Instead, I found broken furniture, bleach in the air, and dark stains someone had tried to scrub from our kitchen floor.

"You hit her, didn't you?" I asked, my voice dangerously low, my body coiled like a steel spring.

Richard’s face twitched. "It was an accident! She wasn't supposed to be here that night! She was supposed to be at her apartment in the city! I came to get those files before Vance’s men swept the place!"

"You tased your own daughter, Richard!" I roared, taking a half-step forward.

"Stay back!" Richard yelled, raising the gun until the front sight was lined up between my eyes. "She wouldn't give me the drive! She pulled a kitchen knife on me, Ethan! She was going to ruin everything I built! Forty years in the judiciary, forty years of service... and she was going to throw it all away because of some stupid moral crusade!"

"She was doing her duty," I spat. "Something a crooked bastard like you wouldn't understand."

Richard let out a harsh, bitter laugh. "Duty? You think the world runs on duty, Corporal? You think this city functions because of clean hands and speeches? The money from Pier 42 paid for her college! It paid for this damn house! It paid for the ring on her finger!"

"And what did it pay Vance to scrub the kitchen?" I countered, slowly shifting my weight to my back foot, measuring the distance between us—eight feet. A trained shooter could bridge eight feet in less than half a second, but Richard was seventy years old and shaking with panic.

"Vance is a contractor," Richard said, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "He handled the staging. We took her to 4th and Elm, made it look like a street mugging. I gave the hospital instructions to keep her under heavy sedation until... until the political situation resolved."

"Until she died of complications," I corrected, the horror of his plan dawning on me. "You were going to let her die in that coma, weren't you? To protect your offshore accounts."

Richard’s eyes welled with tears, but his grip on the weapon tightened. "She gave me no choice, Ethan! She wouldn't listen to reason! And now... now you've forced my hand too."

"You really think you can shoot a Marine in his own study and walk away, Richard?"

"Vance is waiting outside," Richard said, a cold, desperate smile spreading across his face. "By tomorrow morning, the story will be simple: Ethan Walker came home from deployment suffering from severe PTSD, attacked his father-in-law over a family dispute, and was regretfully neutralized by responding officers. The media will eat it up."

It was a clean narrative. Simple. Easy for a former judge to sell to a coroner and a grand jury.

Except for one detail.

"You forgot one thing, Richard," I said softly.

He blinked. "What?"

"I don't play by courtroom rules."

I lunged forward.

Richard pulled the trigger.

POW!

The shot cracked through the quiet room, the bullet grazing my left shoulder, tearing through my leather jacket and burning the flesh beneath.

Path of least resistance—I ignored the pain, grabbed the barrel of his pistol with my left hand, twisting it upward, while my right fist drove into his throat with full military force.

Richard let out a wet gagging sound, his eyes bulging as the gun was ripped from his grip. He stumbled backward, crashing into the mahogany desk, knocking over a brass lamp before collapsing onto the floorboards, clutching his neck, gasping for air.

I stood over him, holding his silenced weapon, my shoulder dripping blood onto the carpet.