The VIP hospital room was a gilded cage of stark white walls, blinding fluorescent lights, and a deafening, heavy silence.

The ink on Julian’s surrender was barely dry when Silas burst into Clara’s office, his face pale and his eyes wild. He didn't bother knocking.

"Silas, what is it?" Clara stood up, her maternal instincts instantly sounding a terrifying alarm.

"It's Genevieve," Silas breathed, pulling out his encrypted phone. "She didn't care about the stock crash. She used the chaos to mobilize her private security. One of my men inside her camp just tipped me off. She found out about the Swiss estate."

Clara’s heart stopped. The air vanished from the room. "Leo."

"They breached the perimeter ten minutes ago," Silas said, already moving toward the door. "My men are holding them off in the safe room, but Genevieve hired ex-military mercenaries. They are trying to extract the boy."

"No," Clara gasped, a visceral, animalistic terror gripping her throat. "Silas, if she takes him, she'll disappear. We will never see him again."

"I'm not letting that happen," Silas roared. "I have a chopper on the roof. We're flying to Teterboro, taking the private jet. We can be in Geneva in seven hours. I've already dispatched a tactical response team from London to intercept them, but we have to move now."

The flight across the Atlantic was a nightmare of agonizing silence. Clara paced the cabin of the jet, her hands trembling so violently she couldn't hold a glass of water. Five years of planning, five years of building an impenetrable fortress of wealth, and Genevieve was still trying to rip her heart out.

Silas sat in the corner, cleaning a matte-black Glock 19 with terrifying, clinical precision. He looked up at Clara.

"She won't get him, Clara," Silas vowed, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. "I lost my family once to that witch. I am not losing my nephew."

When they finally landed in Switzerland and took a helicopter to the remote alpine estate, the sun was just beginning to rise over the mountains. The front gates of the compound were blown wide open. Two black SUVs were burning on the driveway.