When Michael Cavada came back to his gated suburban house at 2:00 a.m. with dried blood on his shirt cuff and one bruised knuckle, he expected to find the one thing money, fear, and years of violence had always bought him.

A blinding, magnesium-white flash erupted across the entire gallery, accompanied by a high-frequency acoustic blast that instantly shattered every remaining window within fifty feet.

The three operatives shrieked in agony, dropping their weapons as they clutched their ears and blinded eyes, stumbling blindly into one another. The high-end tactical night-vision goggles strapped to their helmets overloaded and sparked violently against their faces.

“Now!” Michael roared over the ringing echoes.

From the shadows of the central hallway, Marcus and Leo stepped out in unison, their weapons raised.

Rat-tat-tat-tat.

Controlled, precise bursts of rubber-baton and non-lethal heavy rounds slammed into the armor plates of the disoriented intruders, dropping all three of them flat onto the shattered marble floor in a tangled heap of groaning muscle and tactical gear.

Within seconds, Marcus and Leo were kneeling over them, snapping heavy-duty zip-ties around their wrists and stripping away their sidearms.

“Secure!” Marcus panted, wiping sweat from his forehead. “That flash-bang trap was a masterpiece, boss.”

Michael walked slowly out of the shadows, holstering his Sig Sauer. He looked down at the lead operative—the man with the scorpion tattoo—who was writhing in pain, clutching his scorched face mask.

“Get them down to the lower holding cells,” Michael commanded coldly. “And call cleaning crew Alpha. I want this floor cleared before sunrise.”

“What about the rest of Vance’s crew?” Leo asked, checking his rifle magazine. “Word’s going to get back to him that his best hit squad vanished into thin air.”

“Vance won’t wait for word,” Michael said, his eyes narrowing as he walked toward the shattered courtyard doors, staring out into the pouring rain where the distant glow of the city skyline pierced the dark horizon. “Vance is a coward who hides behind mercenaries. If he wants his flash drive back, and if he wants to finish what he started... he’s going to have to come here himself.”

“You think Vance will show his face at your estate?” Marcus asked, sounding skeptical.

“When a desperate man loses his entire insurance policy and his elite cleanup crew in one night, pride takes over,” Michael said with absolute certainty. “He’ll want to watch me bleed personally. And when he steps foot onto my property, we end this war permanently.”

Michael pulled out his encrypted terminal, booted it up, and routed a signal directly through the captured tactical radio frequencies. He didn’t encrypt the transmission. He broadcasted it on an open loop across every secure channel Victor Vance’s syndicate used.

Within two minutes, a harsh, gravelly voice crackled through the speaker of the recovered radio.

“Who the hell is this?”

Michael leaned close to the mic, his voice dropping an octave into a low, terrifying growl.

“It’s Michael Cavada, Victor. You sent your dogs to my house. Now it’s your turn. Come and get your drive... if you have the stomach for it.”

A heavy, suffocating silence hung on the other end of the radio line, broken only by the crackle of static and the sound of heavy breathing. Then, a cold, venomous laugh echoed through the speaker.