Have the driver bring the Rolls-Royce around," Madeleine ordered the butler. "And call the senior legal team. Tell them to meet me in the car."

Thirty minutes later, three black Rolls-Royce Phantoms sped out of the Long Island estate, heading straight for Manhattan.

Inside the lead car, a man in a sharp suit handed Madeleine a thick stack of legal documents.

It was a fifty-page Voluntary Relinquishment of Parental Rights and Divorce Settlement.

Madeleine put on her reading glasses. She flipped through the pages. The terms were brutal. Corrine would leave the marriage with zero assets and would be legally barred from ever seeing the children again.

Sloane sat next to her, painting her nails a bright, blood-red color. She smiled. She couldn't wait to see her pathetic sister-in-law cry.

The motorcade pulled up to the private hospital.

Madeleine and Sloane marched through the sliding doors, flanked by four massive bodyguards in black suits and two lawyers.

The hospital director ran into the lobby, sweating profusely.

"Mrs. Clarke, please," the director stammered, holding his hands up. "The patient is in the VIP ICU. She just woke up from hemorrhagic shock. She cannot have visitors."

Madeleine stopped. She looked the director up and down with absolute disgust.

"My family donates twenty million dollars a year to this hospital's research wing," Madeleine said, her voice like ice. "If I am not in that room in two minutes, I will pull the funding and have your medical license revoked."

The director turned pale. He swallowed hard and stepped aside. He pulled out his master keycard and swiped them into the private elevator.

The elevator doors opened on the top floor.

Two of Eleanor's private security guards stood in front of the heavy wooden door of the VIP suite.

Sloane marched right up to them. She pointed her wet, red fingernail at the guard's chest. "Move out of the way, you hired apes. We are the Clarkes."

The guard didn't blink. "No entry without Ms. Fletcher's approval."

"Move!" Sloane shrieked, shoving the guard's shoulder.

Inside the room, Corrine lay flat on the hospital bed. Her face was the color of chalk. She had just regained consciousness. The massive surgical incision across her abdomen burned with a tearing, agonizing pain. Cold sweat soaked her gown.

She heard the shouting outside.

Before she could press the call button, a loud BANG echoed through the room.

The heavy wooden doors were violently shoved open by the bodyguards. Madeleine Clarke stepped into the room, bringing a suffocating wave of oppression with her.