Chapter 4

The after-party at SkyBar was a crush of beautiful people. Champagne flowed, and the air buzzed with gossip and laughter. Keith was in his element, holding court with a group of friends, Holly radiant by his side.

"You two look perfect together," one of his friends, a fellow prosecutor named Mark, said, raising his glass. "Like you were made for each other."

"I always said you were crazy to let her go, Keith," another friend, Sarah, added, giving Holly an admiring look.

Holly smiled graciously. "We had to find ourselves first. But some connections... they're just meant to be."

Keith felt a warm glow spread through his chest. This was right. This was how his life was supposed to be.

"So, where's the little wife tonight, Keith?" Mark asked, a smirk on his face. "At home, baking cookies?"

The group laughed. Keith felt a brief, uncomfortable twinge. He knew they all thought Eva was boring, a plain, quiet woman who didn't fit into his high-powered world. He had never defended her, never tried to make them see her differently. Because, in a way, he agreed with them.

"She's... not feeling well," he said, the lie coming easily.

"Probably for the best," Sarah said with a shrug. "This isn't really her scene. You need a woman who can keep up with you, Keith. A woman like Holly."

He didn't disagree. He just smiled and changed the subject, pulling Holly closer.

Meanwhile, thousands of feet above them, Eva was on a red-eye flight to New York. The city lights glittered below like a carpet of scattered diamonds. She wasn't looking out the window. Her face was illuminated by the glow of her laptop screen.

She was reviewing the final documents for the hostile takeover case. She had found the weak point, the fatal flaw in the opponent's strategy. It was a small, overlooked detail in a footnote of a decade-old financial report, a detail that would unravel their entire case.

She felt the thrill of the hunt, the cold, clear focus that had earned her the name Nemesis. The woman who baked cookies and waited for her husband was a distant memory, a character in a story that was no longer hers.

She closed the file and opened a new document, a blank page. At the top, she typed a single heading:

KEITH SAMPSON: A CASE STUDY

She began to type, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She listed his strengths, his weaknesses, his habits, his blind spots. She analyzed him with the same dispassionate precision she would use on a corporate rival.

For three years, she had tried to understand him as a wife. Now, she would understand him as an adversary.

The plane began its descent into JFK. Eva closed her laptop and looked out the window. The skyline of Manhattan rose to meet her, a promise of a new beginning.

She was no longer Mrs. Sampson.

She was Nemesis. And she was back in her kingdom.