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.”

“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.