If we don’t get them out of this freezing sleet immediately, the frost will take both of those innocent babies!” Kaelen barked, his voice barely cutting through the howling wind beneath the rusted Boston overpass.

As Julian lay ruined on the stage, the sudden sound of heavy automatic gunfire erupted from the grand foyer of the Quincy Ballroom.

The crystal chandeliers overhead swayed violently as heavy caliber rounds shattered the soaring glass dome of the atrium.

Five hundred elite guests shrieked in terror, diving beneath banquet tables as smoke grenades filled the room with dense, choking white fog.

Anton Voronin’s Montreal cartel hit squad had arrived to collect their bounty.

Thirty heavily armed mercenaries in tactical gear poured through the shattered entrances, assault rifles blazing as they moved in a coordinated assault toward the stage.

“Kill Mercer! Grab the woman and the babies!” a heavily accented voice bellowed through the smoke.

Julian’s weeping stopped instantly, a twisted, maniacal grin spreading across his bloodstained face as he looked up from the floor.

“You’re too late, Mercer!” Julian laughed hysterically.

“Voronin is here to finish the job! You’re all going to die in this room!”

Silas Mercer didn't flinch.

He didn't seek cover.

He stepped directly in front of me and my daughters, his towering frame forming an impenetrable human fortress against the gunfire.

“Kaelen, initiate Sector Nine protocols,” Silas commanded smoothly into his radio earpiece.

“Neutralize all hostile targets.”

Suddenly, the heavy iron service doors surrounding the entire ballroom slammed shut with a deafening hydraulic thud, trapping the cartel mercenaries inside a sealed kill box.

From the elevated catwalks and decorative balconies above, fifty Mercer elite tactical snipers opened fire with pinpoint, suppressed accuracy.

Muzzle flashes illuminated the dense smoke like strobes of lightning.

Within sixty seconds, every single Montreal cartel mercenary was dropped to the marble floor, their weapons clattering uselessly against the tiles.

Anton Voronin, the feared Russian kingpin, was pinned to the floor at the base of the stage by Kaelen’s heavy combat boot, a red laser sight centered directly between his eyes.

The smoke cleared slowly, revealing the absolute, uncontested dominance of the Mercer syndicate.

Not a single innocent guest had been touched.

Not a single scratch had fallen upon my daughters.

Silas slowly lowered his weapon, turned around, and looked down at me with calm, unwavering certainty.

“The room is secure, Elena,” Silas said softly.

I looked at the bodies of the assassins who had come to slaughter my family, and then down at Julian, whose face was now frozen in pure, unadulterated horror.