“Can you hug me for two minutes?”

Friday passed in a haze of cold rain and suffocating silence.

Emma spent the day in the third-floor bedroom. It was a spacious, beautiful room with cream-colored walls, a king-sized bed covered in goose-down comforters, and a private balcony overlooking Lake Michigan. But every window was locked with steel latches, and the heavy door remained locked from the outside until Mrs. Gable brought her breakfast at nine.

She spent hours standing by the glass, watching the grey waves smash against the stone seawall below.

She thought about her father.

She remembered the smell of his jacket—diesel fuel, cold rain, and old spice cologne. She remembered how he used to sit on the porch during summer storms, drinking black coffee from a thermos, watching the lightning strike across the sky.

“Some men build things, Emma,” he had told her once when she was ten. “And some men break things because they don't know how to build. You stay away from the breakers.”

Adrian Vale was a breaker.

Yet, every time she looked into his green eyes, she didn't see a monster. She saw the seventeen-year-old boy sitting in the back of a blood-soaked Lincoln, holding his father's dead hand while the world burned around him.

At 8:00 PM, the door to her room opened.

Adrian walked in.

He wasn't wearing his suit. He wore a dark black turtleneck, black tactical trousers, and heavy leather boots. A leather holster was strapped across his chest, holding a dark grey semi-automatic pistol beneath his left arm.

His face was drawn, his green eyes bright with adrenaline.

"It's starting," he said.

Emma stood up from the armchair near the window. "Where are you going?"

"Gary," Adrian replied. "Kessler’s men just moved three shipping containers into the West Rail Yard. The federal agents are two miles away, waiting for my signal."

"Are you going alone?"

"I have twelve men," Adrian said. He walked over to the small table near the bed and laid a small, black handheld radio on the surface. "If anything happens to me—if I'm not back by four AM—Mrs. Gable will take you to a safe house in Wisconsin. There is a passport and five hundred thousand dollars in cash in the library safe. The combination is your father's badge number."

Emma’s breath hitched. "My father's badge number? How do you know his badge number?"

Adrian looked at her, his expression softening for a fraction of a second.

"4109," Adrian said quietly. "It was stamped on the leather coat he put over my shoulders fifteen years ago. I never forgot it."

Emma stared at him, her heart doing a strange, violent flip in her chest. "Adrian... don't do this."

"I have to finish it, Emma."

"He has men, Adrian! He knows you're coming!"

"He thinks he knows," Adrian said. He stepped closer to her, his hand reaching out. For a second, she thought he was going to touch her face, but his hand stopped inches from her cheek, hovering in the warm air between them. "If I don't come back, take your mother and leave the Midwest. Don't look back."

He turned and walked toward the door.

"Adrian!" she called out.

He stopped in the doorway, his broad back framed by the dim light of the hallway.

"Be careful," she whispered.

He didn't answer, but his head dipped slightly in acknowledgment before he disappeared down the stairs.

Two minutes later, Emma stood by the window and watched three black SUVs roll quietly down the long stone driveway, their lights off, disappearing into the dark, rain-soaked night toward Indiana.

The house fell silent.

Hours passed.

Emma couldn't sit down. She paced the length of the bedroom, her eyes constantly returning to the dark screen of the handheld radio on the table.

1:00 AM.

2:00 AM.

3:00 AM.

The storm outside grew worse. High winds whipped the lake into a frenzy, rain slamming against the ballistic glass with the force of thrown gravel.

At 3:22 AM, the radio on the table crackled to life.

Static hissed through the small speaker, followed by a rough, breathless voice.

"...the primary yard is clear... federal teams are moving in... we have four casualties..."

Emma rushed to the table, picking up the radio. "Hello? Is Adrian there?"

Static.

"...repeat, Kessler fled west toward the lake... he's hit... Adrian is pursuing..."

Then the signal died.

Emma pressed the broadcast button, her thumb shaking. "Hello? Can anyone hear me?"

Nothing. Only the steady, cold hiss of dead air.

Emma dropped the radio. She ran out of her room, down the grand staircase, her socks slipping slightly on the polished hardwood floors.

The grand foyer was dark. Mrs. Gable was sitting in an armchair near the kitchen, a teacup held in her trembling hands, her face white.

"Emma?" Mrs. Gable said, standing up. "What are you doing down here? Mr. Vale said—"

A loud, violent crash echoed from the front of the house.

The heavy oak front doors burst open, slammed back against the stone walls with a force that shattered the glass panels.

A man stumbled into the foyer.

He was bleeding heavily from his side, his right hand pressed beneath his ribs, dark red blood soaking through his white shirt. He dragged his left leg, his face pale as chalk, his dark hair plastered to his forehead by rain.

Adrian.

He caught himself against the edge of the entry table, knocking a porcelain vase to the floor where it shattered into a hundred pieces.

"Adrian!" Emma screamed, rushing forward.

"Stay... stay back..." Adrian gasped, his green eyes unfocused, blood dripping from his fingertips onto the white marble floor. "He's... he's right behind me..."

Before Emma could reach him, another figure appeared in the doorway, framed by the blinding flashes of lightning outside.

George Kessler.

He was limping, his dark coat torn, a black revolver gripped tightly in his right hand. The silver hawk ring on his finger was coated in dark, wet mud.

His face was contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated madness.

"You thought you could trap me, you little bastard?" Kessler roared, raising the revolver. "I built your father's empire! I owned this city before you were old enough to shave!"

"George..." Adrian choked out, trying to draw his own gun, but his hands were too slick with blood. The weapon slipped from his fingers, clattering across the marble floor.

Kessler smiled, a terrifying, blood-soaked grin. He cocked the hammer of the revolver, pointing it directly at Adrian’s chest.

"Say hello to your father, Adrian."

Emma didn't think.

She didn't calculate.

She picked up a heavy bronze statuette from the entry table and threw it with every ounce of strength in her body.

The bronze struck Kessler square in the side of his neck.

Kessler stumbled, his shot firing wild—the bullet tearing into the plaster ceiling with a deafening CRACK.

Adrian didn't waste the second.

With a final, desperate burst of strength, Adrian lunged forward, slamming his entire weight into Kessler. The two men crashed through the open doorway, tumbling down the wet stone steps into the rain.

Emma ran after them.

When she reached the bottom of the steps, Adrian was kneeling over Kessler in the wet grass.

Kessler wasn't moving. The revolver lay three feet away in the mud.

Adrian sat back on his heels, gasping for air, his hand still pressed against his bleeding side. The rain washed the dark red blood across his white shirt, turning it into a pale crimson wash.

He looked up at Emma, standing on the steps in her rain-soaked clothes.

His green eyes were wild, terrified, stripped of every layer of ruthless control he had spent fifteen years building.

He dragged himself back up the steps, stumbling into the study off the main hall, collapsing into the heavy leather chair behind the desk.

Emma followed him inside, slamming the heavy oak door shut against the storm.

Outside, the distant wail of police sirens began to echo across the lakefront.