Coming home three days early should have given me the advantage over the traitor inside my organization. Instead, I walked into my own fortified Chicago mansion, heard my seventeen-year-old daughter screaming behind a locked kitchen door, and found the quiet maid I barely noticed digging metal out of her bleeding leg while my youngest child—silent for three years—whispered, “Claire is fixing it.”

By 3:00 AM, the storm had transformed into a sweeping blizzard. Dressed in dark tactical gear, Claire and I drove a heavy black sedan through the empty, snow-slick streets of Chicago toward the Victor Tower—a high-rise glass monolith that served as the nerve center of Victor's empire.

Using the commander’s stolen security codes, we bypassed the underground parking garage checkpoints. We breached the private express elevator, riding it directly to the eighty-fifth floor where Victor’s penthouse suite overlooked the glowing city skyline.

The elevator doors slid open to an immediate wall of gunfire. We rolled out onto the polished granite floor, taking cover behind reinforced marble pillars. Claire threw a flashbang grenade across the floor, blinding the penthouse security detail. We advanced through the blinding white light, executing our maneuvers with seamless precision.

I cleared the left corridor with my shotgun, while Claire moved through the executive offices with her suppressed rifle, cutting down Victor's elite bodyguards before they could even draw their sidearms.

Finally, I kicked open the heavy double doors of the master office. Victor sat behind his sprawling glass desk, his hands trembling as he tried to clear a jam in his gold-plated revolver. When he looked up and saw me standing there—drenched in rain and blood, flanked by a female operator with the eyes of a hawk—his face turned ghost-white.

"Julian... wait," Victor stammered, backing up against the floor-to-ceiling glass window. "We can make a deal! Half of the city's revenue is yours!"

"You targeted my daughters, Victor," I said, stepping forward as Claire covered the door behind me. "There are no deals for men who touch my family."