On Christmas morning, my 9-year-old daughter opened a present from her grandfather, my father-in-law. Just seconds later, she let out a terrifying scream, clutching her face and crying that it was burning.

"She’s your granddaughter," I said, taking two slow, deliberate steps onto the dock. The planks groaned beneath my weight, wet with whatever volatile accelerant he had poured from the can. "She carries your name, Harold. She carries your blood."

"That's the problem, isn't it?" Harold smiled—a thin, yellowed sneer that didn't reach his dead eyes. "The blood went thin. Brian took after his mother. Soft. Full of excuses. When I told him to prime the package on Christmas Eve, he swapped the nitric acid for household lye. He thought he was saving her. He thought a little burn would satisfy the debt."

My breath seized in my lungs.

*Brian swapped it.*

The memory hit me with the force of a physical blow—Brian kneeling over Tessa on the living room rug, his hands covered in baking soda, screaming for an ambulance, his face a mask of grief. It hadn't been grief. It had been guilt.

He had known the bomb was coming. He hadn't stopped it; he had just tried to calibrate the mutilation.

"He tried to protect her from you!" I yelled, closing the distance to twenty feet. "He was terrified of you!"

"And look what it earned him," Harold replied coldly. "A hole in the floor. A broken leg. A lifetime of running."

Harold shifted his weight, his grip on Tessa tightening. "Evelyn thought she could leave too. She took the car, took the baby girl, got all the way to the state line before the steering linkage failed. People think iron breaks because it’s old, Claire. Iron breaks because it has impurities. My father taught me that. I tried to teach Brian. Now I have to finish it myself."

He lifted Tessa higher, swinging her out over the black water.

Tessa bit down on his fingers.

Hard.

With all the strength left in her small, terror-fueled body, her teeth sank into the fleshy web between Harold’s thumb and forefinger.

Harold let out a guttural roar of surprise and pain, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second.

"Mommy, shoot!" Tessa shrieked.

I didn't aim for his spine. I aimed for his knee.

The gun roared—a deafening, violent report that shattered the stillness of the lake. The recoil slammed into my wrists, the muzzle flash cutting a bright orange streak through the dusk.

The bullet struck Harold’s right kneecap with a wet, sickening crack.

The old man bellowed, his leg buckling beneath him, his massive frame collapsing onto the slick boards. Tessa slipped from his grasp, hitting the dock with a thud, rolling toward the edge.

"Tessa! Roll to me!" I screamed, lunging forward.

Harold, down on one knee, blood pumping through the torn canvas of his trousers, lunged not for the girl, but for the heavy brass lighter in his chore-coat pocket.

"If the timber burns," he snarled, his face twisted into a mask of demonic fury, "the whole ridge goes with it!"

He flicked the wheel.