My husband’s family never knew I had once been an MMA champion. At my mother-in-law’s BBQ, my brother-in-law poured beer over my head. My husband stood up and told him to apologize to me. He laughed, shoved my husband, then punched him in the mouth. He told me to sit down because it didn’t concern me. Then he grabbed my wrist... and that’s when my sister-in-law started screaming.

Diane looked up from her chair, her tear-streaked face twisting in absolute disbelief. "What... what did you just say?"

"Ask him, Diane," I said, pulling Marco’s secondary encrypted phone from my pocket and tossing it onto the glass coffee table. The screen glowed with transaction ledgers and bank routing numbers. "Ask your favorite son why he brought a Reno syndicate collector into your living room."

"Derek?" Diane whispered, turning toward him, her voice cracking with mounting horror. "Derek, what is she talking about?"

"She's lying! She forged that!" Derek screamed, his eyes darting frantically toward Julian Vance, pleading for backup. "Julian, tell her! Tell my mother this is about Elena!"

Julian picked up his teacup again, taking a slow, leisurely sip. A razor-thin smile cut across his weathered face. He looked at Derek with the cold disgust a wolf reserves for a wounded hyena.

"Actually, Mrs. Sterling," Julian drawled smoothly, "your son Derek has been writing bad checks out of your late husband's trust fund for eighteen months. He told Victor that if we covered his gambling debts in Reno, he would deliver Elena Alvarez to us once he identified her at this afternoon’s family barbecue."

Diane gasped, clutching her chest as if she had been stabbed. "The trust fund? Your father’s trust fund?"

"Mom, I was going to double it! I had a lock on the championship series!" Derek wept openly now, all his arrogance evaporating into pathetic, sniveling terror. "I had to clear the books! If Victor's people audit the company, I go to federal prison for twenty years!"

"You betrayed your brother's wife," Chloe said from the floor, her voice trembling with pure hatred as she looked at her husband. "You invited killers to our mother's house. You put our babies upstairs in danger... for your gambling?"

"I was protecting this family!" Derek shouted, his voice reaching a fever pitch.

"You don't know what family means," Ryan said, closing the distance between them in two strides.

Derek raised his good left arm to push Ryan away, but Ryan didn't hesitate. He caught Derek’s wrist, twisted it down with a crisp martial leverage I had drilled into him for months, and slammed Derek face-first against the glass of the French doors.

*Crack.*

The impact vibrated through the room. Derek wailed in agony, pinned helplessly under his younger brother's forearm.

"You poured beer on my wife's head," Ryan whispered directly into Derek's ear, his voice freezing the air in the room. "You hit me. You tried to sell her to monsters. If you ever speak her name again, I won't let her break your other arm. I'll do it myself."

Julian Vance watched the domestic demolition with quiet amusement, slowly setting his teacup down and standing up. He buttoned his suit jacket, his hand drifting naturally toward the left lapel.

"Touching family reunion," Julian murmured, his gaze settling back on me. "Unfortunately, business remains business. Derek’s debt is secondary. Victor wants Elena. Alive if possible, broken if necessary. And while Marco was a blunt instrument, I don't miss."

Julian’s hand slid into his jacket.