SHATTERED TIES ACROSS THE GLASS TOWER

Ethan sprinted toward the house, drawing a concealed automatic handgun from his waistband—a survival instinct he had never truly discarded. He burst through the kitchen door, finding Elena kneeling over Lily behind the thick butcher-block island, her eyes wild with panic.

"The back greenhouse!" Elena whispered, pointing toward the shattered French doors leading to the sunroom.

Ethan moved with quiet, lethal precision. The cold Atlantic wind wailed through the broken panes, fluttering curtains and blowing potted orchids onto the flagstone floor. On the floor lay a heavy steel cylinder, venting a thin trail of sulfurous white smoke.

It wasn't an explosive. It was an encrypted transponder beacon, pulsing with a rhythmic green LED light that synced to satellite frequencies. It was actively transmitting their exact coordinates.

"Someone triangulated our private network," Ethan muttered, his jaw tight as he stepped on the cylinder, crushing the antenna under his boot. "They wanted us to know they found us before they moved in."

Elena stood up, holding Lily close. Lily was remarkably calm, though her small hands trembled as she clutched the dinosaur keychain pinned to her sweater. "Daddy, is it the bad men from the tall building again?"

"No, baby," Ethan lied gently, though the truth was likely far worse. Mark Davies was dead, and Arthur Vance was locked in a federal penitentiary awaiting trial. This was someone from outside the corporate boardroom—someone rooted in the dark foundation upon which the Pierce empire had originally been built.

Ethan's burner phone, buried inside an antique ceramic jar on the counter, suddenly vibrated. The caller ID displayed an unlisted alphanumeric sequence.

Ethan answered, pressing the receiver to his ear without speaking.

"Hello, little brother," a low, gravelly female voice spoke through the speaker. "Did you really think our father left everything to you without paying off the syndicate that bought his first fleet of tankers?"

Ethan's blood ran ice-cold. Victoria Pierce. His older half-sister, disinherited thirty years ago and presumed dead in a Mediterranean yacht explosion.

"Victoria," Ethan breathed.