32 Weeks Pregnant, I Watched My Husband Bring His Mistress to Christmas—Then I Said, “Since You Brought Someone, I Brought Someone Too.”

Matthias took two staggering steps backward, his knees buckling until he had to brace himself against a damp concrete pillar.

"You... you lied to me," he whispered, staring at Fiona as if seeing a monster emerge from the dark. "You told me the Hensley board needed to be restructured... you said my father was holding the firm back... you told me the insurance payout would cover the debt from the New Haven acquisition..."

"You are so blindingly, pathetically stupid," Fiona said, her voice dripping with absolute contempt. She didn't even bother looking at him; her eyes remained locked on Mercer’s firearm. "You embezzled forty million dollars from your father's hedge fund to impress me. When the audit came down, you were facing twenty years in federal prison. I didn't create your greed, Matthias. I just gave it a roadmap."

"Shut it down, Fiona," Mercer ordered, his gun never wavering. "The house is surrounded. You have snipers on the tree line outside the estate. Even if you detonate that device, you aren't leaving this property alive."

"I don't need to leave alive, Detective," Fiona replied, her voice dropping into a chilling, crystalline calm. "My father died with nothing. If I die taking the entire Dre bloodline with me, that is what the financial world calls an acceptable return on investment."

My daughter kicked again, so violently that a sharp spasm of pain radiated across my lower abdomen. I gasped, pressing both hands against my belly, bending slightly at the waist.

Matthias looked over at me, his eyes wide and hollow. "Serena... your stomach... the baby..."

"Don't you dare speak about our daughter," I breathed through clenched teeth, riding out the contraction. "You signed her death warrant the moment you brought this woman into our lives."

"I didn't know!" he cried, tears of pure, unadulterated cowardice finally spilling over his cheeks. He fell to his knees on the cold cellar floor, groveling, reaching out a trembling hand toward Fiona. "Fiona, please. My father is up there. My mother’s portrait is up there. Everything my family built—"

"Everything your family *stole*," she corrected viciously.

*00:09:41.*

Nine minutes left on the timer.

I caught Mercer’s subtle movement. He was angling his body, waiting for a clear shot that wouldn't trigger an involuntary muscle spasm in her hand. But the dead-man switch was a mechanical pressure trigger; if her heart stopped, her hand would relax, and the circuit would close. A bullet would kill us all.

I had to use what I knew best. Not weapons. Not authority.

Human biology.

As a trauma nurse, I had treated dozens of combat veterans, gang members, and psychopaths. I knew that when adrenaline peaks, tunnel vision sets in. The brain hyper-focuses on the primary threat—which, for Fiona, was the black barrel of Mercer’s Glock.

She wasn't looking at me. She saw me only as a weak, crippled, pregnant bystander.

"Fiona," I gasped aloud, deliberately exaggerating my pain, stumbling forward two steps and collapsing onto my hands and knees on the concrete. "Please... my water... I think my water broke..."

"Serena!" Matthias shouted, scrambling toward me.

"Stay back, you idiot!" Fiona barked, her eyes snapping toward Matthias for a fraction of a second.

That fraction was all I needed.

My right hand, hidden beneath the folds of my voluminous velvet dress, wasn't holding my belly.