HER STEPMOTHER THREW A 3-YEAR-OLD GIRL OFF A PRIVATE ISLAND INTO THE OCEAN! Her father jumped into the raging waves to save her, but when they reached shore, the little girl pointed at a fleeing speedboat and whispered something that made his blood run cold. What she revealed next exposed a terrifying secret about her dead mother!

The blast of the helicopter’s twin turbines rattled the chalet’s rafters, shaking dust and splintered wood from the ceiling. Marcus pushed my hands away as I tried to apply a tourniquet to his abdominal wound.

"Stop wasting gauze, Daniel," Marcus hissed, his teeth red with blood. "I've been dead since the day I let Claire take that assignment three years ago. This is my debt. Pay it forward."

"Marcus, talk to me—what assignment?" I demanded, gripping his shoulder. "What didn't you tell me?"

Marcus looked at me with fading, haunted eyes. "Your wife didn't find the Black Sun by accident. I sent her in. I was the handler for Aegis Red before Julian bought the board. Claire was my deep-cover agent."

The revelation struck me like a physical blow. The world seemed to stop spinning. The mentor who had trained me, the man who had stood by my family, had placed my wife directly in the monster’s jaws.

"You used her," I choked out, betrayal burning hotter than the gunfire outside.

"To save you!" Marcus gasped, grabbing my collar with trembling, blood-slicked fingers. "Julian had a kill contract on you, Daniel! Claire volunteered to infiltrate their inner circle to erase your file! She gave herself up so you could raise Lily in peace!"

Before I could answer, a loud, amplified voice boomed from the hovering gunship, cutting through the blizzard:

*“Daniel Mercer. Step outside. The bloodline returns to the Black Sun, or we level this mountain.”*

Down on the lake, the Zodiac’s engine suddenly cut out.

I lunged to the broken loft window, looking down through the mist. The small inflatable boat was drifting dead in the water, fifty yards from the shore. Arthur was standing at the bow, his hands raised, holding Lily tightly behind his back.

A sleek black stealth cutter had emerged from the alpine fog, its mounted heavy machine gun trained directly on my daughter.

"They played us," I whispered, the cold reality sinking in. "They pushed us here intentionally. They wanted Arthur to bring Lily to the open water."

Marcus coughed violently, dragging himself toward the edge of the window frame. "The basement... beneath the floorboards... Arthur kept an old World War II anti-tank launcher in the weapons locker. Take it. Save your girl."

I looked at Marcus one last time. There was no time for anger. No time for retribution. Only the mission. Only Lily.

"Live long enough to see me kill them, Marcus," I said.

"Give 'em hell, kid," he rasped, sliding another magazine into his rifle and turning back to the window to lay down suppression fire.

I dove down the stairs, sprinting into the basement. I tore the padlock off the rusted steel footlocker in the corner. Inside, greased in heavy cosmoline, lay a Swedish Carl Gustaf 84mm recoilless rifle and a single high-explosive round.

I loaded the heavy ordnance into the tube with a metallic slam, hoisted the twenty-pound launcher onto my shoulder, and kicked through the lakeside exit door into the freezing storm.

The icy water rushed over my tactical boots as I stepped onto the wooden dock.

Out on the lake, the commander of the stealth cutter stood on the foredeck, holding a megaphone. He was a towering man in black naval fatigues, a bionic ocular implant glowing faint red beneath his tactical hood.

"Throw the child over, old man!" the commander yelled across the water. "Her mother belonged to us. Her blood belongs to us!"

I raised the Carl Gustaf, aligning the crosshairs directly with the cutter’s waterline engine bay.

"Not today, you son of a bitch," I whispered.