I sat motionless while my own mother looked a judge in the eye and swore that I had never served my country. She called my scars fake, claimed I had bought my medals online, and insisted my entire military career was nothing more than an elaborate lie. The courtroom believed every word—but while they celebrated my downfall, I was silently counting the minutes until the people who could destroy their lies walked through those doors.

The metal walls of the transport van rattled as the vehicle sped away from the downtown courthouse.

Caleb kept the barrel of the suppressed pistol pressed firmly against the center of my forehead.

He wore an arrogant, mocking grin that made my blood boil beneath my skin.

I quickly realized the two officers driving the van in the front cab were not actual law enforcement.

They were private mercenaries hired directly by my family to ensure I never made it to a real jail cell.

Caleb proudly confessed that he had manipulated the entire trial just to legally strip me of my massive corporate inheritance.

He boasted about hacking the Pentagon archives using our late father's proprietary defense technology.

I asked him quietly what he planned to do with the company now that he had successfully stolen it.

He laughed coldly and admitted he was selling Bennett Meridian Systems to a foreign syndicate by midnight.

He explained that the lucrative deal required all original board members to be officially deceased.

He slowly pulled back the hammer of the pistol, preparing to pull the trigger right then and there.

I did not panic, because I had spent a decade surviving highly classified interrogations in hostile territories.

I waited for the exact moment the heavy van hit a deep pothole on the neglected city streets.

The sudden jolt threw Caleb slightly off balance for a mere fraction of a second.

I brutally slammed my handcuffed wrists upward, catching his gun hand and twisting it violently toward the ceiling.

The suppressed weapon fired a silent round straight through the metal roof of the speeding van.

I drove my knee viciously into his chest, knocking the breath completely out of his lungs.

The pistol dropped to the grated floor, and I kicked it smoothly out of his desperate reach.

The fake guards in the front cab heard the intense struggle and immediately slammed on the harsh brakes.

The van careened violently to the side and crashed heavily into a concrete barricade.

I was thrown hard against the steel wall, but my combat instincts took over instantly.

I grabbed the dropped pistol, brought my handcuffed arms awkwardly around my legs to the front of my body, and aimed at the partition.

The rear doors of the van were suddenly ripped open from the outside by heavily armed men.

I fully expected to see Caleb's hired mercenaries ready to finish the bloody job.

Instead, the blinding daylight revealed a tactical extraction team wearing unmarked black tactical gear.

“Which daughter is yours?” should have been a harmless question

The first wineglass shattered at 8:07 p.m

The moment the mafia boss’s wife called me “an illiterate servant,”

The lead operator pulled off his heavy combat helmet and stared at me.

It was my defense attorney.

Chapter 3 - The Transport Ambush