Ivy swiped her keycard. The heavy steel door of the Tribeca loft slid open. This was her sanctuary, the one place her father's money hadn't touched. She had bought it through a shell company three years ago.

She kicked off her heels. The cement floor was freezing against her bare feet. She exhaled, a long, shuddering breath that rattled in her chest.

The apartment hummed. It was the sound of server fans.

Zoe Vance was sitting cross-legged on the oversized leather sofa. Her hair was bright pink that day. She was typing furiously on a laptop covered in stickers.

"Did you handle the douchebag?" Zoe asked without looking up.

Ivy walked to the kitchen island and poured two fingers of whiskey. Her hands were finally steady.

"Handled," she said. "I got married."

Zoe spun around so fast she nearly knocked her laptop off her knees. "You what?"

Ivy pulled the folded certificate out of her bag and tossed it onto the coffee table.

Zoe picked it up gingerly. She read the name. Her eyes went wide.

"Dominik Mack?" She looked at Ivy. "The Dominik Mack?"

Ivy took a sip of the whiskey. It burned, grounding her. "You know him?"

Zoe's fingers flew across her keyboard. "Do I know him? Ivy, he's a ghost. He's a legend."

She turned her laptop screen toward Ivy. It showed a profile of Dominik. Net worth: redacted. Location: everywhere and nowhere.

"He eats companies," Zoe said. "He's dangerous. You're playing with fire."

"The enemy of my enemy," Ivy said. "He scared Preston. He'll scare Harris."

"He might eat you, too," Zoe warned.

"I have nothing left to lose," Ivy said. "Except this."

She pulled a USB drive from her pocket. It contained the photos of Preston, plus the financial records she had scraped from his laptop while he was sleeping.

"I should leak this to the Journal right now," Zoe said, reaching for the drive.

Ivy pulled it back. "No. Not yet."

"Why? He deserves it."

"If we tank the Hayes stock now, the merger collapses too fast. My Miller shares drop. I need the value high so I can cash out or negotiate."

Zoe sighed. "You're so rational. It's creepy."

"It's survival," Ivy said.

Zoe frowned at her screen. "Wait. Alert."

She pointed to a window on her monitor. "Someone is trying to use a keycard on the downstairs lobby door. It's... Preston's old card."

Ivy walked to the security monitor. The black-and-white feed showed the lobby. Preston was there. He looked disheveled. He was shouting at the intercom.

"He's persistent," Zoe said. "Should I call the cops?"

Ivy watched him on the screen. He was banging on the glass.

"Let him throw a tantrum," she said. "We have bigger problems."

She pointed at the photo of Dominik on Zoe's screen.

"Zoe, I need you to focus on Mack Capital's server architecture. Find a backdoor. I'm going to start mapping his offshore entities and looking for patterns. I need to know his weak spots."

Two hours later, the pizza box on the table was half empty. The room smelled of pepperoni and ozone.

Zoe hit the enter key with unnecessary force. "Impossible."

Ivy was on the treadmill in the corner, running at a steady pace. It was the only way to burn off the cortisol. "What?"

"He's clean," Zoe said. "Too clean. It's synthetic."

Ivy slowed the machine to a walk. "Explain."

"Harvard Business. Goldman Sachs. Founded Mack Capital. That's the resume. But there's no... life. No speeding tickets. No ex-girlfriends on Instagram. No embarrassing college photos. His digital footprint is manicured."

Ivy wiped sweat from her forehead with a towel. "So he's paranoid."

"Or hiding something huge," Zoe said. "I tried to ping the Mack Capital internal server. I hit a firewall that felt like military grade. If I push harder, they'll trace me."

"Don't," Ivy said. "I can't afford a cyber-crime charge."

Zoe clicked a folder. "I found one thing. Dark web archive. It's a partial image."

She pulled up a grainy photo. It was low resolution. A young man standing in the snow, smoking. He looked hollowed out. Behind him was a building with a distinctive clock tower.

Ivy stepped off the treadmill. She walked closer to the screen.

Her heart skipped a beat.

She knew that clock tower. The Clinic of St. Jude in Zurich. The place her father sent her to "dry out" when she was nineteen, even though she had never touched a drug in her life. It was where she was first recruited, where her 'illness' became the perfect cover.

"He was there," she whispered.

"Patient or visitor?" Zoe asked.

"I don't know."

The buzzer rang. Not the lobby buzzer. The apartment door.

Zoe jumped up. "Preston got in?"

Ivy grabbed a heavy brass candlestick from the table. She walked to the door and looked through the peephole.

It wasn't Preston. It was a courier in a uniform, holding a massive black box.

She opened the door. "Yes?"

"Delivery for Mrs. Mack," the courier said.

Ivy signed for it. She dragged the box inside.

"Bomb?" Zoe asked, peering over the sofa.

Ivy cut the tape. She lifted the lid.

Inside, nestled in layers of tissue paper, was a dress. It was midnight blue velvet, structured and severe, with a slit that went up to the thigh. It was armor disguised as fashion.

There was a card.

The Miller Foundation Gala. Tonight. 8 PM. Wear this.

Her father's gala. The one she was explicitly banned from attending.

"He's taking you?" Zoe whistled. "That's a declaration of war. He's marching you right back into the lion's den."

Ivy ran her hand over the velvet. It was soft, but the construction was rigid. He knew. He knew she needed protection.

"Zoe," Ivy said, lifting the dress. "Get the makeup kit. We're going to war."

Zoe had gone downstairs to bring her car around to the back alley, just in case Preston was still lurking in the front.

Ivy stood in the center of the living room, smoothing the velvet over her hips. The dress fit perfectly. Too perfectly. How did he know her measurements?

The keypad on the front door beeped. An override sequence. The emergency alarm on her phone remained silent. Someone had bypassed her security from the inside.

She froze.

The door swung open.

It wasn't Zoe.

Harris Miller strode into the apartment. Her father. He brought the cold air in with him. Two of his personal security detail flanked him, blocking the exit.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. It was a Pavlovian response. She mentally calculated the distance to the kitchen knives, the weight of the candlestick still in her hand. Threat assessment. The sight of him made her feel small, trapped.

"What have you done?" Harris didn't yell. He never yelled. His voice was a low rumble, vibrating with suppressed rage.

He threw a folder onto the coffee table. It slid across the surface and hit the pizza box.

"Preston called me," Harris said. "He says you married a stranger. He says you've finally snapped."

"I secured the voting rights," Ivy said. Her voice sounded thin to her own ears. "I did what was necessary to protect the company."

Harris walked toward her. He smelled of expensive scotch and old money.

"You ruined the merger," he spat. "The Hayes family is furious. You are an embarrassment, Ivy. A junkie. A liability."

"I'm not a junkie," she said. "And Preston was cheating."

"Men cheat!" Harris roared, losing his composure for a split second. "You look the other way! That is your job!"

He stepped closer. She backed up until her legs hit the sofa.

"I am going to file for an annulment," Harris said. "And then I am filing for an emergency conservatorship. Dr. Aris has already signed the affidavit stating you are a danger to yourself."

Conservatorship. The word was a noose. He was going to lock her away. He was going to take her voice, her money, her life. Her mind raced, cataloging the legal statutes for challenging a fraudulent medical affidavit, the average court processing time, the likelihood of a judge being on his payroll.

"You can't," she whispered.

"I can," Harris said. He reached out to grab her arm. "You're coming with me."

Her phone, sitting on the coffee table, began to ring.

The screen lit up. Unknown Number.

She lunged for it. Harris tried to block her, but she was faster. She hit answer and speakerphone.

"Ivy?"

The voice filled the room. Deep. Calm. Dangerous.

"Dominik," she choked out.

"I'm downstairs," Dominik said. "The car is waiting."

Harris froze. He stared at the phone.

"Who is this?" Harris demanded.

"Hello, Harris," Dominik said. His tone was conversational, terrifyingly polite. "This is your son-in-law."

Harris's face went pale. "Mack."

"You are interfering with a Mack asset," Dominik said, his voice dropping an octave. "And I protect my assets. If you so much as bruise her wrist, I will call in the debt on the 40th Street tower. Tonight. I will bankrupt you before dessert is served."

The silence in the room was absolute. Harris knew. He knew Mack Capital held the distressed debt on the family's crown jewel property.

"Get out of my wife's apartment," Dominik said.

Harris looked at the phone, then at Ivy. His eyes were full of hate, but his hands dropped to his sides. He adjusted his cufflinks.

"We'll discuss this at the board meeting," Harris muttered.

He signaled his men. They turned and marched out.

The door clicked shut.

Ivy sank onto the sofa, her legs giving out.

"Are they gone?" Dominik asked from the phone.

"Yes," she whispered. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," he said. "Come downstairs. We have a party to crash."