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.”

The mansion was eerily quiet now. The remaining mercenaries had fled, realizing that whatever was hunting them in the dark was not human.

I walked up the grand staircase, my combat boots leaving faint bloody footprints on the expensive Persian rugs.

Jax was waiting for me at the end of the second-floor hallway. He was the biggest of the brothers, a massive brute wielding a heavy steel wrench—the exact same tool they had used on Elena.

"You think you're a tough guy?!" Jax roared, charging at me like a freight train, raising the heavy wrench.

I didn't shoot him. I holstered my weapon.

When Jax swung the heavy steel wrench, I ducked under the arc, stepped into his center of gravity, and delivered a devastating palm strike to his solar plexus. The air rushed out of his lungs. Before he could recover, I grabbed his wrist, twisted the wrench out of his hand, and drove my knee into his ribs.

I heard three ribs crack.

Jax collapsed onto the hardwood floor, gasping for air, tears streaming down his face.