The first thing I saw when I opened the mansion door after eight weeks undercover was not the pink birthday decorations I had ordered for my daughter.

Marcus backed away from the edge of the gantry, his silver revolver shaking in his hand as Damian stepped onto the catwalk, his boots ringing out like death bells against the iron grating.

“Stay back, Damian! I swear to God I’ll put a hole in your chest!” Marcus stammered, sweat beading on his forehead despite the freezing wind.

“You had your chance, Marcus,” Damian said, walking forward with slow, terrifying deliberation. “You touched my estate. You threatened federal assets on my ground. And above all, you forgot the cardinal rule.”

“What rule?” Marcus shrieked.

“Never bring violence to a father’s home.”

Marcus whipped his arm up, aiming directly at Damian's head.

I didn't wait. From my vantage point across the container stacks, I raised my pistol, aimed past Damian's shoulder, and fired.

The bullet struck Marcus’s wrist with a sickening crack. The silver revolver slipped from his shattered fingers, clattering loudly against the metal gantry before tumbling down to the concrete floor below.

Marcus screamed, clutching his bleeding hand and dropping to his knees.

Damian walked up, stood over him for a long, quiet second, and then delivered a single, devastating right hook that knocked Marcus out cold.

The warehouse fell dead silent.

I climbed down from the container stacks, my breath pluming in the cold air, and walked across the floor to join Damian on the gantry.

“Well,” Damian said, wiping a smear of soot from his cheek and looking down at the unconscious traitor. “That takes care of the internal audit.”

I holstered my weapon, letting out a long, shuddering breath that felt like expelling two months of poison from my lungs.

“My handler at the Bureau is going to have a field day with these shipping manifests,” I said, kicking a ledger case near Marcus’s feet. “The entire syndicate network is exposed on these drives. Every offshore account, every money-laundering shell company.”

Damian looked at me, his dark eyes softening in the industrial gloom. “And what about you, Agent Hart? What happens to us now that your undercover operation is officially over?”

“That,” I said, stepping closer to him, “depends entirely on whether you have any pink birthday decorations left at home.”

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My daughter dumped her wedding cake over my head and called me a burden—...

$I stepped down from a classified military transport and headed directly to the ICU, where my wife was lying with twenty-seven broken bones and a fractured skull. Outside her hospital room, her mother and six sisters stood smiling as though they were waiting for lunch to arrive. The detective assigned to her case leaned in and whispered, "Captain, this family practically controls the entire county." I stared through the glass at my wife's bruised and swollen face before answering, "Good. Because my authority extends far beyond this county."$