My brother-in-law beat me until blood covered my face, my shoulder was dislocated, and his hands tightened around my throat until everything faded into darkness. My sister never tried to stop him. She only looked at me and said, “You should have signed over the house.” I woke in the hospital expecting defeat, only to find them already celebrating outside my room. But when my father’s attorney placed a sealed letter beside my bed, I smiled for the first time, because they had absolutely no idea what my father had left behind for me... and what I was about to take from them.

I stood trapped between a locked door and a massive, heavily armed professional killer.

Marcus chuckled deeply, the sound rumbling in his massive chest like an idling engine.

"Drop the little revolver, Clara, or I will put a bullet straight through your kneecap," he ordered.

I slowly lowered my weapon, letting it fall onto the plush Persian rug with a soft thud.

Marcus stepped closer, the beam of his tactical flashlight blinding me in the dark library.

"Vanessa is a very smart woman, but she is also incredibly cheap," Marcus stated casually.

He explained that he had never intended to actually honor the contract Vanessa had paid him for.

He worked for a much more powerful syndicate, and they had specific plans for this property.

Suddenly, the heavy oak doors of the library were blown completely off their hinges by a massive shotgun blast.

Splinters of wood and brass shrapnel flew violently through the air, striking Marcus in the shoulder.

He roared in pain and spun around, firing blindly into the thick cloud of dust and smoke.

Vanessa stepped through the ruined doorway, holding our father's antique hunting shotgun in her hands.

She pumped a fresh shell into the chamber with a terrifying, mechanical precision.

"Nobody takes my house from me!" Vanessa screamed like an absolute maniac.

She fired a second blast, striking Marcus squarely in the chest and sending his massive body crashing through a wooden bookshelf.

The hitman hit the floor hard, completely unresponsive and bleeding out onto the expensive books.

Vanessa slowly turned her wild, bloodshot eyes toward me.

The recoil of the shotgun had bruised her delicate shoulder, but she didn't seem to feel any pain at all.

"Now it is just you and me, little sister," she whispered, raising the smoking barrel toward my face.

I didn't have anywhere to run, and my weapon was lying on the floor ten feet away.

I closed my eyes and braced myself for the final, deafening blast of the hunting shotgun.

Instead of a gunshot, a brilliant, blinding flash of white light illuminated the entire property outside the windows.

The deafening wail of police sirens pierced the quiet mountain night, echoing off the surface of the dark lake.

A booming voice erupted from a heavy megaphone right outside the front door.

"Vanessa Vance, drop your weapon immediately and exit the house with your hands in the air!" the voice commanded.

“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,”

Vanessa panicked, looking wildly between me and the flashing red and blue lights pouring through the broken windows.

Instead of surrendering, she turned the shotgun around and aimed the barrel directly at her own shoulder.

Chapter 7 - The Midnight Hunt