Eight months pregnant, I lay on the floor of my own baby shower after my husband shoved me for confronting his mistress, smiling because the federal raid I’d spent a year planning was exactly sixty seconds away.

She was right.

It wasn’t over.

Two days after the hearing, Julian was taken back into custody. The FBI had formally charged him with conspiracy to commit murder. Without his father’s money to bail him out—Arthur’s assets had all been frozen—he was stuck in jail, awaiting trial.

I should have felt relieved.

I should have been able to breathe again.

But Beatrice’s words haunted me. Not over.

And sure enough, the next blow came from the most unexpected place.

Chloe.

She called me. Directly. On my personal cell phone. A number only a handful of people had.

I almost didn’t answer. But something made me pick up.

“Clara,” she said. Her voice was different. No longer the high, breathy, annoying tone she’d used at the baby shower. She sounded… broken. Scared.

“Chloe,” I said. My hand tightened around the phone. “How did you get this number?”

“Beatrice gave it to me,” she said. She laughed bitterly. “Turns out the Vance family still has a few uses for me. Or at least, they think they do.”

I said nothing. Waited.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “In person. Somewhere safe. Please, Clara. It’s important. It’s about the baby. And it’s about Beatrice.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“Why would I help you?” I asked. “You tried to destroy me. You gave those interviews. You called me a gold-digger. You stood there while Julian shoved me to the floor.”

“I know,” she said. Her voice cracked. “I know I did. And I’m sorry. More sorry than you’ll ever know. But I was young. And stupid. And they promised me the world. Money. A house. Security for my baby. I didn’t know what they were really like. Not until it was too late.”

She paused.

“Clara, please. I’m scared. Beatrice is… she’s not what you think. None of this was just Arthur and Julian. Beatrice was the brains behind everything. Always. And now that Arthur and Julian are in jail, she’s desperate. She’s got nothing left to lose. And she’s coming for you. And for Ethan.”

I thought about Beatrice’s face in the courtroom. The cold, dead eyes. The way she’d mouthed those two words.

“Where do you want to meet?” I said.

She gave me an address. A small coffee shop across town. Public. Busy. Somewhere I’d be safe.

I told Mia where I was going. I gave her the address. I told her if I didn’t call in an hour, to call Sarah and the police.

Then I went.

Chloe was already there. She was sitting in a booth at the back, wearing a hoodie, her hair pulled back, no makeup. She looked years younger than twenty-two. And she looked terrified.

She stood up when she saw me. Her hands were shaking.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

I sat down across from her. Kept my bag on the seat beside me, within easy reach. Pepper spray. Taser. Sarah had insisted I carry both after the hearing.

“Talk,” I said.

Chloe took a deep breath. She reached into her bag and pulled out a thick manila envelope. She slid it across the table to me.

“This is everything,” she said. “Every document. Every recording. Every piece of evidence I could gather over the last six months.”

I looked at the envelope but didn’t touch it.

“Evidence of what?”

“Of everything,” she said. “Beatrice didn’t just know about Arthur’s crimes. She planned them. Every bribe. Every illegal deal. Every cover-up. Arthur was the face, but Beatrice was the one pulling the strings. She’s the one who told Julian to bring me to the baby shower. She’s the one who wrote the speech he gave about me being the ‘true heir.’ She wanted to humiliate you so badly you’d break. So you’d sign whatever they put in front of you.”

She paused. Swallowed hard.

“And she’s the one who came up with the idea to kill you.”

The words hit me like a fist to the stomach.

I’d known Arthur and Julian had planned it. But Beatrice? The woman who’d once smiled and told me she’d always wanted a daughter? The woman who’d sat beside me at doctor’s appointments and rubbed my back during morning sickness?

She’d wanted me dead more than anyone.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

Chloe’s eyes filled with tears. She put a hand on her stomach—still rounded, still very pregnant.

“Because I’m next,” she whispered. “I know too much. And now that Julian is in jail and Arthur is going to prison for twenty years, Beatrice doesn’t need me anymore. She doesn’t need this baby either. She told me so herself. Three days ago. She said if I didn’t sign over all my parental rights and disappear, I’d end up ‘just like you—except you got lucky.’”

A tear fell down her cheek.

“I don’t want money. I don’t want to be a Vance. I just want to have my baby and raise him somewhere safe. Somewhere Beatrice can’t find us. But I can’t do that if she’s still free. She’ll hunt me down. She’ll hunt both of us down.”

She nodded at the envelope.

“Everything in there will put her away for life. Maybe longer. Bank records. Recorded conversations. Witness names. She kept everything. She thought she was untouchable.”

I stared at her. For the first time, I saw her not as the mistress who’d ruined my life, but as what she really was.

A kid. A scared, twenty-two-year-old kid who’d made the worst mistake of her life and was now paying for it.

Just like me.

“Why should I believe you?” I asked. “How do I know this isn’t another trap? Another Vance trick?”

Chloe reached into her pocket. She pulled out her phone. Tapped a few buttons. Held it out to me.

It was a video.

I watched it.

It was Beatrice. In her study. Talking to someone on the phone. Her voice was cold, sharp, completely different from the polite society woman she pretended to be.

“… take care of the girl before she talks. I don’t care how. Accident. Overdose. Something. And Clara? The moment she lets her guard down, we grab the boy. He’s the only thing of value this family has left. Once we have him, we can negotiate from strength. The feds can have Arthur and Julian. I don’t care. But the Vance line continues through that child. And I will have him, even if I have to kill Clara with my bare hands to get him.”

The video ended.

I sat there, frozen. My blood had turned to ice in my veins.

Beatrice wasn’t just bitter. She wasn’t just angry.

She was completely insane.

And she was coming for my son.

Chloe took her phone back. Her hand was shaking so badly she almost dropped it.

“That was three days ago,” she said. “She doesn’t know I recorded it. I’ve been bugging her study for a month. Ever since I realized what she really was.”

She looked at me. Her eyes were desperate.

“Please, Clara. Help me. If we work together, we can take her down. Once and for all. You get safety for Ethan. I get safety for my baby. We both get to finally be free of this family.”

I looked at the envelope on the table. At Chloe’s tear-streaked face. At the fear in her eyes that I knew so well—the same fear I’d carried every day for the last year.

I picked up the envelope.

“Okay,” I said. “We do this together. But Chloe? If this is a trick… if you so much as think about betraying me… I will make sure you spend the next twenty years in a cell right next to Julian and Arthur. Do you understand?”

Chloe nodded so hard her hair fell in her face.

“I understand,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

I stood up to leave. Paused.

“Chloe,” I said. She looked up. “The baby. Is it really Julian’s?”

For a second, she hesitated. Then she shook her head.

“No,” she whispered. “It’s not. I lied. Beatrice told me to. She said if I claimed it was Julian’s, the family would take care of me. That I’d be set for life. The real father is my high school boyfriend. He left town when he found out. I haven’t heard from him since.”

She looked down at her stomach.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry I lied about that. About everything.”

I thought about it. For a second, I was angry. Furious. She’d helped them drag my name through the mud. She’d helped them hurt me.

But then I looked at her. Really looked at her. And I realized something.

We weren’t enemies.