“I’ll sn@p your arm,” my brother-in-law sneered, throwing a pair of MMA gloves at my feet and threatening to send me to the hospital in front of my terrified little girl. He thought he was facing a helpless mother with no way to defend herself. What he didn’t know was that I was a combat veteran. And he had just awakened a Special Operations major.

I listened carefully through the metal grate as the auctioneer began speaking to the gathered elites.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Project Thunderbird represents the pinnacle of modern biological engineering," the man announced smoothly.

He was a tall, distinguished European man wearing a bespoke suit, completely detached from the cruelty of his words.

"The genetic antibodies mapped in this sequence guarantee absolute immunity to all known chemical nerve agents."

The wealthy buyers murmured in quiet appreciation, completely ignoring the fact that a child was the source.

"The starting bid for the complete, stabilized genome, extracted directly from the primary subject, is one billion dollars."

A heavily scarred man smoking a thick cigar raised a small electronic paddle without hesitation.

"One point five billion," an elegant woman dripping in expensive diamonds casually countered.

They were trading massive fortunes for the right to drain my daughter's blood in a hidden laboratory.

My vision literally tinted red as a furious, uncontrollable adrenaline surged fiercely through my body.

I slowly and silently unscrewed the metal bolts holding the ventilation grate in place.

I could not just shoot them blindly from the ceiling and hope to escape the ensuing lockdown.

I needed to completely destroy their secure servers so the genetic data could never be replicated again.

I checked the schematics Jax had provided and located the primary server room directly beneath the auction floor.

I carefully backed out of the ventilation shaft and dropped back into the quiet underground hallway.

Two armed syndicate guards were standing right in front of the server room's heavy steel security door.

I drew a silenced pistol and fired two rapid, precise shots before they even registered my presence.

They dropped silently to the floor, their body armor completely useless against targeted headshots.

I dragged their heavy bodies into a nearby supply closet and scanned their access card on the door reader.

The heavy door hissed open, revealing massive rows of blinking, heavily cooled data servers.

I pulled three blocks of military-grade C4 plastic explosives from my tactical backpack.

I meticulously wired the explosive charges to the primary mainframe and the backup data clusters.

I set the digital timer for exactly five minutes, ensuring complete and absolute data annihilation.

If they wanted Lily's biological data, they were going to get completely burned to ash trying to keep it.

I stepped back out into the hallway just as the facility's main security klaxons began to blare aggressively.

The red emergency lights bathed the pristine concrete corridors in a violent, flashing crimson glow.

Someone had finally found the guards I had killed at the lower loading bay, and the base was on full lockdown.

When my newborn 'passed away,' my mother-in-law leaned in and said

My Husband Left Me Alone in My Car While I Was in Labor

“You’re Dead When We Get Home,” He Snapped

I dropped the silenced pistol and unslung the heavy, fully automatic assault rifle from my shoulder.

Subtlety was no longer an option, and the silent infiltration phase was officially over.

Chapter 16 - The Devil's Auction