"Daddy, The Baby Went Flat!" When The Billionaire Ripped Off His Wife's Pregnant Belly at The Gala, He Discovered The Terrifying Monster Sleeping in His Bed

Evelyn raised her hand.

"Wait!" Harrison shouted, his voice booming through the cellar. "You want the genetic stabilization data! You can’t get it without the master encryption key!"

Evelyn’s fingers paused in mid-air. Her eyes narrowed into slits of emerald ice. "Vivienne stored the key on a biometric drive. The drive was in the casket."

"The drive in the casket was a decoy!" Harrison lied, taking a half-step forward, his mind racing through calculations with the speed of a supercomputer. "You think Vivienne trusted you? She knew you were poisoning her with thallium! She gave me the real key hours before she died in Mount Sinai. It’s hardwired into my retinal scan at the Vance Corporate mainframe in Manhattan! If you kill me, the data corrupts automatically. Maya becomes biologically worthless to your buyers within seven days!"

Evelyn stared at him. The air in the cellar felt like it was charged with thousands of volts of static electricity.

Behind her, one of the masked mercenaries whispered into his comm headset, checking the veracity of Harrison’s claim.

"He's bluffing, Evelyn," the operative murmured in a thick Swiss accent. "The genetic sequence in the girl's marrow is already active. We can extract the stem cells directly."

"The extraction has an eighty-five percent mortality rate without the stabilization key, you idiot!" Harrison barked, his voice commanding, authoritative, the voice that had crushed hedge funds and humbled senators. "You pull those cells without the key, Maya goes into anaphylactic shock in forty-eight hours! Your forty-billion-dollar payout turns into a corpse!"

Evelyn’s chest rose and fell in a slow, controlled breath. For the first time, a flicker of doubt crossed her immaculate face.

She looked at Maya, then back at Harrison.

"You always were an exceptional negotiator, Harrison," Evelyn purred, taking a step backward into the shadows of the corridor. "Fine. We do this the old-fashioned way. You will board my private transport. You will fly with us to Zurich. You will unlock the mainframe. And if you attempt a single clever trick... I will peel our daughter's skin off piece by piece while you watch."

"Don't do it, Mr. Vance," Marcus hissed through clenched teeth.

"Marcus, stand down," Harrison ordered without taking his eyes off Evelyn. "Take care of the ranch. That is an order."

Harrison slowly bent down and kissed Maya’s trembling forehead. "Be brave, baby. Daddy is right here. I’m not going anywhere."

He picked Maya up in his arms, wrapping the thick blanket around her shoulders. He stepped past Marcus, walking straight toward the guns of Evelyn’s mercenaries.