I was seven months pregnant when my husband gave me a gentle smile, rested his hand on my shoulder, and murmured

Ryan’s hand reached out toward the bookshelf. He was three inches away from the curtain hiding me.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird, but my grip on the heavy steel flashlight remained iron-clad. If he pulled that curtain, I would strike him down without hesitation.

Suddenly, his phone blared loudly on the desk.

The sudden noise made Ryan jump. He cursed under his breath, turning away from the shelf to snatch up his phone.

"What?!" he yelled into the receiver.

I watched through the tiny gap in the velvet curtain. Ryan’s face instantly drained of color as he listened to the voice on the line.

"What do you mean, it’s gone?" Ryan stammered, his voice cracking with sudden panic. "That account was encrypted! How could three million dollars be wired out of the Zurich branch fifteen minutes ago?!"

Vanessa gasped, clutching her chest. "What?! Three million? Ryan, that’s our safety reserve!"

"Who authorized the transfer?!" Ryan screamed into the phone, slamming his fist onto the mahogany desk.

He listened for a moment, then slowly dropped his phone onto the desk. He looked like he had seen a ghost.

"Ryan... who was it?" Vanessa whimpered, grabbing his arm.

Ryan looked up, his eyes wide with an eerie, horrifying realization. "The bank said... the transfer was authorized using an active biometric voice print and primary passphrase."

"Whose passphrase?"

"Emily's," Ryan whispered, his voice trembling violently. "The passphrase was her mother's maiden name. Only Emily knew it."

"That's impossible!" Vanessa screamed. "She's dead! Her scarf was found in the river! The police closed the case!"

"Then who just emptied the Zurich account, Vanessa?!" Ryan yelled back, grabbing his hair in pure hysteria. "Who is doing this to us?!"

Standing in the shadows behind the curtain, I smiled softly behind my mask.

Earlier that evening, while Ryan was driving back from Aspen, Caleb had used the encrypted biometric file we pulled from my grandfather's Swiss trust to initiate an emergency asset clawback. We didn't just steal his money—we made the banking system notify him that Emily Carter had signed off on the transaction.

"I... I need to open the safe," Ryan muttered, stumbling back toward the bookshelf.

He reached out, pulled the hidden lever, and punched in the code. The safe opened. He reached his hand inside, feeling around frantically for the blue folder containing the forged documents.

His hand came out empty.

Ryan froze. He looked inside the safe.

The cash was there. The gold bars were there. But the blue folder—the only piece of evidence that could send him to prison for attempted murder and fraud—was gone.

In its place lay a single item I had left behind right before I hid behind the curtain.

A small, silver baby rattle. The exact same rattle Ryan had bought for our nursery six months ago.

Ryan let out a strangulated, terrifying shriek, dropping to his knees on the hardwood floor. He grabbed the silver rattle, staring at it as if it were a venomous snake.

"She’s alive..." Ryan whimpered, his eyes rolling back in terror. "She’s alive... she’s coming for me..."

"Ryan! Get a grip!" Vanessa screamed, slapping him hard across the face. "You pushed her off a two-hundred-foot cliff! She’s dead! Someone is playing mind games with us!"

I didn't wait to watch the rest of their breakdown. While they were screaming at each other on the floor, I slipped quietly out through the open French doors, disappearing into the torrential rain and the dark night.