He smiled, tight and savage. “I’ll be back. With papers, with lawyers, with whatever it takes to see this mistake corrected.”
I advanced, every inch of me humming with purpose. We were close now—too close for safety, close enough to count his pores and the old surgical scar at his jaw line.
“One more word about him,” I growled, “and you’ll be eating through a straw for a month. Father or not.”
He stared, eyes glassy and hard. He wanted to call my bluff, but even he remembered what happened the last time he underestimated me. I could almost see him weigh the calculus: his ego versus his dental plan.
He stepped back, hands up. “Noted,” he said, just above a whisper.
Barrett looked between us, desperate to patch the fissure with whatever was left of his dignity. “Maybe—maybe we should just go. Dad, you’ve said your piece.”
For a second, I pitied him. He didn’t ask for this. But it was a war, and every war needed its casualties.
Chapter Eighteen
~ Rawley ~
There are a dozen kinds of silence, but the kind that settles after a family fight is the one that poisons a house for days. Our post-dinner quiet was thick and wet, like air in a slaughterhouse—nobody breathed, nobody moved, and all the ghosts lined up to watch what happened next.
I was scraping plates at the sink, back to the room, the echo of Harrison’s threats still gnawing behind my ears. I’d just snapped a biscuit in half—broke it with the side of my hand, too hard—when I heard it.
The alarm.
First, a barely audible click—relay in the breaker, prelude to hell. Then every sensor on the property lit up, floodlights strobing the fields, and somewhere in the attic Burke’s IR perimeter screeched a banshee wail.
I dropped the plate. It shattered against the steel of the sink, one sound among a dozen, but it brought everyone to rigid attention.
Jojo was first into the doorway, hand still clutching the dish towel, face already drained of color. Macon was right behind him, eyes gone flat and animal, left hand flexing with a rhythm that matched the war drum in my chest. Harrison and Barrett stood in the hallway, their argument paused but not forgotten.
I crossed the kitchen in three strides. “Upstairs. Both of you,” I said, fixing Harrison with the stare I used to reserve for men who needed convincing at gunpoint.
He didn’t budge. “This is my house, dammit—”
“Not tonight.” I snatched Jojo by the waist, all but throwing him behind the kitchen island. My hands worked without orders, checking the clip in the Sig, scanning the sightlines through the first-floor windows.
Macon moved to the bay window, saw something I couldn’t, and his jaw clenched so hard it made a sound.
“They’re here,” he said, voice flat.
Burke’s boots thundered on the stairs as he jogged down from the attic. “Southeast approach. Two, maybe three,” he barked, already loading the slide on his own sidearm.
I went to the gun safe in the mudroom. Fingers remembered the code even with adrenaline frying the connection between brain and hand. I pulled the AR-15, jacketed a round, and handed it off to Macon without a word. He took it like it was made for him, already scanning for targets.
A second later, the air exploded.
First, the hollow thud of a suppressed shot—then the living room window atomized, glass shards hissing through the room like shrapnel. It was a sniper’s round, low and fast, embedding itself in the old mahogany mantel two inches from Harrison’s skull.
I tackled Jojo to the floor. We hit the hardwood, my full weight crushing him, and for a split second all I could register was the fragility of his ribs, the way his heart was jack-hammering against my hand.
“Stay down,” I barked, not sure if I was talking to him or myself.
In the corner, Barrett yelped and went fetal, hands covering his head, but Harrison didn’t move. He stared at the shattered glass, lips curling, as if it was the insult, not the bullet, that offended him.
Macon dragged him by the collar behind the couch, not gentle, then snapped off a return volley through the hole in the glass. “Two confirmed,” he said, voice steady. “Both behind the tractor in the south field.”
I risked a glance. The muzzle flash came from the shelter of the old John Deere, thirty yards out. I saw a silhouette—tall, broad, moving with military intent.
“Kill the lights,” I ordered. Burke was already on it, sliding along the baseboard to reach the fuse box. The house went from shock-bright to full blackout, only the blue strobe of the exterior sensors pulsing through the windows.
