I pushed him against the brick wall. “Please,” Mason whimpered. “Hunter, you don’t understand. I had to. He made me.”
“Who made you? Your father?”
“Yes! Victor. If I didn’t hold her legs, he would have done the same to me!”
I looked at him. He was twenty-two years old, wearing a watch that cost more than my truck. He had never worked a day in his life, never fought for anything. And he thought fear was an excuse for monstrosity.
“You held her legs,” I repeated. “You felt her fighting. You heard her begging you. ‘Mason, help me.’ That’s what she said, right?”
Mason flinched. “I… I tried to look away.”
“That doesn’t matter. You were part of the equation.”
I zip-tied his hands in front of him. “Where is the warehouse?”
“What warehouse?” He played dumb. A reflex.
I took the hammer out of my belt loop. I didn’t raise it. I just let the heavy steel head rest in my palm. Mason’s eyes locked onto it. He knew exactly what this hammer meant.
“Warehouse 4!” he blurted out. “At the docks, the South Terminal. That’s where the shipment is.”
“What’s in the shipment?”
“Guns. Modified ARs, military surplus. They’re shipping out to a buyer in Sudan on Tuesday.”
“And the others?”
“They went to Dominic’s penthouse. They’re continuing the party.”
Information acquired. I dragged him to my truck and drove him twenty miles out of town to an abandoned grain silo I knew. It was isolated, soundproof, and terrifying at night. I zip-tied him to a support beam.
“You’re leaving me here?” he cried. “I’ll freeze!”
“It’s fifty degrees,” I said. “You’ll be uncomfortable, but you’ll live. Tessa might not. So you sit here and pray she wakes up. Because if she dies, I come back. And I won’t bring water next time.”
I left him screaming into the darkness.
—————–
I returned to the city, but before I could move on the warehouse, my phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number.
I know what you’re doing. I can help. But you need to know the truth about Tessa.
I stared at the screen. Reply: Who is this?
Response: Someone who hates Victor as much as you do. Meet me at the diner on Route 9. Alone.
It was a trap. It had to be. But my instincts told me something else. I turned the truck around.
The diner was a greasy spoon with flickering neon. A woman sat in the back booth, wearing a trench coat and sunglasses at 04:00. She was older, maybe fifty.
“My name is Eleanor,” she said as I sat down. “I was Victor’s personal assistant for twenty years. He fired me last week because I refused to shred the files on Tessa.”
“Why did they do it, Eleanor?” I asked. “Money isn’t enough of a reason for thirty-one hammer strikes.”
Eleanor slid a manila envelope across the table. “Open it.”
Inside was a medical report. It was dated two weeks ago.
Patient: Tessa Hunter. Status: Pregnant.
My heart stopped. The world tilted on its axis.
“Pregnant?”
“She didn’t tell you yet,” Eleanor whispered. “She wanted to surprise you when you came home. She went to Victor that night to tell him she was leaving the family for good. She told him, ‘My child will not grow up around a monster like you.’“
I stared at the paper. A baby. We were having a baby.
“Victor couldn’t handle that,” Eleanor continued. “He wanted to wipe the slate clean. He wanted to kill the baby.”
“Did… did the baby survive?” I asked, my voice cracking.
Eleanor looked down. “The report from the ER said trauma to the abdomen. I don’t know, Hunter.”
I stood up. The rage I felt before was a candle flame. What I felt now was a nuclear explosion.
“Thank you, Eleanor. Go home. Lock your doors.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to finish this. I’m going to kill them all.”
—————
The sun was bleeding into the sky—a bruised purple dawn—when I reached Victor’s estate. The “Fortress,” he called it. Twelve-foot walls, electrified wire, cameras.
I parked in the woods and moved on foot, scaling a massive oak tree that overhung the perimeter wall. I dropped onto the manicured lawn, moving like a ghost from shadow to shadow until I reached the main house.
I peered through the living room window. They were there—the remaining Wolf Pack. Victor, Dominic, Evan, Felix, Grant, Ian, Kyle. They looked exhausted, arguing.
Then, a man in a white lab coat walked into the room. Dr. Sterling. The chief of surgery at St. Jude’s. Why was he here?
I pressed my ear against the glass.
“Complications?” Sterling was saying. “But she is stable for now.”
“And the extraction?” Victor asked. “Successful?”
Sterling nodded. “The C-section was performed immediately upon arrival. The trauma induced labor, but the fetus was viable. Thirty-two weeks, not eight. The report Eleanor saw was old. She was much further along than she told anyone.”
My knees hit the grass. Thirty-two weeks. Eight months. She had been hiding it, wearing loose clothes, protecting him.
“And the child?” Victor asked.
“He is in the neonatal incubator in the basement,” Sterling said. “Healthy. Strong lungs.”
“Good,” Victor said. “My buyer arrives tomorrow. A healthy male heir with clean genetics fetches a high price.”
The world went silent. They hadn’t killed my son. They had stolen him. They beat my wife into a coma to induce labor so they could sell our child.
The mission parameters shifted instantly.
Priority One: Secure the asset (my son).
Priority Two: Eliminate hostiles.
I moved to the basement access doors. I pried the lock and slipped inside. The basement was a fully equipped private medical clinic. And there, in the center, was an incubator.
Inside lay a tiny, wriggling baby boy. He had dark hair. My hair.
“I’m here, buddy,” I whispered, placing a gloved hand on the glass. “Dad’s here.”
I heard footsteps on the stairs.
“Check the levels,” Victor’s voice drifted down. “Dominic, check the generator.”
I hid behind a stack of oxygen tanks. Dominic burst into the room, flashlight sweeping. He walked over to the incubator and tapped on the glass hard.
“Little bastard,” he sneered.
That was it. I stepped out. “Don’t touch him.”
Dominic spun around, reaching for his gun. He was too slow. I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall.
“Shhh,” I whispered. “You’ll wake the baby.”
I squeezed. I crushed his windpipe—not enough to kill instantly, but enough to ensure he wouldn’t breathe without a tube ever again. He slumped to the floor. I took his gun and his phone.
