Harper Reed slammed her Birkin bag onto the café table. She looked like a storm cloud in a Yves Saint Laurent blazer.

"Where is he?" Harper demanded. "I will run him over. I have insurance."

Elinor sat in the corner booth, clutching a cup of hot water. She pushed a folded piece of paper across the table.

Harper snatched it up. Her eyes scanned the medical discharge summary.

"D&C? Yesterday?" Harper's voice rose an octave. "He wasn't there?"

Elinor typed on her phone. He was with Chanelle.

Harper slammed her hand on the table. People turned to look. She didn't care. "That son of a bitch. I'm going to sue him until he's living in a cardboard box."

Elinor shook her head. She reached into her tote bag and pulled out another file. This one was yellowed with age.

She slid it to Harper.

Harper opened it. She went still.

"Two years ago?" Harper whispered. She looked up, horror in her eyes. "You had a miscarriage two years ago?"

Elinor nodded. A single tear tracked down her cheek.

Harper read further. "Blunt force trauma to the abdomen? Elinor... did he hit you?"

Elinor typed. He was drunk. He pushed me. I fell into the counter.

"And you stayed," Harper said, her voice breaking. "And you let that witch Beverly call you barren."

I thought I was protecting him, Elinor typed. I thought it was love. Now I know it was just stupidity.

Harper reached across the table and grabbed Elinor's hand. Her grip was fierce.

"Listen to me," Harper said. "This isn't a divorce anymore. This is war. We are going to destroy him."

Elinor took a napkin. She wrote two words.

Total War.

"First step," Harper said, standing up. "We get your stuff. You are not sleeping under that roof again."

Elinor's phone lit up on the table. Hubby calling.

Elinor stared at it. Her finger hovered over the decline button.

Harper swiped the phone. She hit decline. Then she blocked the number.

"You're the strategist," Harper said, her eyes intense. "I'm just the weapon. I am your voice now."

Thirty minutes later, Harper's Range Rover screeched to a halt in the driveway of the Logan Estate.

Beverly was on the front lawn. Servants were carrying armfuls of Elinor's clothes and throwing them onto the grass.

"If you're leaving, leave!" Beverly shrieked. "Take your trash with you!"

Elinor looked at her clothes-dresses Julius had picked out, shoes he liked-scattered like garbage. She didn't move to pick them up.

She walked past the lawn, straight toward the detached garage.

"Where are you going?" Beverly yelled.

The garage door was locked. From inside, Elinor could hear a whirring sound. A mechanical grinding.

A shredder.

Panic flared in Elinor's chest. Her design archives. Her hard drives. The only part of her that had ever been truly free.

She pointed at the window.

Harper didn't hesitate. She grabbed a 9-iron from a golf bag lying on the grass.

Smash.

The glass shattered. Harper reached in and unlocked the door.

They burst inside.

Chanelle was there. She wasn't weak. She wasn't recovering. She was sitting in a plush armchair that had been brought into the dusty space, a cashmere blanket over her legs. Next to her, a tech-savvy young man was feeding blueprints into a commercial shredder's teeth while another worked on a laptop, wiping data.

She froze when she saw them.

Elinor lunged. She didn't scream. She just shoved the tech aside.

She grabbed the stack of external hard drives from the desk. She grabbed the remaining rolls of blueprints.

Chanelle smirked, smoothing her hair. "Garbage anyway. Just like you."

Elinor looked at the hard drive in her hand. The blue light was blinking. It was alive.

She looked at Chanelle with eyes that were absolute zero.

You have no idea what you just stole, Elinor thought. But you're about to find out.

The living room of the estate had a fireplace large enough to roast a pig. A fire was roaring, casting dancing shadows on the stone hearth.

Elinor walked in, carrying the hard drives. Harper followed, holding the golf club like a weapon.

Beverly stormed in behind them. "Get out! I'm calling the police!"

"Do it," Harper challenged. "I'd love to file a report about illegal eviction and destruction of property."

Elinor set the drives down on a safe side table. She turned to the pile of clothes Beverly had had the servants dump in the foyer.

She picked up a Chanel tweed jacket. Julius had bought it for her after he forgot her birthday three years ago. It was beautiful. It was a lie.

She walked to the fireplace.

"What are you doing?" Beverly asked, her voice shrill.

Elinor tossed the jacket into the fire.

The flames licked the fabric. The wool blackened and curled. Smoke billowed out.

"That cost five thousand dollars!" Beverly screamed.

Elinor picked up a Hermès Birkin. Into the fire.

A limited edition silk scarf. Into the fire.

She was burning the costume. She was burning the character of "Mrs. Logan."

Harper leaned against the wall, watching with a dark smile. She kicked a Louboutin toward Elinor. "Don't forget the shoes."

Elinor looked at her left hand. The diamond was massive. Five carats. Flawless. Cold.

She slid it off her finger.

Beverly gasped. She lunged forward. "Don't you dare! That is a Logan heirloom!"

Elinor pulled her arm back and threw.

The ring sparked in the air, a tiny meteor. It landed in the heart of the fire, disappearing into the red-hot coals.

Beverly let out a wail as if she had been physically struck.

Elinor pulled out her phone. She typed.

Tell Julius the debt is not paid.

Tires crunched on gravel outside. A car door slammed.

Julius ran into the house. He stopped dead in the foyer. The smell of burning leather and expensive fabric filled the air.

He saw the fire. He saw Elinor's bare hand.

"Elinor!" he shouted. "Are you insane? You're burning the house down!"

Elinor didn't look at him. She grabbed the hard drives and walked toward the door.

Julius grabbed her arm. His grip was bruising. "You don't get to walk away after this. You're having a breakdown over a miscarriage? Grow up."

Harper stepped in. She shoved Julius hard in the chest.

"Let go of her," Harper snarled. "You abuser."

Julius froze. He blinked, confused. "What?"

"Two years ago," Harper said, her voice deadly quiet. "You were drunk. She said no. You pushed her. That's why she lost the first baby. And this time? Your precious Chanelle pushed her."

Julius went pale. His mouth opened and closed. He looked at Elinor, searching for a denial.

Elinor looked at him. Her eyes were empty windows in a condemned house.

She pulled her arm from his grip.

She walked out the door, Harper flanking her.

They got into the Range Rover. As they drove away, Elinor watched the estate shrink in the rearview mirror.

Julius stood in the doorway, staring at the fire consuming his wealth, looking small.

Elinor's new temporary sanctuary was Harper's guest room, but it felt like a command center. The city lights of Manhattan glittered outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, indifferent and beautiful.

Harper plugged the rescued hard drive into her laptop. "Okay, let's see what the little thief was trying to destroy."

Elinor sat at the keyboard. Her fingers moved with the fluidity of a concert pianist. She bypassed the encryption on her own files in seconds.

A folder named Aurora appeared.

She opened it. Dozens of intricate architectural renderings filled the screen. A sustainable urban park design. Her secret thesis from the architecture degree she'd completed online, a hidden rebellion against the Logan family's insistence that she become a docile corporate wife after her time as a forensic accountant. Her soul.

Harper pulled up a browser window on her tablet. She searched "Chanelle Cross Award Winning Design."

She held the tablet next to the laptop screen.

They were identical.

"That bitch," Harper breathed. "She didn't just steal your husband. She stole your brain."

Elinor didn't rage. She smiled. It was a cold, sharp thing.

She minimized the drawings and opened an Excel spreadsheet. This file was hidden deep in a system folder labeled System32_Config.

It was the Logan Family Trust ledger.

She had audited it once, as a favor to Julius, before she had fully understood the cage she was in. She understood money trails better than Julius understood people.

She filtered the data.

Victoria Cross Holdings. Chanelle's mother's company.

"Look," Elinor pointed.

For three years, the company had been bleeding money. Yet, every month, a substantial injection of cash appeared from a shell company in the Caymans.

Elinor traced the shell company. It linked back to a subsidiary of Logan Group.

She typed into the text-to-speech app.

"Chanelle isn't in love. She is in debt. She is using Julius to launder money to save her mother's business."

Harper's jaw dropped. "This is federal prison level stuff. This is RICO."

"Step one: IP theft," Elinor typed. "Step two: Follow the money."

Harper rubbed her hands together. "I know a shark. An IP litigator who eats people like Chanelle for breakfast."

Ding.

Elinor's phone lit up. A notification from the bank.

Alert: Card Ending in 4490 Declined. Account Frozen by Primary Holder.

"He cut you off," Harper said, reading the screen. "That petty little man."

Elinor reached into her bag. She pulled out a small, silver USB stick. A cold storage wallet.

She plugged it into the laptop.

She opened the crypto interface.

Harper leaned in. "What is that?"

Elinor logged in. The balance refreshed.

20.04 BTC.

Harper choked. "Elinor... is that...?"

Elinor typed. "I was silent. Not blind. My last bonus from my forensic accounting career. A contingency fund."

She transferred a sum to Harper's bank account.

"Retainer," she typed. "And rent."

Harper stared at her friend. "You're not a victim, El. You're a sleeper agent."

Elinor closed the laptop.

In another part of the city, Julius was pushing Chanelle away as she tried to kiss him. He was angry. He was confused.

Elinor walked to the whiteboard on Harper's wall. She wrote Chanelle in red marker.

She drew a big, red X over the name.

She picked up her phone and sent a message to a real estate agent.

I'll take the loft in SoHo. Cash offer.