UNTIL MY DYING CALL UNCOVERED A DEADLY CONSPIRACY THAT WOULD COST THEM EVERYTHING.

We pulled into the underground garage of a nondescript brick industrial building in West Loop.

Marcus wheeled me inside a private freight elevator that opened directly into a fully equipped safehouse. Monitors lined one entire wall, displaying surveillance feeds, financial records, and city traffic cameras. In the center of the room, standing over a large steel conference table, was my father.

He had aged five years in the last three months. His silver hair was disheveled, his shoulders slumped beneath his faded canvas jacket. But the moment his eyes landed on me, the iron returned to his posture.

"Claire," he breathed, stepping forward and wrapping his arms around me.

I buried my face in his shoulder, gripping his jacket with fists that finally had their strength returning. "You were right, Dad. You were right about him from the beginning."

Four years ago, on the day Ethan proposed to me at a rooftop restaurant overlooking Lake Michigan, my father had refused to toast. *The boy is hollow, Claire,* he had warned me over coffee the next morning. *He smiles with his teeth, not his eyes. He looks at you the way a real estate broker looks at prime acreage.* I had screamed at him, accused him of being paranoid, and didn't speak to him for three months.

"Forget the past," Dad said softly, kissing my temple. "You’re alive. That’s all that matters right now."

"What’s the play, Arthur?" Marcus asked, pulling up three separate laptop screens.

My father walked back to the conference table and pointed at an official-looking document with a state seal.

"At 6:00 AM tomorrow, a Jane Doe deceased will be registered at County Morgue," Dad said. "A homeless woman of similar height and weight who passed away from natural liver failure two nights ago at an outreach clinic. Dr. Sterling has already altered the digital intake records to switch the identification tags. As far as the Cook County health system and the public record are concerned, Claire Vance succumbed to her illness at 10:14 tonight."

I felt a chill wash down my spine. "I'm officially dead?"

"For seventy-two hours," Dad said. "That gives us until Friday morning. Ethan won't report Jennifer's altercation at the hospital because he can't risk the police sniffing around your medical charts. Once Dr. Sterling delivers the fake death certificate to Ethan at nine o'clock tomorrow, Ethan will think Jennifer panicked over nothing—he'll think you fled the room in confusion, collapsed in an empty wing, and died as scheduled."

"And once he has that certificate," Marcus added, "he’ll sprint to the probate court and the insurance companies to trigger the payouts."

"That's when he commits federal wire fraud and insurance fraud on top of attempted murder," I said, the puzzle pieces clicking together in my mind.

"Exactly," Dad replied. "A localized attempted murder charge can be tied up by dirty defense attorneys and Diane’s judicial friends for years. But multi-million-dollar interstate insurance fraud and wire fraud? The FBI steps in. The federal system has a ninety-eight percent conviction rate, no parole, and Diane’s country club judges can’t touch a federal prosecutor."

"It's not enough," I said suddenly.

Both men stopped and looked at me.

I looked down at my hands. The tremor was almost gone. The charcoal and the saline were working, but the rage burning in my chest was doing more to keep me upright than any medicine.

"Ethan isn't just trying to steal insurance money," I said, my voice hardening. "He wants to erase me. He wants to take my mother's home, her jewelry, my family's legacy, and hand it to a woman who helped him poison me. I don't just want him locked up in a federal penitentiary."

"What do you want, Claire?" Marcus asked quietly, a faint, dangerous smile playing at the edge of his mouth.

"I want them to destroy themselves," I said. "I want Ethan to suspect Jennifer. I want Jennifer to turn on Diane. I want them at each other's throats before the feds even kick down the door. And then, when they think they've gotten away with every single dime... I want to be the one who takes it all back."

My father looked at Marcus, then back at me. A slow, grim nod crossed his face.