I returned from a Delta deployment and walked straight into the ICU. My wife lay there—so battered I barely recognized her. The doctor lowered his voice. “Thirty-one fractures. Severe blunt trauma. Repeated blows.”

Marcus Thorne arrived at his luxury real estate office the next morning expecting to rule his corrupt empire.

Instead, he found a message.

When Marcus unlocked his mahogany doors, he froze. Sitting perfectly in the center of his expensive leather desk chair was a heavy steel wrench. The metal was stained with dried blood. Pinned beneath the wrench was a single photograph of Julian, bound, weeping, and broken in the nightclub.

Written in black marker across the photo were three words: I am coming.

My burner phone buzzed from the rooftop across the street, where I was watching his office through the scope of a sniper rifle. I had planted a listening device in the office hours ago.

"Find him!" Marcus roared through my earpiece, screaming at Dante, who had just rushed into the room. "He crippled your brother! He left him for the feds with the ledgers!"

"He’s one man, Dad," Dante growled, pacing like an enraged bull. "He’s a grunt. I’ll take Silas and Roman. We’ll go to his house and finish what we started with Elena. We’ll burn his whole world down."