BORN FROM ASHES: THE UNBROKEN MOTHER

Arthur set his glass on a side table and lunged with shocking speed.

He didn't fight like Victoria; he struck with calculated, brutal efficiency. His fist collided with Clara’s injured shoulder, sending a shockwave of blinding white pain through her nervous system. Clara stumbled backward, crashing into a glass coffee table that shattered into thousands of crystal fragments.

"You should have taken the money!" Arthur bellowed, stepping over the debris and grabbing Clara by the collar of her slicker. He hoisted her up, pinning her against the floor-to-ceiling plate glass window. Behind her, sixty stories below, the city was a blur of rain and lights.

"You could have lived a comfortable life somewhere far away," Arthur snarled, his hand tightening around her throat. "Instead, you forced me to bury you."

Clara’s airway closed. Black spots danced across her eyes. But through the ringing in her ears, she heard it—a soft, newborn whimper coming from the mahogany cradle across the room.

Her baby was crying.

A primal, untamed strength surged through Clara’s veins. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the sharpest jagged shard of the broken highball glass she had palmed from the floor, and drove it directly into Arthur’s forearm.

Arthur roared in pain, dropping his grip as blood spurted across his white shirt.

Clara ducked low, sweeping his legs with a brutal kick that sent the billionaire crashing onto the carpet. Before he could recover, she grabbed a heavy bronze sculpture from the side console and brought it down across his shoulder, pinning him to the floor.

Arthur gasped, spitting blood, his eyes wide with sudden, genuine terror. "Clara... wait... think about this! You kill me, you spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison! You'll never hold him!"

Clara stood over him, the bronze statue raised, chest heaving. Rain pounded violently against the glass behind her.