“Mom, don’t leave me,” Noah pleaded quietly.
“I have to fix this,” she said, her eyes fierce. Grace slipped out of the hidden corridor and began moving through the shadows, heading toward Nathaniel’s study. She needed to give him the drive.
Grace crept through the darkened dining room, using the flashes of lightning to navigate. She could hear the estate manager kicking open doors upstairs, searching for Noah. Time was running out.
Suddenly, a cold hand clamped over her mouth, and an arm wrapped tightly around her waist, pulling her backward into the library.
Grace thrashed wildly until a familiar voice whispered in her ear. “It’s me. It’s me.”
She went limp against Nathaniel’s chest. He turned her around, his eyes wide in the gloom. “Where is Noah?”
“Hidden,” she breathed. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the small, silver flash drive. “Take this. This is what she wants. It has the original encrypted emails and the takeover contract. If you get this to the police, she’s finished.”
Nathaniel looked at the drive, then at Grace. The sheer bravery of the woman standing before him left him speechless. “Grace, I am so sorry I brought this danger into your life.”
“You didn’t,” she replied fiercely. “I chose to look in that drawer. I chose to stay.”
Before Nathaniel could respond, the library doors flew open. A flashlight beam blinded them both.
“How touching,” Victoria’s voice sneered from the doorway. The estate manager stood beside her, his gun leveled directly at Nathaniel’s chest. “Hand it over, Nathaniel. And maybe I’ll let the maid live.”
Nathaniel stepped instinctively in front of Grace, shielding her with his body. He kept his own weapon lowered, calculating the odds. If he fired, the manager might pull the trigger first.
“You’re out of your mind, Victoria,” Nathaniel said calmly, stalling for time. “Even if you destroy the drive, my accountants have already flagged the offshore transfers. The FBI is looking into Vance as we speak.”
“Vance can buy his way out of an FBI probe,” Victoria snapped, her perfect posture rigid with desperation. “But he can’t buy his way out of a signed conspiracy contract. Give me the drive!”
“No.” Grace stepped out from behind Nathaniel.
“Grace, get back,” Nathaniel warned.
But Grace held up her hand. She looked Victoria dead in the eye. The timid, broken housekeeper from a week ago was gone. In her place was a mother defending her child, a woman who had endured too much pain to be intimidated by a spoiled heiress.
“You want it?” Grace asked, holding the silver flash drive up. “Come get it.”
With a sudden, violent motion, Grace threw the flash drive as hard as she could toward the roaring fireplace at the end of the room.
Victoria screamed. “Get it!”
The estate manager instinctively turned his gun away from Nathaniel and lunged toward the hearth to catch the drive before it hit the flames.
It was the only opening Nathaniel needed.
Nathaniel tackled the estate manager to the floor. The man’s gun went off, the gunshot deafening in the enclosed space, shattering a priceless Ming vase on the mantelpiece, but missing Nathaniel entirely.
Victoria lunged at Grace, her perfectly manicured hands curling into claws, aiming for Grace’s throat. But Grace was no longer the exhausted woman on her knees. Fueled by pure adrenaline, Grace sidestepped Victoria’s attack, grabbed the heiress by the lapels of her designer trench coat, and used Victoria’s own momentum to throw her to the ground.
Victoria hit the hardwood floor hard, crying out in shock. Before she could recover, Grace snatched a heavy brass fire poker from the stand and pointed the sharp end directly at Victoria’s chest.
“Move, and I’ll see how much this ruins your silk,” Grace panted, her eyes blazing.
Across the room, Nathaniel landed a brutal right hook across the estate manager’s jaw, knocking the man out cold. He kicked the man’s gun away and stood up, breathing heavily.
Red and blue lights suddenly bathed the library windows. Sirens wailed down the long driveway. Nathaniel had triggered the silent panic alarm under his desk the moment the power went out.
The police burst through the doors moments later. They found the billionaire standing over a neutralized gunman, and the former housekeeper holding the treacherous fiancée at bay.
The nightmare was finally over.
The weeks that followed were a media frenzy. The arrest of Victoria Ashford and Arthur Vance rocked Wall Street to its core. The flash drive—which had safely bounced off the stone hearth and avoided the fire—provided exactly the evidence the SEC needed to dismantle Vance’s empire.
Through it all, Nathaniel kept Grace and Noah entirely out of the press. He bought Grace a beautiful townhouse in Brooklyn and paid for her to re-enroll in her university program. He gave her everything she needed to be independent.
