HER MOTHER-IN-LAW PUSHED HER OVER THE BALCONY TO KILL HER UNBORN BABY—UNTIL HER BROTHER BROKE HER FALL!

The river seemed to swallow the world.

Julian and Cole disappeared beneath the churning white foam of the swollen mountain gorge. The current was merciless, fed by late-autumn rains, dragging the two wrestling men over sharp submerged boulders and jagged tree roots.

"Julian!" Emily screamed, stumbling to her feet in the shallows, scooping Grace into her arms.

Margaret scrambled backward on her elbows along the stony bank, spitting blood, her eyes darting between the drowning men and the child. "Cole! Get the child!" she screamed uselessly into the roaring wind.

Thirty yards downriver, the water exploded. Julian surfaced, gasping for air, his face battered and bruised, but his arms were locked in a desperate death grip around Cole’s neck. Cole was fighting like a cornered viper, driving his tactical knife upward toward Julian’s ribs.

Julian saw the flash of steel beneath the water and knew he couldn't overpower the trained killer. But Julian didn't need to win a fistfight; he only needed to hold him down.

"This ends with us, Cole!" Julian choked out, swallowing mouthfuls of freezing water. With a final surge of adrenaline, Julian threw all his remaining weight downward, dragging both of them straight into the vortex of a submerged hydraulic siphon beneath a massive fallen hemlock.

"Julian, NO!" Emily wept, running along the slippery bank.

Suddenly, a loud crack echoed from the tree line above. Daniel emerged from the brush, his rifle raised. He didn't look at the river; his eyes were locked entirely on Margaret Sterling, who had picked up a fallen tree branch and was creeping toward Emily from behind.

"Freeze, Margaret," Daniel’s voice cut through the roar of the water like a steel blade.

Margaret froze, holding the heavy wooden club over her shoulder. She slowly turned to face Daniel’s rifle barrel, her manicured facade entirely obliterated. Mud coated her face, blood dripped from her nose, and her designer clothes were shredded rags.

"Shoot me, then, you peasant," Margaret hissed, her voice trembling with lunatic defiance. "Go ahead! Kill the mother of the man who just sacrificed his life for your sister! Let’s see what that does to your righteous soul!"

"Danny, don't!" Emily cried out, clutching Grace tightly against her chest. "Don't become what she is! Grace doesn't need to see you kill someone!"

Daniel took a slow, deliberate step forward, his rifle never wavering an inch from Margaret’s forehead. His finger tightened on the trigger. He remembered the night Emily was thrown from that second-story balcony. He remembered catching her body in his arms, the bone-snapping impact that nearly crippled him, the sound of her crying out for her unborn child on the bloody marble tiles. Every instinct in his soldier’s heart screamed at him to pull the trigger and end Margaret’s poison forever.

He exhaled a long, frosty breath.

Slowly, Daniel lowered the rifle barrel three inches—and drove the butt of the stock violently into Margaret’s solar plexus.

Margaret collapsed to her knees, gasping for air, curling into a pathetic ball in the mud.

"Death is too clean for you, Margaret," Daniel spat down at her with cold disgust. "You're going back into a cage. And this time, there won't be any private doctors or bribed wardens."

From downstream, a weak cough broke through the roar of the river.

Emily’s head whipped around. Crawling out from beneath the tangled hemlock branches, half-drowned and shivering violently, was Julian.

He was alone. Thomas Cole had been swept into the deep, dark abyss of the lower reservoir.

Julian dragged his battered body onto the rocky shore, his lips blue with hypothermia, his side soaked in dark red blood where Cole’s blade had grazed him. He looked up, his trembling eyes meeting Emily's.