Nora Wynn refused to trade herself for another hostage. She and Elias Kane returned to a live-streamed engagement gala above Manhattan before midnight, using the key from the ambush to enter the archive their enemy had tried to keep buried.
Inside were recordings, legal files, and a wall tracking Nora Wynn's life from childhood to the previous night. Someone had planned every loss with patient precision. At the center, a line connected her to Elias Kane, then continued toward a sealed record neither of them had seen.
Elias Kane reached it first. The evidence proved the truth neither of them was ready to trust: Elias chose the wrong sister publicly to protect the woman he had loved in secret for years. It also showed why he had been tied to the conspiracy long before he met Nora Wynn.
Footsteps filled the corridor. Elias Kane reached for his weapon, but Nora Wynn stopped him. Running had brought her here. This time she would make the person hunting them speak.
The archive door opened. The intruder removed a hood, and Nora Wynn's breath caught. The face belonged to someone whose funeral she had attended—and the hostage video had been playing from an empty room.
“You finally found the truth,” the stranger said. “Now choose: expose it and destroy Elias Kane, or bury it and become the woman who betrays him.”
Nora Wynn took Elias Kane's hand instead.
The stranger smiled and pressed a remote. Behind them, the archive began counting down from ten.