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.”

OnlineImage GalleriesFinally, Grant and Ian returned from outside. They saw me standing over their broken father. They saw the FBI alerts flooding Dominic’s phone I had thrown on the floor.

“It’s over,” I said. “The money is gone. The evidence is public. You have nothing.”

I walked out into the snow as the police lights crested the hill. I didn’t run. I just walked away, leaving them to the law.

———–
Three days later, I stood in the  hospital room. Tessa’s eyes were open.

“They’re gone,” I told her softly. “All of them. Victor is in prison. The brothers are facing life.”

“And…?” she whispered, her eyes searching.

“And Leo is safe.”

Eleanor walked in, holding our son. She placed him in my arms. I sat beside Tessa, and for the first time, her hand squeezed mine back.

A federal agent, Special Agent Ren, visited an hour later. She offered me a job. “We could use someone with your… skill set.”