The barefoot little boy looked completely out of place among the diamonds, tuxedos, and champagne glasses surrounding me at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive galas. “Sir, can I heal your legs?” he whispered, and I nearly laughed until his bruised hands touched my knees, warmth exploded through a body I hadn’t felt in years, and the antique watch in his other hand revealed something even more impossible.

I looked Vance straight in the eye and smiled—a slow, terrifying smile that made the two guards beside him glance at each other nervously.

“The boy is somewhere you will never reach, Richard,” I said quietly.

Vance sneered, raising his hand to signal his men. “It doesn't matter. Once I put you back in that chair and extract the fresh cellular markers from your spine, my doctors will track the child down within forty-eight hours.”

Before his guards could raise their weapons, I pressed a hidden button built into the cuff of my jacket.

A high-pitched acoustic pulse exploded through the steel rafters of the foundry.

The halogen floodlights shattered simultaneously, plunging the vast chamber into pitch-black darkness.

Shouts of panic echoed through the space as Vance’s mercenaries struggled to switch on their night-vision goggles. But Marcus and my tactical team didn't need night vision—they had already breached the upper skylights, dropping down on high-speed cables like shadows in the night.

Suppressor-equipped gunfire crackled through the dark—short, precise three-round bursts.

I didn't wait for the guards to recover. I lunged forward into the dark, relying on the raw strength of my restored legs, grabbing Vance by the throat and slamming him violently against the steel railing of the gantry.

His bourbon glass crashed onto the floor below.

“Where are they?” I growled into his ear, my fingers digging into his windpipe.

Vance gasped, kicking his legs uselessly against the metal floor. “Below... level two... security door...”

Marcus’s voice came through my earpiece. “Upper level clear, Mr. Whitmore. We have control of the courtyard.”

Emergency red backup lights flickered to life along the concrete walls, casting a bloody glare across the steel gantry. Four of Vance’s mercenaries lay unconscious on the floor, disarmed and zip-tied.

I dragged Vance by his collar down the iron spiral staircase toward the subterranean levels of the facility.

The air grew cold and damp, smelling of ozone, sterile chemicals, and old river water. We descended two floors beneath the riverbed until we reached a heavy reinforced steel door equipped with a biometric keypad and a thick quartz viewing window.

I shoved Vance against the security panel. “Open it.”

With trembling, blood-stained fingers, Vance typed in a six-digit code and placed his palm against the scanner.

The heavy hydraulic locks disengaged with a deep, echoing hiss.

The steel door swung open.

Inside was a sterile glass laboratory filled with medical monitors, fluid centrifuges, and two reinforced containment cells.

Inside the first cell, sitting on a low cot beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, was a man with wild dark hair, an unkempt beard, and amber-green eyes—my brother, Julian. In the adjoining cell sat a woman with pale skin and dark hair, her hands bandaged, her head resting weakly against the glass wall—his wife, Clara.

Julian snapped his head toward the door as it swung open.

He saw the guards. He saw Vance.

And then he saw me—standing straight, walking on my own two feet, holding the man who had ruined our family by the throat.