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.”

A hail of suppressed gunfire tore through the kitchen. Glass rained down over the marble countertops like deadly diamonds. I grabbed Marcus by the collar and dragged him behind the heavy oak island. Claire was already moving, pulling Ava and little Emma down onto the floor, shielding them with her own body. "Harper, stay down!" I yelled to my middle daughter. She was shaking violently, clutching the flashlight tightly against her chest. The gunfire stopped abruptly, leaving a terrifying, ringing silence in the room. I peeked over the counter and saw dark figures moving across the manicured lawn. They were wearing tactical gear and night-vision goggles. "We need to get to the panic room," I ordered, checking the magazine of my pistol. Claire tied a tight bandage over Ava's fresh stitches. "She cannot run fast enough to make it to the east wing," Claire stated flatly. "I will carry her," I replied, moving to grab my oldest daughter. Suddenly, the entire mansion plunged into absolute darkness. The backup generators did not kick in. The smart-home security system chimed with a computerized, robotic voice. "Perimeter breached, total lockdown initiated." Heavy steel shutters slammed down over the windows and doors, sealing us entirely inside. I cursed under my breath. Only I had the master code to initiate a total lockdown. Someone had remotely hacked my impenetrable network. My phone vibrated in my pocket with an incoming video call. I answered it in the dark, the screen illuminating my face with a harsh white glow. The man smiling on the screen was someone I thought I had buried five years ago.