Coming home three days early should have given me the advantage over the traitor inside my organization. Instead, I walked into my own fortified Chicago mansion, heard my seventeen-year-old daughter screaming behind a locked kitchen door, and found the quiet maid I barely noticed digging metal out of her bleeding leg while my youngest child—silent for three years—whispered, “Claire is fixing it.”

"Drop your weapons, or your entire bloodline ends right now," Thomas ordered coldly. I immediately threw my rifle onto the floor, falling to my knees in total defeat. Claire placed her shotgun on the carpet, raising her hands in the air. "You always were weak when it came to family," Thomas mocked, pulling a silver pistol from his jacket. He walked out from behind the desk, aiming the weapon directly at my forehead. "Any last words, brother?" I looked up at him with tears burning my eyes. "You forgot to check the windows," I whispered softly. Thomas frowned in confusion. Suddenly, a brilliant red laser dot appeared directly over his heart. Before Thomas could even pull the trigger, the massive glass window behind him completely shattered. A high-caliber sniper bullet tore through the room and struck Thomas squarely in the chest. He collapsed instantly, dead before he ever hit the expensive carpet. I spun around in shock and realized Claire was holding a small remote detonator. She had rigged a remote sniper rifle on the adjacent rooftop before we even entered the building. "Tell your man at the clinic to stand down, or I blow the explosive vest I strapped to Doctor Vance," Claire barked into Thomas's radio. The masked man on the screen immediately dropped his weapon and ran away in terror. I fell back onto the floor, laughing and crying at the exact same time. Within hours, loyal men flooded back to my side, and my empire was completely restored. I brought my daughters safely back to a newly secured mansion, wrapping them in a massive hug. Emma looked up at me with bright, happy eyes and clearly said, "I love you, Daddy." Claire agreed to stay as the permanent head of my family's security team. Everything was finally perfect, and the nightmare was truly over. Three weeks later, I sat in my office decrypting Thomas's private files to clean up his loose ends. I found the original digital contract Thomas used to hire Claire six weeks ago. My blood turned to absolute ice when I looked at the encrypted signature at the bottom of the page. The employer who paid for the hit was not my brother Thomas at all. The bank account belonged to Evelyn Vale, my beloved wife who supposedly died in a car bomb three years ago. She was still alive, and she was the one trying to slaughter our entire family.