“HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, YOU LIARS!”—I Caught My Millionaire Husband Kissing His Mistress on Our FIFTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, Then Slapped Her and Walked Out While He Begged Me to Stay! But Hours Later, a Doctor Turned a Monitor Toward Me—and What I Discovered Could Change His Life Forever..

On the bluffs above the lake, Dante’s fingertips grazed the sleeve of Julianna’s white cashmere coat just as her boots pushed off the rusted iron railing.

With a roar that shook the very gale, Dante threw his entire body forward, heedless of the drop, slamming his chest against the railing. His left hand locked around Julianna’s wrist with the crushing strength of a hydraulic vise.

Julianna swung out over the void, suspended eighty feet above the jagged, foam-crested rocks and the black, freezing fury of Lake Michigan.

The wind shrieked around them. Julianna looked up, her hair whipping across her face, staring into Dante’s bloodshot, wild eyes. In her other arm, she still clutched the screaming infant, Alexander.

"Let go, Dante!" she screamed, her fingers slipping against his grip. "We die together!"

"Give me the child!" Dante roared, his muscles tearing as he strained to hold her weight against the icy metal. "Give me the baby, Julianna!"

"He’s not your blood! He’s Vance’s son! He means nothing to you!"

"He’s a child!" Dante bellowed. "Give him to me!"

With her remaining strength, Julianna swung the baby carrier upward. Dante lunged with his right hand, his fingers hooking into the nylon straps, wrenching the crying child up over the railing and onto the safety of the iron walkway.

Julianna looked up at him, a sudden, horrifying clarity washing over her pale face. The detonator in her pocket was beeping—a high-frequency, rapid chirp that signaled the final sixty seconds.

"You can't save them, Dante," she whispered, her lips curling into one final, tragic, broken smile. "She’s already gone."

"Julianna, hold on!" Dante shouted, trying to haul her up with both hands.

"I won't rot in a cell," she said softly.

And with a deliberate twist of her wrist, Julianna Vance unclasped the heavy gold bracelet that gave him purchase, kicked off against the stone abutment, and plummeted into the black, churning abyss below.

Her body hit the dark water with a distant, sickening crash, swallowed instantly by the roaring winter surf.

Dante didn't look down.

He scooped up the infant Alexander, tucked him inside his heavy overcoat, and bolted down the stone stairs like a demon unleashed from hell.

The two miles to the clinic were covered in a desperate, reckless sprint through the blizzard. His lungs burned with fire, his boots tore through the snowdrifts, his vision tunneling until there was nothing left in the universe except the image of Lena’s face.

As he broke through the pine tree line into the clinic’s clearing, the sight that met him was an absolute nightmare.

The three fake police cruisers were burning hulks of twisted metal. Keller was slumped against a snowbank, clutching a shattered shoulder, firing his sidearm into the retreating shadows of the surviving mercenaries.

And from the basement vents of the clinic, thick black smoke was billowing violently.

*"Facility containment compromised. Detonation in ten... nine... eight..."* the robotic voice echoed across the snow.

"LENA!" Dante screamed, his voice tearing raw.

He ran toward the shattered front entrance, but before he could cross the threshold, the rear wall of Operating Room 3 collapsed outward in a shower of glass and plaster.

Through the gaping hole in the burning wall, crawling through the snow on her hands and knees, was Lena.

Her hospital gown was soaked in dark crimson blood. Her fingernails were torn to the quick, digging into the frozen dirt. But wrapped securely against her chest, shielded from the fire and the falling debris by her own broken body, were two small, writhing bundles.

"Lena!" Dante sobbed, dropping to his knees beside her, shielding her with his massive frame just as the final countdown hit zero.

*BOOM!*

The earth heaved violently. A massive, concussive fireball erupted from the center of the clinic, blowing out the remaining roof and sending a shockwave of heat, shattered concrete, and burning timber across the clearing. Dante took the brunt of the blast on his back, his heavy coat catching sparks, shielding the four children and his wife with his flesh.

When the dust finally settled, the blizzard began to smother the flames in a blanket of silent white.

Dante looked down.

Lena was breathing, her eyes fluttering open, looking up into his face with dazed, miraculous recognition.

"Dante..." she whispered, her bloody fingers reaching up to touch his soot-stained cheek. "Our babies... Leo... Maya... they’re alive."

"You did it, my brave girl," Dante wept, burying his face in her neck, holding her tight as the three infants cried together in the snow. "You saved them."

Keller dragged himself over through the red-stained snow, collapsing beside them, his face pale from blood loss. He looked at the baby wrapped in Dante's coat, then at Dante.

"Is Julianna...?" Keller gasped.

"Gone," Dante said coldly. "To the bottom of the lake."

For a single, fragile second, as the distant sirens of real federal reinforcements finally echoed over the highway, it felt like the war was over.

Then, Dante’s encrypted phone, resting in the snow beside Keller’s boot, lit up.

The screen did not display an unknown number.

It displayed a live video transmission from inside the highest-security federal isolation wing at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago.

Cell Block D.

Sitting at a steel table, wearing an orange jumpsuit, her silver hair perfectly coiffed, smiling serenely into the security lens, was Eleanor Moretti.

Beside her, holding an official Presidential Pardon bearing the seal of the United States and the signature of the outgoing Commander-in-Chief, stood a man Dante recognized with sickening, bone-chilling clarity:

Victor Moretti.

Dante’s father.

The man Dante had buried in an empty grave twenty years ago.

The phone speaker crackled to life with Victor Moretti’s deep, aristocratic, terrifying voice: