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.”

“Hunter,” he stammered. “I… I didn’t…”

I grabbed his wrist. I didn’t squeeze hard—just enough to hit the pressure point. I twisted. He gasped, dropping to one knee.

“We need to talk about your sister,” I said softly. “And you’re going to tell me everything, or I’m going to start counting.”

I pulled him into the darkness of the alley. The hunt had officially begun.

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.