A pillow smothers the dying woman’s breath until footsteps approach. In a flash, the maid slips the oxygen tube back. The young wife’s tears fool him completely, until a silent whisper exposes the real monster.

Before Naomi could even reach for the bedside emergency dial to summon the private physician, the heavy mahogany doors burst open. Mr. Julian Vail, the sole heir to the empire, stepped into the room. His normally impeccable, razor-sharp suit was rumpled from a grueling day at the firm, and his face instantly drained of color at the sight of his mother struggling. Clinging to his arm like a frightened child was his new fiancée, Serena. She looked entirely out of place in a glittering, beaded evening gown, her perfect makeup completely undisturbed. Without missing a single beat, Serena threw herself against Julian’s chest, unleashing a torrent of high-pitched, hysterical sobs that echoed off the mahogany walls. "Julian, your mother started choking!" Serena wailed, her voice trembling with perfectly calibrated fragility as her manicured hands gripped his lapels in a white-knuckle hold. "I tried to adjust her mask, and she attacked me! It was terrifying!" Naomi’s hands froze mid-air. She slowly looked up from the gasping matriarch, her piercing gaze locking directly onto Serena's tear-streaked face. Beneath the weeping and the trembling shoulders, there was no genuine fear in the younger woman's eyes—only a cold, calculating, reptilian gleam. Slowly, Naomi stood tall, her voice cutting through the theatrical sobbing like a serrated blade. "Don't trust the crying, Mr. Vail."