Devin walked into the hospital room and scooped Kenzie up from the window seat. He turned and shoved her into the arms of the startled head nurse, who had just walked in to check her vitals.

"Watch her," Devin ordered, his voice like gravel. "If she gets a single scratch, I will shut this hospital down and sell it for scrap."

The nurse went white, clutching the baby to her chest. "Yes, sir! Of course, sir!"

Devin turned and headed for the door. His long legs ate up the distance, his body coiled with explosive energy.

Kenzie struggled in the nurse's arms. This wasn't part of the plan. Devin was going in blind. He didn't know where the drugs were. He didn't know where the cameras were. He would walk into Desiree's trap just like Sterling.

"You idiot!" Kenzie screamed in her mind, thrashing her tiny limbs. "You can't just kick the door down! She'll have the cameras hidden! If you don't find the evidence, she can claim Sterling attacked her! You need me!"

Devin's stride faltered. He was at the elevator bank, his finger hovering over the call button. He heard the baby's thoughts loud and clear. She was right. Without the physical evidence of the cameras and the drugs, it would just be his word against hers. And a rich man accusing a poor doctor of entrapment wouldn't play well in the press.

But taking a sick infant on a tactical raid was insane.

"Bring me!" Kenzie insisted, her mental voice frantic. "I can pinpoint the cameras! I can read her mind! I'm your radar! You're flying blind without me!"

Devin's jaw clenched. He looked back at the squirming baby in the nurse's arms. He weighed the risk to the child against the risk to his family's empire. The empire won.

He strode back and snatched Kenzie from the nurse. "Shut up," he muttered, holding her close. "Arthur," Devin barked, turning to his bodyguard. "You follow one block behind in the SUV. If anything happens to me, your only priority is the child. You get her out. Understood?" Arthur nodded grimly. Devin shifted his grip, using his broad chest and the thick layers of his wool coat to create a protective barrier around Kenzie's fragile body. "If you throw up on my coat, I'm leaving you on the side of the road," he added, though the careful way he shielded her head belied the harsh words.

Kenzie immediately stopped struggling. She nestled into his neck, a smug satisfaction warming her chest. "Deal. Let's go, tyrant."

Devin hit the elevator button. They plummeted down to the underground garage. A sleek, black Aston Martin DBS was waiting, its engine already growling like a caged beast. Arthur was standing by the driver's door, but Devin pushed him aside.

"I'm driving. You follow with the team," Devin snapped. He opened the passenger door and quickly strapped Kenzie into a top-of-the-line car seat that had magically appeared in the back. He buckled the five-point harness with quick, efficient movements.

Kenzie looked around the interior. The leather, the carbon fiber, the rumble of the V12 engine. "Not bad," she thought, impressed. "Zero to sixty in three point four seconds. Might actually make it in time."

Devin slid into the driver's seat. He heard her thought and a grim smile touched his lips. "Hold on, little monster."

He slammed his foot on the gas. The Aston Martin roared and shot out of the garage, the tires squealing against the wet concrete. They hit the street, and Devin wrenched the wheel, weaving through traffic with a terrifying precision.

Kenzie's tactical mind kicked into high gear. She stared out the windshield, calculating distances and traffic patterns. "Turn right! Take Sixth Avenue!" she yelled in her mind. "Broadway is a parking lot right now! The theaters just let out!"

Devin saw the wall of red taillights ahead. He didn't hesitate. He cranked the wheel, the car drifting sideways through a narrow gap in traffic. They shot down Sixth Avenue, the engine screaming.

"Left on 50th! Cut through the park! It's faster!"

Devin obeyed, the car jumping the curb slightly as they carved a path through the city. They were a bullet tearing through the heart of Manhattan, driven by a man who owned the city and navigated by a baby who used to protect it.

The Aston Martin skidded to a halt right in front of the luxury apartment building on Fifth Avenue, blocking the entrance completely. The doorman jumped back, his mouth agape.

Devin was out of the car in a flash. He ripped the car seat from the back, unstrapped Kenzie with one hand, and tucked her inside his coat. He ran for the private elevator, Arthur and two men in black suits right behind him.

He used a master key card to override the system. The elevator shot up. The numbers climbed rapidly. 30... 40... 50.

Kenzie closed her eyes. She reached out with her mind, pushing through the static. She found Desiree's consciousness. It was buzzing with excitement, a sickening, greedy anticipation.

"Drink it... drink it... just one sip and you're mine..."

Kenzie's eyes flew open. "We're too late! She's making him drink! Kick the door!"

The elevator dinged. The hallway was silent, lined with expensive wallpaper and thick carpet. Devin didn't slow down. He walked up to the heavy oak door of the penthouse. He didn't knock. He didn't try the handle.

He took a step back, raised his leg, and kicked.

The door exploded inward. The heavy deadbolt sheared off, the wood splintering. The door slammed against the wall with a bang that shook the apartment.

In the dimly lit living room, Sterling was sitting on the sofa, a glass of whiskey raised to his lips. Desiree was draped over him, wearing a silk robe, her eyes glued to the glass.

The crash made Sterling jump. His hand jerked. The amber liquid sloshed over the rim, spilling onto his shirt.

Devin stood in the doorway, his chest heaving, his eyes wild. He looked like a demon summoned from hell.

"Devin?" Sterling gasped, lowering the glass. "What the hell are you doing?"

Desiree scrambled back, her face draining of color. The fear in her eyes was real this time.

Devin didn't speak. He crossed the room in two strides and snatched the glass from Sterling's hand. He hurled it against the marble coffee table. The crystal shattered, sending shards and liquid flying.

"Are you crazy?!" Sterling shouted, jumping to his feet. "You can't just break into my-"

"If I hadn't, by tomorrow morning, every shareholder in the company would be watching you drool and grunt on camera," Devin snarled, pointing at the wet stain on the floor. "That was laced with GHB."

Sterling froze. The anger drained from his face, replaced by a chilling realization. He looked at Desiree, who was shrinking into the corner of the sofa.

"That's not true!" she cried, her voice trembling. "It was just whiskey! I was trying to help him relax!"

Kenzie poked her head out of Devin's coat. She scanned the room, her eyes landing on the bedroom door and a decorative vase on the bookshelf. "Smoke detector in the master bedroom," she thought clearly. "And the vase on the right side of the TV. Those are the camera angles."

Devin heard her. He didn't even turn his head. "Arthur. Smoke detector in the bedroom. Vase by the TV. Smash them."

Arthur moved. Two loud crashes later, he dropped two tiny, blinking devices onto the coffee table. The red recording lights were still on.

Sterling stared at the cameras. His stomach heaved. He thought about the glass in his hand, the drink he was about to take. He looked at Desiree, really looked at her, and saw the monster hiding behind the pretty face.

"You..." Sterling's voice was a low, dangerous growl. "You set me up. You drugged me. You filmed me."

"Sterling, please, I-" she whined, reaching out for him.

Sterling lunged. He grabbed her by the shoulders, his grip like a vice, and shoved her backward. She hit the sofa hard, the breath knocking out of her lungs. He didn't choke her; he didn't need to. He leaned over her, his face inches from hers, his voice a low, terrifying snarl. "You poisonous bitch! You were going to ruin me? I will erase you. You will wish you were never born."

Desiree choked, her face turning red, her hands clawing at his wrists. The fake tears were gone, replaced by a desperate, animalistic panic.

Devin watched for a moment, letting his brother vent the rage. But when Desiree's eyes started to roll back, he stepped in.

"Enough," Devin said, his voice cold. He grabbed Sterling's shoulder and pulled him back. "Don't touch her. You'll leave marks. Arthur, bag her and the cameras. Call the lawyers. I want her charged with attempted sexual assault, blackmail, and possession of illegal substances."

Arthur hauled Desiree to her feet. She was gasping, her silk robe disheveled, her mascara running. She looked pathetic and broken.

As the security team dragged her out of the apartment, Kenzie watched from the safety of Devin's arms. The tension in the room began to dissipate, leaving behind the heavy scent of broken wood and spilled whiskey.

"Round one," Kenzie thought, a weary but satisfied sigh echoing in her mind. "We won. But this is just the beginning."

Devin looked down at the baby in his arms. Her eyes were drooping, the exhaustion of the fever and the telepathic strain finally catching up to her. He gently adjusted his coat, wrapping her tighter.

He didn't say a word.

Devin stepped fully into the living room, his leather shoes crushing the scattered shards of crystal from the shattered whiskey glass. The crunch of crystal under his heel was sharp and grating, the sound cutting through the wet stickiness of spilled liquor on the floor. It was a harsh reminder of the violence that had just occurred. He held Kenzie tight against his chest, his arm a steel band around her small body.

The apartment smelled of spilled liquor and GHB. It was a sickly sweet chemical odor that coated the back of the throat. Arthur and two other men in black suits were tearing the place apart. They yanked open drawers, dumping the contents onto the floor. Designer handbags and silk scarves piled up on the Persian rug like garbage.

Sterling sat on the white leather sofa in the study area, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clutching his head. His body shook. It wasn't just a tremor; it was a full-body vibration of delayed shock and revulsion. The polished Wall Street elite was gone, replaced by a man who had just looked into the abyss.

"Boss," Arthur called out, pulling a lockbox from under the bed. He used a tactical knife to pry it open. Inside were stacks of cash and several unmarked pill bottles. "We've got a stash here. And the bedroom closet is clean."

Devin didn't respond. He watched Arthur's men toss a Chanel jacket onto the growing pile of debris. They were searching like bulls, relying on force, not finesse.

Kenzie turned her head in Devin's arms. Her dark eyes, still slightly glazed from the fever and the telepathic strain, scanned the room. She wasn't looking at the mess. She was looking at the architecture. The sightlines. The shadows. Her tactical mind, honed over a decade of leading the Aegis Alliance, kicked into gear.

"A bunch of idiots," she thought, her mental voice dripping with disdain. "They only know how to rummage through drawers. A blackmailer of this caliber? She wouldn't leave the backup in a shoebox. She'd have offline redundant feeds. Hidden probes."

Devin's stride faltered for a fraction of a second. He heard the thought, clear and sharp over the noise of the ransacking. His icy gaze swept the room, looking past the obvious chaos.

Sterling lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot, the skin around them pale and slack. "Devin," he said, his voice hoarse. "It's clean. They cleared it out. She wouldn't dare keep anything else here."

Kenzie rolled her eyes internally. "Fool's logic," she scoffed in her mind. "That woman's heart is colder than a snake's. Third row of the bookshelf. The green spine of The Great Gatsby. There's a micro-camera embedded in the binding. Independent power supply. It's pointing right at where you're sitting."

Devin's pupils contracted. He didn't hesitate. He shifted Kenzie to his left arm, securing her against his hip, and walked directly toward the mahogany bookshelf against the far wall.

Sterling watched his brother's sudden movement, confusion twisting his features. "Devin? What are you doing?"

Devin ignored him. He stopped in front of the third row. His long, elegant fingers reached out and bypassed the financial textbooks and art folios. They closed around the worn green cover of The Great Gatsby. He pulled it out smoothly.

The book felt slightly off. Too light in the center. Devin turned it over. On the spine, nestled perfectly into the fabric pattern, was a tiny black dot. It was no bigger than a pinhead, almost invisible unless you knew exactly what to look for.

He used his thumbnail to pry back the thin layer of cloth covering the dot. A miniature lens glinted under the apartment's lights. A faint red light blinked steadily. It was live. It was transmitting.

Sterling gasped. The sound was sharp, like he'd been punched in the gut. He scrambled off the sofa, his legs unsteady, and stumbled over to look at the book in Devin's hand.

"A camera," Sterling choked out. His face drained of all color, leaving him looking like a ghost. "She was... she was watching?"

"Recording," Devin corrected, his voice flat and lethal. He tossed the book to Arthur. "Trace the IP address. Find the receiving end. Hack the cloud server. I want every byte of data pulverized. Now."

Arthur caught the book, his face grim. He barked orders into his wrist comm, pulling a ruggedized laptop from his tactical bag and dropping to his knees on the carpet.

Sterling stared at the blinking red light. The reality of how close he had come to total destruction hit him like a physical blow. His stomach heaved. He clamped a hand over his mouth, his body convulsing as he fought down the bile. He stumbled backward and collapsed back onto the sofa, his head hanging between his knees.

Kenzie watched him, a flicker of pity crossing her mind. "He's broken," she thought. "But better broken than dead." She shifted her gaze to the mantelpiece above the fireplace. "And there's one more."

"That antique clock," she projected to Devin, keeping her mental tone calm and instructional. "The brass one. There's something inside the pendulum housing."

Devin turned on his heel. He crossed the room in three long strides. He reached up and stuck his hand into the narrow space behind the swinging brass pendulum. His fingers brushed against the smooth metal, then shifted. He felt a cold, angular object taped to the inner wall.

He gripped it and ripped it free. A second device. This one was a storage drive, slightly larger than the camera, designed to record locally if the Wi-Fi went down. A failsafe.

Devin held it up between his fingers, staring at it with cold disgust. He threw it onto the coffee table. It skidded across the glass and stopped next to Arthur's laptop.

Sterling looked at the second device. The last thread of his denial snapped. He covered his face with his hands, a raw, broken sound escaping his throat. It wasn't a sob; it was the sound of a man realizing that not a single second of his relationship had been real.

"She never..." Sterling moaned, his voice muffled by his palms. "Not even for a second."

Devin walked over to his brother. He looked down at Sterling's hunched, shaking form. There was no comfort in Devin's posture, only a harsh, unyielding reality.

"Realizing it now is better than dying by her hand," Devin said. His voice was severe, but underneath the ice, there was a thread of pain. It was the pain of an older brother watching his sibling learn a cruel lesson.

He turned away from Sterling and looked at Arthur. "Take him back to his safe house. He doesn't step outside without my authorization."

Arthur nodded. He signaled two of the men. They hauled Sterling up from the sofa. He didn't resist. He moved like a zombie, his eyes vacant, his feet dragging across the carpet. They led him out of the apartment, leaving the door hanging off its hinges.

The room fell silent. The only sound was the rapid clicking of Arthur's tech guy on the keyboard and the faint hum of the apartment's ventilation system.

Devin stood in the center of the chaos. The ransacked furniture, the scattered clothes, the blinking lights of the tech equipment-it all faded away as he looked down at the baby in his arms.

Kenzie stared back at him. Her dark eyes were clear, assessing. She had dropped the innocent act. In this moment, she was his partner, his scout.

"How did you know?" Devin asked. His voice was low, barely above a whisper. "How did you know they were there?"

Kenzie blinked. She couldn't exactly say, "Because in my past life, I trained my operatives to hide bugs in the exact same spots." She needed a cover. She needed something that sounded plausible for a three-month-old.

"I'm a genius," she thought, projecting the thought with a haughty, arrogant flair. "Bad guys have a smell. I can sniff them out. Do I need a reason?"

Devin heard the thought. The sheer, unapologetic arrogance of it. A baby, claiming she could smell espionage. It was absurd. It was ridiculous.

A tiny, almost imperceptible curve touched the corner of Devin's mouth. It wasn't a smile, not really. It was a crack in the ice. He raised his free hand and brought his index finger down on Kenzie's forehead. He flicked her gently.

"Little monster," he murmured. "Stop looking at dirty things."

Kenzie's head jerked back slightly from the impact. It didn't hurt, but it was annoying. She scowled, her tiny face scrunching up in displeasure.

"Hey!" she yelled in her mind. "Stop flicking! You're going to break my skull! Child abuse!"

Devin heard the complaint. The crack in his ice widened just a fraction. He let out a soft breath that might have been a laugh in another life.

"Cloud data is wiped, sir," the tech guy announced, looking up from the screen. "No backups. The feed is dead."

Devin nodded. He didn't say anything else. He just adjusted his grip on Kenzie, tucking her more securely inside his coat, and turned toward the shattered doorway. He stepped over the broken door and walked out into the hallway.

As they moved toward the elevator, Devin pulled out his phone. He dialed a number from memory. It rang once.

"This is Devin Ayers," he said, his voice echoing in the empty hall. "Notify the legal team. Initiate full prosecution against Desiree Dillon. I want her locked away for the rest of her life."

He hung up and slipped the phone back into his pocket. He looked down at Kenzie, who was yawning, her eyes drooping.

"Round one is over," he thought, though whether the thought was his own or a whisper from the baby, he couldn't tell anymore.