I came home from a Delta deployment to find my wife in the ICU. Her face… I couldn’t recognize her. The doctor whispered, “Thirty-one fractures. Blunt force trauma. Repeated strikes.” Then I saw them outside her room—her father and his seven sons—smiling like they’d just won something. The detective said, “It’s a family matter. The police can’t touch them.” I looked at the hammer print on her skull and replied, “Good. Because I’m not the police.” “What happened to them… no court could ever judge.”

“Tragedy,” Victor said flatly. “But we will take care of her. Hunter, you have done your duty. You can go back to your base. We have the best doctors money can buy.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

“She’s my daughter!” Victor snapped, his voice rising. “And you are just a husband who is never there. You weren’t there to protect her. I’m handling this.”

I stepped close to him. I was three inches taller than him and carried fifty pounds more muscle than his security guards.

“That’s the problem, Victor,” I whispered so only he could hear. “You’re handling it too well. You don’t look sad. You look inconvenienced.”

Victor’s eye twitched. I looked at the brothers. Seven strong, capable men, yet not a single scratch on any of them. But I noticed something else. Mason. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the floor. His hands were shaking. He was holding a coffee cup, and the liquid inside was rippling.