A ONE-YEAR-OLD GIRL RAN SCREAMING AS HER STEPMOTHER CHASED HER WITH A BASEBALL BAT! Her mother arrived just seconds before disaster struck. But when the little girl opened her tiny fist, the USB inside made her father turn pale—and her stepmother tremble in terror!

A deafening, pressurized hiss erupted from the ceiling vents throughout the entire grand rotunda.

Massive plumes of dense, white Halon gas blasted downward with the force of a hurricane. The fire-suppression chemical, designed to eliminate oxygen instantly to smother chemical fires, turned the rotunda into an impenetrable, blinding fog of white mist within three seconds.

“Fire! Blind fire!” Vance roared, coughing violently as the oxygen was ripped from his lungs.

The mercenaries opened fire in panic.

*RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!*

Muzzle flashes strobed through the dense white chemical smoke like miniature lightning strikes. Bullets chewed into marble pillars, shattered antique mirrors, and tore priceless oil paintings into confetti. But the mercenaries were firing blind, their lungs burning, their eyes watering profusely as the Halon displaced the air.

Harrison dropped instantly to the floor. Clara was already down, her jacket pulled over Lily’s face, crawling on hands and knees beneath the heavy fog where the remaining breathable air hovered inches above the cold marble.

Harrison moved through the white smoke like a ghost born of vengeance.

He didn't fire blindly. He tracked the muzzle flashes.

Emerging from the mist beside the first mercenary, Harrison drove the butt of his pistol into the man’s throat, sweeping his legs out from under him. As the second mercenary turned, Harrison fired two point-blank rounds into his tactical vest, dropping him instantly.

The Halon fog began to clear through the shattered terrace doors, swept away by the howling storm winds outside.

Through the thinning mist, Harrison saw Julian Vance sprinting toward the terrace, clutching a black leather briefcase, having abandoned his mercenaries to die.

And then Harrison heard the scream.

“HARRISON!”

Harrison spun around.

The Halon had cleared from the base of the grand staircase.

Evelyn was standing there. Her face was streaked with blood, soot, and wild, unhinged insanity.

In her trembling hands, she held the fallen Glock.

And the barrel was pressed directly against the temple of little Lily.

Clara was on her knees five feet away, held at gunpoint by the last surviving, bleeding mercenary. Clara’s hands were clawing at the floor, her voice a shattered, weeping wail of pure agony: “Please! Evelyn, please! Take me! Kill me! Don't hurt my baby! She’s just a baby!”

Lily was crying silently, her tiny body trembling, her eyes fixed on Harrison. “Dada...”

Harrison froze. Every drop of blood in his body turned to liquid nitrogen. The pistol in his hand felt like lead.

“Drop the gun, Harry!” Evelyn shrieked, her finger twitching erratically on the trigger. Her eyes were completely gone—drowned in the psychotic abyss of a woman who had lost everything and wanted only to drag the world down into hell with her. “Drop it, or I paint this staircase with her brains! DROP IT!”

Harrison slowly bent his knees. He placed the Sig Sauer gently on the marble floor. He raised both hands, his palms open, his chest aching with a terror no corporate battle, no poison, and no bullet could ever induce.

“Evelyn,” Harrison said, his voice dropping to a low, pleading whisper. “Look at me. Look at me, not her. You want the money. You want the bearer bonds. They’re in the vault. Three hundred million. I will give you the biometric codes. I will give you the offshore routing numbers. You can walk out of here a wealthy woman. Just let Lily go.”

Evelyn let out a high, hysterical cackle that curdled the blood in his veins.

“You think I care about the money now, Harry?” she spat, tears of madness cutting through the soot on her cheeks. “I’m finished! The FBI is already tracking Vance’s jet! My face will be on every news channel in the world by sunrise! If I’m going to prison for the rest of my life... I’m leaving you with nothing. I’m going to make you watch your legacy die right in front of your eyes!”

Her knuckle turned white.

The hammer of the Glock began to pull back.