“Your wife betrayed you while you were deployed,” my mother sneered. My brother laughed as I stormed into the bedroom and ripped back the blanket. But instead of another man, I found my wife trembling, her body covered in bruises. “They took everything,” she whispered. “They threatened me into silence.” My blood turned to ice. I quietly made one phone call. By sunrise, my mother and brother would discover exactly who they had underestimated...

"Well, well, well," Ryan drawled, pushing himself off the workbench and adjusting the collar of his expensive, rain-soaked jacket. He looked thinner, his skin pale from years behind bars, but the same snide, arrogant smirk that had infuriated me since childhood still twisted his lips. "Look who decided to show up. Right on schedule, just like a good little soldier."

"How the hell are you out of a federal penitentiary?" I demanded, keeping my pistol locked dead-center on Viktor Gault’s chest, though every fiber of my being wanted to empty the magazine into my brother’s skull.

"Good lawyers, expensive bribes, and a few powerful friends who realized that keeping the Blackwood Trust locked away benefits nobody," Ryan laughed, spreading his arms theatrically. "Did you really think a concrete cell could hold me forever, Christian? Mother always said you were brilliant in the field, but hopelessly naive about how the real world works. Money buys locks, and money picks them, too."

Emily’s eyes met mine, shining with unshed tears, but her expression was one of fierce, unyielding relief. *“Christian, don’t listen to them,”* she whispered, her voice shaking but resolute. *“They want the biometric override. They need my thumbprint on the digital transfer protocol. Don't give it to them.”*

"Shut her up, Viktor," Ryan snapped, nodding toward the enforcer.

The knife pressed a fraction of an inch closer to Emily’s throat, drawing a single bead of crimson against her pale skin. My grip on the pistol tightened until my fingers ached.

"Drop the weapon, Christian," Viktor spoke for the first time, his voice a gravelly, emotionless rasp. "Unless you want your wife’s head rolling across this dusty floor before you can even twitch your trigger finger."

In tactical scenarios, you are trained to evaluate leverage. Right now, they had all the physical leverage. But in psychological warfare, leverage is a fluid currency.

"You think you’ve won, Ryan?" I said, my voice dropping into a dangerous, icy cadence that caused my brother’s smug smile to falter slightly. "You think breaking out of a federal pen and dragging my wife out here makes you a kingpin? Look outside. The local police aren't coming. The federal marshals aren't coming. But Marcus is standing outside with a heavy-caliber rifle, and he has zero patience for family reunions."

Ryan’s eyes flickered nervously toward the shattered doorway for a fraction of a second—a fatal mistake.

In that microsecond of distraction, I didn't aim at Viktor. I shifted my barrel three inches to the left and fired a single, deafening round into the rusted metal winch hanging directly above Ryan’s head.

The heavy steel cable snapped with a sound like a thunderclap, sending a two-hundred-pound iron pulley plummeting downward, crashing directly onto Ryan’s shoulder and sending him sprawling into a stack of wooden crates with a shriek of agony.

Viktor cursed in Russian, his attention snapping away from Emily for a split second as he tried to adjust his knife to cover the new threat.