Chapter 3

Kane Voss stared down at his phone screen, the endless digits still pulsing bright: Prediction Mode: 28.6 Seconds. Zoe Hale stood two paces away, the thick document bag in her hands heavy as smoldering iron.

“Your endurance is far better than I anticipated,” Zoe broke the silence first, her voice unsteady, matching the erratic flicker of her bar license’s page numbers.

Kane offered no reply. He reached into his jacket pocket and set a small silver USB drive down on the concrete railing—tiny, light, easy to vanish into the night breeze.

“Inside this drive lies the full property split agreement from nineteen years ago,” he said flatly. “The one you’ve spent years chasing. The reason your father’s old family estate was ruled marital joint property from the very start.”

Zoe’s entire demeanor shifted in an instant. Her mind flashed back to the yellowed old document she’d found in her father’s study only days prior. When she’d questioned Kane about it, he’d dismissed it as worthless scrap paper.

“You’re playing with fire, Kane,” she stepped forward, tone sharp with suppressed fury.

“I’m only playing the exact game you started first,” Kane replied, tapping his phone screen to launch the file transfer. The progress bar crawled slowly across the display, coiling forward like a snake shedding its skin.

Zoe’s personal assistant Lauren received the encrypted email seconds later. She opened the attachment, her hands shaking uncontrollably. Inside lay a fully notarized 1999 legal affidavit, clearly listing Zoe’s father gifting the heritage estate to his daughter three months before Zoe’s wedding.

“Ms. Hale… this changes everything,” Lauren’s voice trembled over the phone line.

Zoe ended the call without a word. She locked her gaze onto Kane, eyes sharp enough to pin him to the rooftop concrete forever.

“How long have you been digging into this?” she demanded.

“The exact day you froze all my personal accounts,” Kane answered calmly. “You made one thing perfectly clear to me that day—marriage was never about us. It was always about two ledgers, fighting to outcount each other.”

The prediction timer’s digits froze exactly at 28.6 seconds, holding perfectly still.

Kane turned to leave, but Zoe’s hand shot out, clamping tight around his wrist. Her nails dug into his skin, leaving bright red crescent marks.

“You think this ends here?” her voice dropped to a dangerous low, quiet as the calm before a catastrophic storm. “We’ll settle this in court.”

Kane twisted free of her grip and strode toward the stairwell. At the landing, he glanced back over his shoulder. Zoe stood motionless at the rooftop edge, wind tearing through her hair, half her face hidden in shadow.

He returned straight to the pet shop and walked into the back storage room. Rows of hamster cages lined the shelves, the tiny creatures running endless empty circles on their wheels, eyes hollow and lost. He opened a locked drawer and pulled out an ornate silk-lined jewelry box.

Inside rested a fine porcelain bowl, a tiny carved character etched discreetly on the base: the initial of Zoe’s family bloodline. Kane had traded ten rare antique ceramics to a private collector to obtain it. Zoe had always believed the bowl remained locked away in her late father’s possession—unaware it had been in Kane’s hands all these years.

He picked up his phone and dialed a number, tone cold and final.

“Move forward with the next stage now.”

Early the next morning, Zoe received an official court summons. She settled into her law office chair and read every line with icy precision. Plaintiff: Kane Voss. Demand: full redivision of all marital joint assets—including the supposedly lost antique porcelain bowl.

“This is absurd,” she slammed the file down on her desk. “He has that bowl hidden inside his shop, everyone knows it.”

“Ms. Hale,” Lauren stepped into the office with a fresh folder, “the plaintiff has submitted new ownership documentation dated 2005—one full year before your marriage even began. It bears your father’s genuine signature.”

Zoe froze solid. She snatched the document, recognizing her father’s handwriting instantly. She remembered how he’d kept that porcelain bowl close until the final year of his life, before donating it to a city museum archive.

The signature was real. The date was official.

Unless…

A terrifying realization crashed over her like a tidal wave. Her father had never donated the real bowl. He’d swapped it with a perfect replica decades ago—and Kane held the authentic original.

At the same hour, Kane stood on the courthouse steps, lighting a cigarette. Smoke curled into the morning air, blurred as his own tangled fate.

Zoe emerged from the building just as he climbed into his car.

“You win this round,” she stood on the stone steps, voice terrifyingly calm. “But this is only the beginning.”

Kane closed the car door and started the engine. In the rearview mirror, he watched Zoe standing alone beneath the massive courthouse arch, the structure gaping behind her like a giant waiting mouth.

His phone screen lit up once more: Prediction Mode: 28.6 Seconds flickered back to life.

He’d won this battle, yet no satisfaction settled in his chest. He knew Zoe would never back down. Her bar license page numbers still jumped endlessly, ticking like a countdown timer to something far more explosive.

The real game—the bomb control phase—was only just starting.

Zoe immediately began gathering every frame of surveillance footage from Kane’s pet shop, determined to trace exactly when the antique bowl first appeared on his premises. She refused to believe a man who’d secured ownership a year before their marriage could possibly be an ordinary nobody.

Kane did not sit idle either. He tasked his team with digging into every detail of Zoe’s late father’s medical records, unearthing shocking hidden secrets no one in the family had ever spoken of.

Their quiet marital asset war had exploded into a full-scale hidden battle of buried family secrets, forged documents, and decades-old lies.

That afternoon at three o’clock, a man in a dark tailored trench coat and shaded sunglasses stepped into Kane’s pet shop, walking straight to his counter without a glance at the animals or antiques.

“The witness you requested has been located,” the mystery man said low, voice guarded. “He’s willing to testify under oath—confirming Zoe Hale’s father attempted to reclaim the porcelain bowl three months before his death.”

Kane lifted his gaze, locking onto the stranger’s hidden eyes behind the lenses.

The man leaned forward slightly, dropping his voice to a dangerous whisper that sent a cold chill through the entire shop:

“But there’s something you never uncovered, Kane. The bowl isn’t just antique property… it’s the locked key to a buried family crime. And Zoe already knows exactly what happens if that key gets unlocked.”