A starving dog nearly tore into me when I approached an eight-year-old girl sleeping beside a dumpster—but the child wasn’t hiding from me. She had been sent to find me, the most feared man in the city, and what she pulled from beneath her sweater connected her to the only woman I had ever loved—and to a man I had watched die six years ago.

Julian looked like a shadow of the boy I had raised.

His face was gaunt, his skin a sickly, translucent grey, covered in sweat and dark bruises. Dozens of wires and transparent tubes ran from his temples, arms, and neck into a massive black computer rack that hummed with terrifying power. His chest was heaving erratically, his body convulsing in subtle, violent twitches as high-voltage electrical currents pulsed through the leads attached to his head.

Standing beside the table, dressed in a pristine white lab coat over a dark suit, was Arthur Sterling.

Elena's father looked older, his hair silver, his face lined with bitter, ruthless ambition. He held a tablet, watching the neural wave readouts spike on the monitors with clinical fascination.

"Increase the voltage by fifteen percent," Sterling ordered the lead technician calmly. "We're reaching the core encrypted sectors of his memory bank. He can handle another pulse."

"Sir," the technician warned, his hands hovering over the controls. "His heart rate is at 190. Another pulse could trigger a massive stroke. He won't survive it."

"He doesn't need to survive it," Sterling replied coldly. "He just needs to hold together for three more minutes until the offshore routing numbers download. Do it."

I didn't wait another second.

I unpinned two thermal grenades from my vest, popped the levers, and tossed them through the open elevator doors into the center of the laboratory guard station.

BOOM! BOOM!

A blinding flash of magnesium fire and pressure waves erupted through the server room. The explosion tore three guards to pieces, shattered the computer terminals, and filled the subterranean vault with thick, black smoke and white-hot fire.

Alarm sirens shrieked through the bunker, red emergency lights flashing violently against the concrete walls.

"Contact! We have an intruder in Sub-Level 3!" a guard screamed into his comms before I put a burst of three rounds through his chest.

I moved through the smoke like a demon unleashed from hell.

The remaining five guards tried to form a defensive line around the glass operating room, but they were blind in the smoke. I used thermal optics, picking them off one by one with cold, lethal precision. A round through the helmet. A burst to the throat. A combat knife driven upward beneath a ballistic vest into a heart.

In ninety seconds, the room was quiet except for the blare of the alarm sirens and the crackle of burning electronics.

I walked up to the reinforced glass wall of the operating room.

Inside, Sterling had grabbed a sidearm from his technician's belt. He stood behind Julian's convulsing body, aiming the gun at the glass door, his face pale with sudden, terrifying realization.

"Who are you?!" Sterling roared over the sound of the sirens. "Identify yourself!"

I stepped up to the glass door, raised my heavy combat boot, and kicked the reinforced latch with enough force to shear the steel bolts right out of the frame.

The door slammed open. I stepped inside the operating room, lowering my rifle, allowing the red emergency light to illuminate my face.

Sterling backed up a step, his gun shaking in his hand. "Victor... Vane?"

"Arthur," I said, my voice dropping into a register that made the glass walls vibrate. "You look old."

"You... you're dead!" Sterling gasped. "Marcus told me you were gone!"

"Marcus was wrong about a lot of things," I said, taking a slow step toward him. "He's dead now. And so is every man you sent to that alley tonight."

Sterling’s eyes filled with venomous hatred. "That girl... she was my granddaughter! She carried my blood! Julian stole her from me! He stole my daughter, he stole my money—"

"Julian didn't steal Elena," I interrupted, my eyes burning with pure fire. "She ran from you because you're a monster who treats human beings like bank accounts. And Maya isn't your granddaughter. She's my family."

Sterling snarled and raised his pistol to pull the trigger.

I didn't bother shooting him. I stepped inside the line of fire, grabbed his wrist, and twisted it until the bones in his forearm shattered with a horrific wet crunch. Sterling screamed in agony, dropping the weapon. I grabbed him by his neck, lifted his six-foot frame off the ground, and slammed him back-first against the heavy steel computer rack.

The metal frame crumpled under the force of the impact. Sterling fell to the floor, gasping for breath, coughing blood, his arm hanging at a grotesque angle.