Fox learned to speak in full sentences at eighteen months, but his first coherent phrase was not "Mama" or "Dada." It was "pretty lady says hello." He whispered it to the ceiling at 2:13 a.m., chubby finger pointing at the smoke detector that had never held a camera we could find. Isabella heard him over the baby monitor and ran barefoot down the hall, robe open, milk dripping from both breasts. I followed seconds behind, gun drawn from the nightstand. The nursery glowed soft blue from the night-light. Fox sat upright in his crib, smiling at nothing, eyes reflecting a red dot that flickered once and vanished.
We tore the room apart. Ripped baseboards. Drilled into drywall. Found only dust and a single fibre-optic filament thinner than spider silk threaded through the crown moulding like a vein. It led nowhere and everywhere. Our security team swept the penthouse for seventy-two hours straight. They discovered thirty-seven new devices: inside Scarlet's dollhouse chimney, behind Luna's vanity mirror, and even soldered into the gold frame of the family portrait above the fireplace. Every lens was microscopic, military grade, and warm to the touch. Someone had been watching us breathe for years.
Isabella did not scream. She stood in the wreckage of the nursery, surrounded by shredded teddy bears and exposed wiring, and laughed until she vomited milk across the hardwood. I held her hair back, cock shamefully hard against her hip because terror and arousal had fused into the same reflex long ago.
That night we moved the children to the island. The one I bought her after the divorce. No internet. No cell towers. Just turquoise water and armed guards who patrolled with dogs bred in Siberia. Isabella flew with them at dawn, belly enormous with number five, face pale but resolute. She kissed me goodbye on the tarmac, tongue sliding deep, hand cupping my balls through linen trousers.
"Find her," she whispered. "Cut her out of the wires. Then come breed me on the beach until I forget my name."
I stayed in the city and went to war.
The trail began with the fibre filament. Reverse-engineered in a black-site lab beneath SoHo, it traced to a patent filed in 2019 by a shell company registered in Singapore. The beneficial owner: Lila Voss. Declared dead. The body never recovered. DNA on the yacht matched dental records, but dental records can be bought. I flew to Montauk myself, chartered a dive team, and dragged the ocean floor for weeks. Found her anchor chain wrapped around a reef, crusted with barnacles and one perfect red acrylic nail still attached.
Lila was alive. And she had been inside our walls the whole time.
I lured her with the only bait she ever wanted: us.
Announced a "legacy gala" at the warehouse, now rebranded as Voss-Hale Hall, a private venue for the depraved elite. Invitation only. Dress code: masks and sins. The card read: One night. No limits. All cameras welcome.
She RSVP'd within minutes. Single plus-one. Name left blank.
The night arrived electric. Thunder over the Hudson. Guests in Venetian masks and latex, diamonds dripping from throats like blood. The warehouse pulsed with bass and bodies. Cages swung from rafters. Whips cracked. Moans layered into a symphony.
Isabella flew in secret, nine months swollen, gown black velvet stretched over her belly, nipples visible through sheer panels. She moved like a warship, hand on the small of my back, guiding me through the crowd. We found Lila on the throne dais where Victor once bled. Red hair longer now, eyes greener, body sculpted by vengeance and money that never ran out.
She wore a mask of mirrored shards. Each fragment reflected a different Hale sin.
"Welcome home," she purred.
Security was ours. Every guard has been loyal since the warehouse days. We let the gala rage for exactly one hour. Long enough for the dark-web streams to hit ten thousand viewers. Long enough for Lila to believe she held the reins.
Then the lights cut to red.
Steel doors slammed. Locks engaged. Phones bricked by EMP. The pretty lady's empire of eyes went blind.
We dragged her to the altar. Stripped the mirror mask. Her face was older, sharper, but the hunger burned brighter. Isabella circled slowly, crop in hand, belly leading the way.
"You lived in my children's dreams," Isabella said. Voice soft. Lethal.
Lila smiled. "They're beautiful. Especially Fox. He waves at me every morning."
I punched her. Once. Hard. Jaw cracked. Blood sprayed.
Isabella knelt, pried Lila's mouth open, and fed her a capsule. "Tracker. Dissolves in six hours. You run, we find you. You hide, we find you. You die, we find the body."
We bound her spread-eagled on the breeding bench. Guests watched from behind one-way glass, masks fogging with breath. Isabella straddled Lila's face reverse, gown hiked, pussy dripping from the flight and the fight. Ground down hard. Smothered her screams.
I entered Isabella from behind, hands on her belly, feeling our daughter kick against my palms. Thrust deep while Lila suffocated beneath us. Isabella came first, squirting across Lila's mask shards, glass cutting her thighs. I followed, flooding Isabella, excess dripping onto Lila's face like baptism.
We took turns after. Whips. Canes. Hot wax is poured into open wounds. Isabella pegged her with the same black dildo that had broken Elias. I forced Lila to watch the nursery feed on loop: Fox waving at the ceiling, Scarlet kissing the empty eye socket, Luna whispering secrets to the wires.
She broke at the sight of Victor Jr. hacking his school firewall at age nine, typing "pretty lady" into the search bar and smiling when her face appeared.
"Enough," she sobbed. "Master server. Iceland. Geothermal plant. Biometric vault. My heartbeat."
We flew commercial. Coach. No trace. Landed in Reykjavik under false names. Rented a Jeep. Drove lava fields black as sin. The plant rose from the ice like a cathedral of glass and steel. Lila's heartbeat opened the door, literally: a sensor against her carotid as we dragged her inside.
The server room hummed with arctic cold. Rows of blades blinking red. We plugged in the kill switch our hacker had built: a virus that would cascade through every mirror site, every backup, every dark-web shard. Lila begged as the countdown began.
"Please. I can give you more. Better footage. The children's first steps. Their first orgasms. I have it all."
Isabella slapped her. "You have nothing now."
The virus deployed. Screens went dark one by one. Red lights died like snuffed candles.
We left Lila chained to a cooling pipe, naked, bleeding, heartbeat slowing as the room dropped to minus twenty. The plant ran automatically. No one would find her for weeks.
On the flight home, Isabella went into labour over Greenland. Turbulence rocked the plane. She gripped my hand hard enough to bruise, pushed into the lavatory while the flight attendant knocked frantically. Our daughter was born at thirty-seven thousand feet, cord wrapped twice around her neck. I unwound it with shaking fingers, slapped her tiny back until she wailed. The pilot announced an emergency landing in Goose Bay. We named her Aurora. Northern lights for the sky that witnessed her birth.
Back in New York, the empire waited untouched. Board meetings. School plays. Normalcy stitched over the carnage like skin over a wound.
We made love in the nursery that night, all six children asleep in their fortified beds. Isabella rode me slowly on the rocking chair, milk leaking down my chest, Aurora nursing at one breast while I sucked the other. Came inside her with her name on my lips and Lila's screams echoing in my skull.
The red lights never returned.
But Fox still waves at the ceiling every morning.
And sometimes, when the wind rattles the windows, I swear I hear a heartbeat in the wires.