THEY ATTACKED ME WHILE I HELD MY NEWBORN—BUT MY SOS WATCH EXPOSED THE DAUGHTER THEY SAID WAS DEAD

The safe house was a modest, heavily secured cabin tucked into the dense woods of the Catskills. Once Elena had confirmed they had completely lost Vance's tail, they settled Dr. Aris into the spare bedroom with a cup of hot tea and a heavy blanket.

In the living room, Naomi had hooked her laptop up to a larger monitor. The digital files from Dr. Aris’s flash drive were staggering. It wasn't just Sarah Jenkins’s son. It was a comprehensive record of over forty children who had been forcefully removed from their parents under entirely fabricated medical pretenses over the last four years.

"It's a factory," Naomi whispered in absolute horror, scrolling through the spreadsheets. "Vance isn't just billing insurance. He is filtering these children into closed adoption networks for incredibly wealthy clients who don't want to wait for legal channels."

"He’s selling them," Mara said, her voice dropping to a deadly, quiet register.

"Look at this payment routing column," Naomi pointed to the screen. "The funds from the closed adoptions are being washed through a shell corporation called Vanguard Holdings."

Mara stared at the name. A cold shiver ran down her spine. "I know that name."

"From where?"

"During Vivian’s trial," Mara said, her mind racing back to the endless hours of testimony. "The prosecutors couldn't find the missing twenty million dollars from the Whitmore Foundation. Grant testified that Vivian had transferred it to a ghost account just before her arrest."

"Vanguard Holdings," Naomi realized, her eyes widening. "Vance didn't just steal Vivian’s methods. He stole her escape fund to build his own empire."

"If we can legally connect Vanguard Holdings to Arthur Vance, we don't just have him for medical fraud and kidnapping," Mara said, her heart pounding with the realization of the absolute leverage they now possessed. "We have him for federal racketeering. The FBI will tear his life apart."

"The problem is, Vanguard is a ghost," Naomi sighed, rubbing her eyes. "The digital trail ends at a proxy server in Switzerland. We need the original, unredacted transfer authorization to prove Vance is the beneficiary."

Mara looked at the dark window. "There is only one person alive who knows the exact routing codes Vivian used to create that trust."