Marcus and I scrambled up the steps, three at a time. My right arm burned with every stride; the muscle tissue around my shoulder scar hadn’t fully recovered, and pulling myself up the metal handrail tested every ounce of my willpower.

“Up here!” Marcus called out, pushing through the heavy fire door at the top landing.

We stepped onto the upper corridor that overlooked the grand ballroom. From this height, the scene below looked like a battlefield wrapped in red emergency lighting. Guests were being ushered into side rooms while my mother sat frozen in her armchair below, completely motionless, her royal blue dress glowing like an inkblot against the white marble.

“Evan!” I shouted into the dimly lit corridor.

A door slammed at the far end of the hallway—the executive suite reserved for the club’s board members.

“He’s inside,” Marcus said, advancing toward the door. “Be careful. He’s not acting alone. The guy who took those shots from the balcony wasn’t an amateur.”

“Evan doesn’t know how to fire a gun,” I said, keeping my back flush against the wall as we approached the door. “He pays other people to do his dirty work.”

I reached the doorway and kicked it open near the lock.

The door swung inward with a loud crack, revealing a plush, wood-paneled office. Sitting behind a massive mahogany desk was my brother Evan.

He wasn’t holding a weapon. He was staring at three laptop screens, his fingers flying across the keyboards as files transferred at lightning speed.

Standing next to him was a man in a dark tactical suit—the shooter.

“That’s far enough, sister,” Evan said without looking up from his screen. “You always had terrible timing. You should have stayed in the Mediterranean.”

“Cancel the hit on Dr. Vance, Evan,” I demanded, stepping into the room with Marcus right behind me. “It’s over. Mercer has already alerted local authorities.”

Evan laughed—a sharp, nervous sound. “Local authorities? Caroline, do you really think a district police captain can touch Harrington Maritime? We have defense contracts signed by three separate cabinet secretaries. You think a few dead sailors in international waters are going to stop a four-billion-dollar merger?”

“Daniel wasn’t just ‘a few dead sailors’!” Marcus snapped, taking a step forward. “He was my brother!”

The man in the tactical suit raised a suppressed pistol, aiming it directly at Marcus’s chest.

“Move one more inch,” the shooter said, his voice completely flat, “and you join him.”

“Put it down, Vance,” I said, eyeing the mercenary. “The Department of Naval Intelligence already has your name. If you fire that weapon again, there isn’t a safehouse on Earth big enough to hide you.”

The shooter’s hand didn’t waver. But Evan finally stopped typing and looked up at me.

“You think you’re so righteous, don’t you?” Evan spat, his eyes wide and unblinking. “You got your little uniform, your little medals, your noble scar. And what did Dad give me? He gave me eighty-hour work weeks, constant humiliation, and a company drowning in debt because of his terrible investments!”

“So you covered up the defective components?” I asked. “You signed off on those modified guidance chips?”

“I saved the company!” Evan shouted, slamming his hand onto the desk. “If I hadn’t cut those costs, Harrington Maritime would have gone under three years ago! Dad knew! Celeste knew! We all did what was necessary to survive!”

“Not all of us,” I said coldly.

I reached into my pocket, but I didn’t pull out the silver drive.

Instead, I pulled out my phone.

The screen was dark, but a green indicator light was blinking at the top corner—the encrypted voice channel connected directly to Admiral Mercer’s tactical unit below.

“Every word you just said,” I told Evan, “was broadcast to Mercer, his security team, and two federal officers standing in the main lobby.”

Evan’s face went dead white.

“Kill her,” Evan whispered to the shooter. “Kill them both!”

Before the shooter could pull the trigger, Marcus lunged across the desk, grabbing the mercenary’s wrist and forcing the gun skyward.

A muffled gunshot echoed through the room, shattering the decorative mirror on the wall behind us.