Chapter 3

The New York City skyline blurred into streaks of light outside the tinted, bulletproof windows of the Maybach. Burdette Guerrero sat in the back, the silence of the car a stark contrast to the storm brewing inside him.

Sam Rivers sat opposite him, speaking in a low, even tone. "More details on Ayleen Ramirez, sir. She's married to Don Bradley, of Bradley Industries. They're in the middle of a contentious divorce."

A humorless smile touched Burdette's lips. "How convenient. A woman on the verge of a divorce suddenly finds herself pregnant with my child. The timing is a little too perfect."

Sam swiped a finger across the tablet in his hand, bringing up a new video file. "We managed to restore more of the clinic's surveillance footage. This is from an exterior camera. The person who entered the specimen vault was an assistant to Helma Blake."

Burdette's eyes turned to ice. Helma Blake. His comatose fiancée's ambitious, grasping mother.

The pieces clicked into place with brutal clarity. Helma, desperate to secure the Blake family's future, had tried to have her own daughter, Penelope, artificially inseminated with his sample. A last-ditch effort to produce a Guerrero heir and cement the family alliance before he pulled the plug on the engagement.

But something went wrong. The sample was switched. And Ayleen Ramirez became the accidental, or perhaps not-so-accidental, beneficiary.

Burdette picked up the printed photo of Ayleen and stared at it with cold disgust. "A greedy, foolish woman." He tossed the photo onto the leather seat beside him.

"Freeze all Blake family assets held in our associated funds," he commanded.

"Sir, that will alert them that we know," Sam cautioned.

"Good," Burdette said, his voice flat. "I want her to be alarmed. I want her to panic."

He leaned back, the city lights playing across his stone-hard features. "Where is Ayleen Ramirez now?"

"Her phone's GPS shows she's en route to her adoptive parents' home in a suburb outside Austin."

Burdette considered this for a moment. His initial impulse was to confront the woman directly, to see the greed and calculation in her eyes. But a better idea, a more cruel idea, began to form.

"Change of plans," he said. "We're not going to see her. Not yet. I want to watch her perform."

The scene shifted. In a lavishly decorated mansion, Helma Blake was admiring a new diamond necklace in the mirror. Her phone began to vibrate violently on her vanity table. It was her private banker. A second call came in. A third. Her accounts were being frozen. All of them.

She let out a shriek of rage and hurled a crystal perfume bottle at the mirror, shattering her own reflection.

Back in the Maybach, Burdette watched a live feed of Helma's meltdown on the tablet. A slow, predatory smile spread across his face.

"Let the Blakes implode first," he told Sam. "As for Ms. Ramirez... I want her to come to me."

"Should we maintain surveillance on her?" Sam asked.

"Yes. But keep your distance. I don't want her to know she's being watched."

Burdette closed his eyes, but the image of Ayleen's face from the driver's license photo was seared onto the back of his eyelids. Those wide, dark eyes. They annoyed him.

He straightened his tie, a gesture of restoring order to a world that had been disrupted. "Sam," he said, his eyes snapping open. "Draft a termination agreement. The standard one. And in the settlement field... put a number with a lot of zeros."

He would not be trapped. He would not be manipulated. He would buy this problem, and then he would bury it.

"She hasn't retained a lawyer yet," Sam reported. "She appears to be completely on her own."

A low hum of satisfaction vibrated in Burdette's chest. "Perfect."

The car glided through the gates of the Guerrero estate and pulled to a silent stop. As Burdette stepped out, the cool night air did nothing to quell the fire in his gut.

The butler, Bertram, met him at the door. "Sir, Mrs. Blake has called seven times. She's begging to speak with you."

Burdette's voice was a soft, deadly whisper. "Tell her I'll speak with her daughter. The one in the coma."

Bertram recoiled slightly at the cruelty of the command.

Burdette strode past him and into the cavernous study, shutting the heavy oak doors behind him. He stood in the darkness, looking out at the sprawling city that was his kingdom.

He had already begun to weave his web.

And Ayleen Ramirez, the woman with the innocent eyes, was the fly he was about to lure to its center.