After seven months serving overseas with the Marines, I returned home two days ahead of schedule, hoping to surprise my wife.

Brock spun around with unnatural speed for a man his size, swinging the heavy iron crowbar with bone-crushing force.

I didn't try to block it.

I ducked beneath the arc of the swing, feeling the wind of the heavy steel graze my hair, and drove my combat boot directly into his left kneecap.

The joint popped with a sickening crunch.

Brock roared in fury, stumbling back, but he didn't go down. He was high on adrenaline and painkillers—a professional killer who had survived dozen combat zones. He dropped the crowbar and reached for a heavy combat knife sheathed at his chest.

I dropped my empty rifle, stepped inside his guard, and we collided like two freight trains.

He slammed me into the stainless steel wall of the freezer. The breath exploded from my lungs. His massive hands clamped around my throat, his thumbs digging into my windpipe, his scarred face inches from mine, grinning through yellow teeth.

"You should have stayed in the desert, boy!" Brock snarled, his grip tightening like an iron vise. "Your wife cried like a dog before I broke her!"

Rage—pure, white-hot, and blinding—surged through every nerve in my body.

I didn't pull at his hands.

I drove my thumbs directly into his eye sockets.

Brock shrieked, his grip faltering as he recoiled from the blinding pain.

The moment his hands slipped, I grabbed the back of his shaved head with both hands and drove his face down into my rising knee.

His nose exploded inward.

He staggered back, blind, blood streaming down his face, swinging wildly.

I picked up the iron crowbar from the floor.

The heavy steel whistling through the air ended the fight in three seconds.

One strike to his collarbone. One strike to his ribs.

Brock crashed to the freezing floor of the meat locker, gasping for air through a crushed windpipe, completely immobilized.

I stood over him, chest heaving, the crowbar dripping red onto the concrete.

"That was for Sophia," I breathed.

I stepped over his broken body, pulled my knife, and cut the ropes binding Samuel to the chair.

Samuel slumped forward into my arms, shivering violently. "Ethan... you came..."

"Told you," I whispered, pulling off my combat jacket and wrapping it around his emaciated shoulders. "Marines don't leave people behind."

Samuel looked at Brock, then looked up at me with tears in his old eyes. "Vance is at his private penthouse at the harbor... Henderson is with him... they’re wiping the servers right now..."

"No," a voice said from the doorway.

I spun around, bringing my weapon up.

Frank Ramos stood in the entrance of the freezer. In his hand was a high-gain military satellite relay terminal.

"Sophia’s micro-SD card," Frank said, a grim smile spreading across his face. "I finished decrypting the partition ten minutes ago. It didn't just have ledger entries, Ethan."

"What did it have?"

"Sophia turned her home office webcam into a hidden surveillance feed before they arrived," Frank said. "She recorded the entire break-in. We have Brock’s face. We have Richard Carter’s voice. And we have Marcus Vance on speakerphone giving the direct execution order."

Frank held up his phone.