Five days after my C-section, my husband gave me $12 for the bus so his mother could take my SUV to lunch—unaware two black sedans were waiting at my next stop.

Two hours later, the storm had completely cleared from my life.

I sat in the master executive office on the fortieth floor of Northgate Tower—my father's office. The shattered scotch glass had been swept away. The air was clean, smelling once more of rain and polished mahogany.

In my arms, wrapped in a soft cashmere blanket, was Maya.

She was sleeping peacefully, her tiny chest rising and falling against my heart. Marcus had personally escorted her from the Oak Brook house with a police escort the moment Evelyn was taken into custody.

The heavy double doors opened.

Two federal marshals led Travis into the room.

His suit was rumpled, his hair disheveled, and his wrists were locked in heavy steel transport cuffs connected to a chain around his waist. All the smug, condescending arrogance was gone. He looked aged, hollow, and utterly broken.

"Eliza," he rasped, his voice trembling as he looked at me sitting behind the massive desk with our daughter. "Eliza, please. You have to listen to me. It was Victor! Victor came up with the transfer idea! He told me the trust was vulnerable!"

"Victor has already signed a full confession, Travis," Marcus said from the window, not even bothering to look at him. "In exchange for a reduced sentence, he gave the FBI three years of your recorded phone conversations. Including the ones where you instructed your private doctor to withhold Eliza's prenatal vitamins."

Travis flinched as if he had been struck with an iron bar. He looked at me, his eyes wide with desperate terror.

"Eliza... we have a daughter," he pleaded, taking a shuffling step forward before the marshals hauled him back by his chains. "You can't do this to Maya's father! Think of her future! Think of our family!"

I looked down at Maya's perfect, peaceful face, then raised my eyes to meet the man who had abandoned me at a bus stop while my surgical wounds were still fresh.

"I am thinking of her future, Travis," I said, my voice quiet, absolute, and devoid of pity. "Her future will not include a monster who measured my worth in twelve bus dollars."

I signed the final sheet of paper on the desk—the complete termination of his parental rights, backed by the criminal endangerment indictments filed by the state.

"Take him away," I told the marshals.

Travis screamed, thrashing against the steel chains as the federal agents dragged him backward out of the office, his curses and frantic pleas echoing down the marble hallway until the heavy oak doors closed, sealing the silence once and for all.

I let out a long, slow breath. The knot of pain that had lived in my chest for months finally unraveled. I leaned down and kissed Maya’s forehead.

We were safe. The empire was restored.