MY MOTHER-IN-LAW RIPPED OUT MY HAIR ON CHRISTMAS EVE—THEN SHE NOTICED THE HIDDEN CAMERA IN THE TREE!

The rusted iron gates of Blackwood Manor groaned in the gale as Clara and Julian breached the perimeter. The stone courtyard was littered with broken statues and overgrown ivy, resembling an ancient tomb rather than an estate.

Inside, the grand foyer was vast, cavernous, and freezing cold. The walls were lined with oil portraits of generations of Sterlings—cold, haughty faces staring down in perpetual judgment.

A trail of wet footprints led up the sweeping double staircase.

Clara and Julian moved in silent synchronicity, weapons raised, sweeping each landing. From the top floor, down a long hallway paneled in rotting mahogany, came a faint, haunting sound.

A music box.

Playing Eleanor Sterling’s favorite Strauss waltz—the same melody that had played on the Christmas tree the night Eleanor had ripped Clara’s hair out.

Clara’s pulse roared in her ears. She followed the music toward the master bedchamber at the end of the hall. The double doors stood wide open.

Julian stepped through the threshold first, his weapon leveled. Clara followed, her gun drawn.

The room was vast, illuminated only by fifty flickering beeswax candles set in silver candelabras around an enormous, four-poster canopy bed. In the center of the room, positioned directly in front of the floor-to-ceiling balcony overlooking the raging ocean below, was an antique mahogany rocking chair.

Sitting in the rocking chair, her face smudged with soot from the prison fire, wearing an opulent black mink coat over her singed prison uniform, was Eleanor Sterling.

And in her arms, wrapped in a pure white cashmere blanket, fast asleep, was baby Lucas.

"Shh," Eleanor whispered, gently rocking the chair back and forth, her fingers lightly caressing the baby’s cheek with long, blood-red manicured nails. "Don't wake him, Clara. He has his father’s delicate ears."

"Step away from my son, Eleanor," Julian growled, his gun trained dead center on Eleanor’s chest. "I swear to God, I will put a bullet through your heart before you can move an inch."

Eleanor didn't even look up at him. She smiled softly, kissing Lucas’s tiny forehead. "You won't shoot, Julian. If you kill me, Damian presses the detonator. There are fifty pounds of C-4 lined along the foundation of this cliff. One click, and all four of us plunge three hundred feet into the rocks below."

From the dark shadow behind the heavy velvet curtains, a tall man stepped into the candlelight.

He lowered his mask.

Clara gasped. The resemblance was uncanny, terrifying, demonic. Damian Sterling had Julian’s face, Julian’s eyes, Julian’s height—but his smile was Eleanor’s: twisted, cruel, and devoid of humanity. In his left hand, Damian held a military-grade remote detonator, his thumb resting lightly on the red toggle switch. In his right hand, a suppressed pistol was aimed directly at Clara’s head.

"Hello, little brother," Damian purred, his voice an eerie, identical echo of Julian’s own. "Mother always told me I was the spare. The monster she locked in the dark while you inherited the kingdom. But tonight... I get everything."

"Give me my baby," Clara said, stepping forward, ignoring Damian’s gun leveled at her forehead. Her voice was steady, her eyes locked on Eleanor. "You wanted me, Eleanor. You’ve always wanted to destroy me. Take me instead. Let Julian take Lucas and leave."

Eleanor finally looked up, her cold, reptilian eyes locking onto Clara with supreme, triumphant malice.

"Oh, Clara, my dear," Eleanor whispered, her lips curling into a hideous, victorious grin as she slowly rose from the rocking chair, cradling the baby over the sheer, unguarded drop of the balcony behind her. "You still don't understand the rules of this house. In the Sterling family... nobody leaves."

Damian cocked his gun.

Eleanor stepped backward, her heels dangling over the three-hundred-foot cliff above the roaring Atlantic ocean.

"Julian!" Eleanor screamed with sudden, bloodcurdling madness. "Choose!"