At 5 in the morning, police found my five-month-pregnant daughter bleeding at a freezing bus stop. "Her husband and his mother beat her," the doctor told me quietly. "She and the baby may not survive the night." For a few seconds, my heart seemed to stop. Her wealthy, arrogant husband thought he could commit murder and walk away without consequences. What he never knew was that I had a past he had never once cared enough to ask about. I didn't cry. I didn't plead. I made one phone call. By the following day, his mansion would be dangerously close to becoming a graveyard.

The Harringtons were not going down without blood. Arrogance when backed into a corner turns into rabid animal violence.

As I made my way to the hospital’s basement level to meet Marcus’s transport, the lights flickered and died. Emergency red lamps clicked on with an ominous hum, casting long, bloody shadows down the concrete corridor. The industrial freight elevator suddenly ground to a shuddering halt between the sub-basement and the service dock.

The Harringtons hadn't waited for the legal process. Garrett had used his remaining liquid black-market accounts to hire what he thought was an elite cleanup crew: four private military contractors, former disgraced private security operators who operated in the shadows of the city's private estates.

The overhead service hatch of the elevator groaned.

I didn't reach for cover; there was none in a six-by-eight steel box. I drew both SIG Sauers, tilted my head, and listened to the scrape of boots on the elevator roof.

Two flashbang grenades dropped through the ceiling grate.

I didn't close my eyes. I didn't turn away. I stepped directly beneath the falling canisters, kicked the first mid-air back toward the open roof hatch, and drove the heavy heel of my boot over the second, smothering the concussive blast with my own body weight and the ballistic plate concealed beneath my canvas jacket.

*BANG.*

The muffled explosion rattled my ribs, but the second grenade detonated above the roof, right in the faces of the two men preparing to rappel down. Screams of disorientation echoed through the shaft.

I didn't wait. I raised both pistols toward the thin aluminum ceiling and fired six controlled double-taps in a circular spread.

Blood immediately dripped through the perforated ceiling panels. A heavy body crashed through the weakened grate, landing dead at my feet, an automatic submachine gun clattering across the floor.

The elevator doors were forced open from the outside with a hydraulic crowbar. Two more contractors stood on the basement dock, night-vision goggles lowered, assault rifles raised.

"Clear the—" one shouted.

I was already moving. I slid across the blood-slicked elevator floor, staying beneath their line of fire. My first shot took the point man through his unarmored inner thigh, severing the femoral artery. As he buckled, I used his falling torso as a human shield, firing three rounds into the second contractor's exposed throat and chin.

In less than twelve seconds, the corridor was silent again, save for the hum of the emergency generator and the wet, dying wheezes of the contractor on the floor.

I stepped over the bodies and knelt beside the point man. He was clutching his leg, blood pumping through his fingers, his eyes wide with the realization that he was minutes from cardiac arrest.

"Who cleared the hospital security grid?" I asked, pressing the hot suppressor of my pistol against the bridge of his nose.

"Garrett..." the man gasped, choking on his own saliva. "He... he said it was twenty grand each to unplug the girl... and drop her body in the furnace. He said... his mother was waiting at the country club... with the cash..."

"Did Garrett give you that order directly?"

"Yes! In the club parking lot... an hour ago! He had the silver club in his trunk... he laughed about it... he said she was too stupid to live..."

I pulled out my phone, pressed stop on the voice recorder, and dialed Marcus.