Jett sat in the back of the black Lincoln Town Car parked outside the hospital.

He yanked the collar of his shirt open. He grabbed the crystal decanter from the armrest, poured a heavy measure of Scotch, and downed it in one burning swallow.

The ice cubes clinked sharply against the glass.

He pressed the intercom button on the privacy partition.

"Alex," Jett snapped.

His executive assistant, sitting in the front seat, immediately answered. "Yes, Mr. Holder."

"I want a full background check on a doctor at Presbyterian. Finn Sandoval. I want to know everything about him by tomorrow morning," Jett ordered.

There was a brief silence. The sound of rapid typing echoed through the speaker.

"Sir," Alex's voice came back, sounding tense. "I don't need until tomorrow. The name Sandoval is heavily flagged in our database."

Jett crushed the empty glass in his hand. "Explain."

"He's not just a surgeon," Alex said. "He's the third-generation heir to the Sandoval Medical Group in Boston. They control half the private hospitals on the East Coast."

Jett's jaw locked. His eyes turned pitch black.

"No wonder he had the nerve to touch her," Jett muttered to himself.

Before he could give another order, his private phone buzzed sharply. It was Miriam. He swiped to answer. "I saw the hospital logs," his mother's icy voice clipped through the speaker. "A public brawl with the Mckees? Fix this mess, Jett, or I will step in." She hung up before he could respond, leaving the line dead.

He pressed the button again. "Put a tail on Sandoval. If he goes anywhere near Calista again, I want to know instantly."

Back up in the hospital, the door to Calista's private room was suddenly shoved open.

Zara Vance, Calista's college roommate, stormed into the room. She was wearing heavy combat boots and a leather jacket. Gripped tightly in her right hand was a solid aluminum baseball bat.

Zara took one look at Calista-the blood-soaked dress, the thick bandage on her head, the dead look in her eyes-and dropped the bat. It clattered loudly against the floor.

Zara ran to the bed and threw her arms around Calista, pulling her into a fierce, tight hug.

"That blind, arrogant piece of shit!" Zara screamed, tears streaming down her face. "And Bo Mckee! I'm going to cave his skull in!"

Calista buried her face in Zara's shoulder. The dam broke. She sobbed until her ribs ached and she couldn't pull air into her lungs.

Zara rubbed her back, her own jaw set with furious determination.

"You are done," Zara said firmly. "You are not going back to that house."

Zara reached into her leather jacket and pulled out a sleek, black business card. She pressed it firmly into Calista's palm.

"This is the best divorce attorney in Manhattan," Zara said.

Calista looked down at the card. Her fingers started to tremble.

The image of Miriam Holder's cold face flashed in her mind.

"I can't," Calista whispered, panic rising in her throat. "The prenup. If I file, I leave with absolutely nothing. They will blackball me. I won't even be able to rent an apartment."

Zara slammed her hand against the metal bedrail.

"I don't care if we have to waitress in a diner in Brooklyn!" Zara yelled. "It's better than staying here and letting them kill you!"

Zara took a deep breath, calming her voice.

"When I got the call from that doctor-Finn-I thought my heart was going to stop," Zara said. "He told me to give you a message."

Calista looked up, her eyes wide.

"He said if you need legal protection, or a place to hide, he has the resources to make you disappear," Zara said.

Calista stared at the wall. A stranger. A man she had met two hours ago was offering her a lifeline, while her husband had thrown her to the wolves.

Deep in the frozen wasteland of her chest, a tiny, desperate seed of rebellion took root.

A silver Maybach rolled smoothly through the massive iron gates of the Mckee family estate in Long Island.

The car stopped in front of the illuminated water fountain.

Kassandra stepped out of the back seat. The sweet, fragile victim act she had played at the hospital was completely gone. Her face was set in hard, cold lines.

She pushed open the front doors and tossed her expensive shawl at a terrified maid.

She walked up the grand staircase and entered her bedroom. It was a massive suite, decorated in pink silk and white gold-far more luxurious than the room Calista had grown up in.

Kassandra walked straight to her vanity mirror. She ripped the plastic ice pack off her cheek and threw it violently into the trash can.

She stared at her own reflection. The right side of her face was swollen and purple.

She thought about the hospital hallway. She remembered the look in Jett's eyes when he saw that doctor holding Calista.

It wasn't just anger. It was territorial panic.

Kassandra let out a scream of pure frustration. She swept her arm across the vanity.

Dozens of glass perfume bottles and expensive creams smashed against the hardwood floor. Shards of glass exploded everywhere.

"He still wants her," Kassandra hissed at the mirror.

She realized that framing Calista for violence wasn't enough. Jett was angry, but he hadn't immediately demanded a divorce. As long as Calista held the title of Mrs. Holder, Kassandra would always be the mistress in the shadows.

She needed to destroy Calista's reputation completely. She needed to attack Jett's ego as a man.

Kassandra walked over to her nightstand, her heels crunching on the broken glass. She picked up her diamond-encrusted phone and dialed Bo Mckee's number.

The second he answered, Kassandra's voice morphed into a trembling, pathetic whimper.

"Daddy?" she cried softly. "I can't sleep. I close my eyes and I see her coming at me again."

"Oh, my sweet girl," Bo said, his voice thick with guilt and anger. "I promise you, I will ruin that ungrateful bitch."

"But Daddy," Kassandra whispered, manipulating the conversation perfectly. "As long as she's in the social circle, people will laugh at us. If Jett found out she was... doing dirty things behind his back, the Holders would throw her out tomorrow."

Bo went dead silent on the other end of the line. Then, a low, cruel chuckle rumbled through the speaker.

"You're a smart girl, Kassie," Bo said.

Kassandra hung up the phone. The fake tears vanished instantly. A twisted, psychotic smile stretched across her lips.

She walked over to the large bay window and looked out at the dark, sprawling woods behind the estate.

The darkness pulled her memory back fifteen years.

She remembered the heavy rain. She remembered standing in the alley behind her miserable orphanage. She remembered handing a thick envelope of stolen cash to a man with a scarred face.

She remembered the news report the next day. The couple who had just adopted Calista Beck-her own biological parents-burning to death in a tragic car accident. That was how she erased her past and ensured she was the only Mckee heir.

Kassandra looked at her faint reflection in the glass. Her eyes were completely devoid of humanity.

She walked to her closet, dug under a pile of designer sweaters, and pulled out a cheap, plastic burner phone.

She punched in a number she had memorized from the dark web.

The line clicked. A gruff voice answered.

"I need a job done," Kassandra said, her voice dropping to a dead, mechanical flatline. "I need you to manufacture evidence of Calista Beck sleeping with multiple men. Make the photos as filthy and undeniable as possible."