The study at Vale House smelled of old leather, cigar smoke that had long settled into the heavy mahogany paneling, and the faint, bitter scent of dried lilies.

Adrian stood up slowly, stepping directly between Margot’s security guards and Celeste.

"Get out of this room, Margot," Adrian said, his voice dropping into a register so low and dangerous that even his sister paused.

Margot scoffed, holding her iPad higher. "Don't be dramatic, Adrian. You’ve always been soft. Father knew it. That's why he left me the secondary power of attorney over Mother's medical trust."

"You poisoned her," Adrian said, taking a step forward. "You've been drugging our mother for three months."

"I preserved this family’s solvency!" Margot hissed, her calm facade finally cracking to reveal the ugly, desperate panic beneath. "Julian lost twelve million dollars in Nassau last week! The Swiss bank was going to call the loans on Vale Global by Monday morning! If I didn't sell the Kestrel patents to Helvetic, we would have been in federal bankruptcy court before the end of the month!"

"By stealing research my father murdered a woman for?" Adrian shouted, his voice booming through the stone chamber.

"Malcolm didn't murder anyone!" Margot snapped. "Evelyn Vance was careless in her own lab! She died in an explosion she caused herself!"

"That's a lie," Celeste said, stepping out from behind Adrian, her face pale, her dark eyes flashing with absolute steel. "My mother discovered that the first batch of synthetic factor VIII was contaminated with viral toxins. Malcolm wanted to push the clinical trials anyway to meet the Q3 IPO deadline. When my mother threatened to go to the FDA, the lab burned down forty-eight hours later."

Margot turned to her lead guard. "Take the journals. Erase the drive. Lock the outer iron door."

The two guards stepped forward, reaching for their holstered stun weapons.

Adrian didn't wait.

He grabbed the heavy iron bar resting beside the old Diebold safe—a five-foot steel breaker bar used to lock the vault mechanisms—and swung it with all his strength, smashing the heavy iron bar directly into the lead guard's chest.