Part 2: At my father’s funeral, sixty-three armed men were too terrified to meet my eyes—but a five-year-old girl walked straight through them and took my hand. Hours later, I discovered my father had secretly sent millions to protect her, and the reason threatened to expose the one truth he had taken to his grave.

The ground floor of the Foundry erupted into violence within forty seconds.

Marcus Vance and Silvio Calder hadn't hired local mob muscle; they had pooled their resources to hire an elite corporate extraction unit—the kind used to overthrow small governments in South America. Thirty heavily armed mercenaries in digital camouflage breached the loading docks using thermal charges.

Smoke grenades filled the cavernous ground floor with thick gray fog. Red laser sights cut through the haze like neon threads.

I moved along the catwalk thirty feet above the killing floor, moving like a ghost through the structural steel I had known since childhood. My carbine fired in disciplined, rhythmic cadence: two shots, pivot, two shots. Every round found its mark.

Three mercenaries advancing behind a tactical shield collapsed as I fired through the exposed gap beneath the plating. Another two tried to flank the central elevator; I dropped a fragmentation grenade over the catwalk railing, detonating it mid-air to clear the corridor.

Below me, my loyal garrison returned fire from behind reinforced concrete barriers. The sound was deafening—a continuous roar of 5.56 rounds, shattering glass, and the concussive thump of flashbangs reverberating off the steel walls.

"Silvio is on the main floor!" one of my men yelled through the tactical comms. "He has an override key to the blast doors!"

I looked down through the smoke. Silvio Calder, wearing a bulletproof vest over his tailored suit, was being escorted by four heavily armed bodyguards toward the elevator shaft that led to the residential vaults. Behind him walked Marcus Vance, his right arm in a sling from the wound I had given him the night before, his left hand clutching an automatic submachine gun.

They weren't trying to destroy the Foundry.

They were trying to reach the vault. They wanted Lily.

Marcus Vance wanted to erase the living proof of his sister's defiance, and Silvio wanted the collateral to force my surrender.

A surge of primal fury tore through my veins. I didn't take the stairs. I leaped from the catwalk onto the roof of a parked armored transport fifteen feet below, the impact rattling my teeth, and rolled onto the concrete floor, coming up with my weapon raised.

The two rear bodyguards turned toward me. I eliminated them before their rifles cleared their hips.

Silvio spun around, terror contorting his features as he saw me emerge from the smoke like an avenging demon. "Shoot him! Marcus, kill him!"

Marcus turned, raising his submachine gun with his good arm. "This ends now, Calder!"

I didn't flinch. I fired three rounds straight through the center of Marcus’s weapon, destroying the firing pin and mangling his fingers. Marcus screamed in agony, dropping the ruined gun and falling to his knees on the slick concrete.

Silvio turned to run toward the elevator doors, but I was faster. I closed the distance, grabbed my uncle by the throat, and slammed his head into the reinforced steel frame of the elevator. The sound of cracking bone echoed in the corridor.

Silvio slumped to the floor, gasping for air, clutching his shattered nose.

"Gabriel... please," Silvio wheezed, blood pouring over his gold rings. "We're family... your father’s blood..."

"My father's blood is down in that vault," I hissed, pressing the smoking barrel of my carbine against his forehead. "You are just a thief who overstayed his welcome."

I didn't pull the trigger. Death was too quick for Silvio.

"Tie them up," I ordered Mateo’s surviving men, who rushed forward to secure the surviving mercenaries. "Strip them of everything. Every account, every property, every dollar. Put them on a cargo ship to South Africa with five hundred dollars in their pockets. If they ever set foot in North America again, feed them to the harbor."

The gunfire died away. The smoke slowly drifted out through the high ventilation shafts.