Two years after a sniper’s bullet left me unable to walk, everyone who worked inside my mansion had learned the same rule: stay out of my way.

By mid-afternoon, the rain had stopped, leaving the city wrapped in a heavy, cold fog that rolled off Lake Michigan.

In the guest wing, Emma was awake.

She sat on the edge of the large Four-poster bed, her knees pressed together, her small hands wrapped around a mug of hot broth that one of the kitchen staff had brought her. She looked smaller than ever, swallowed up by one of my oversized gray wool sweaters.

I rolled my chair into the room, stopping near the foot of the bed.

She looked up at me, her dark eyes filled with a mixture of shame and exhaustion. "I heard the gate," she whispered. "It was Dr. Thorne, wasn't it?"

"Yes," I said.

"They... they have a warrant, don't they? Or a contract?"

"I don't care about their contracts, Emma," I said flatly. "In this city, Victor Vane's paper isn't worth the ink he uses to print it."

She set the mug down on the nightstand, her hands trembling slightly. "You shouldn't have gotten involved, Danny. They’re too powerful. Vanguard isn't just a medical company. They have guards, they have political connections... they own half the judges in Cook County."

"And I own the other half," I replied coldly. "Or at least, I used to before I spent two years feeling sorry for myself in this house."

She looked at me, really looked at me, her eyes drifting down to my paralyzed legs and then back up to my face.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked, her voice cracking softly. "I’m just a maid. I’m nobody to you. I refused to give you your extra pain pills. I talked back to you. I broke your rules."

"You didn't pity me," I said.

She blinked, surprised by the simplicity of the answer.

"Everyone in this house," I continued, gesturing toward the door, "looks at this chair like it's a coffin. They speak to me in quiet, soft voices as if I'm made of glass. You came in here, scrubbed my floors, told me to eat my food, and refused to let me overdose on narcotics because you didn't care about my reputation. You cared about the work."

I leaned forward, looking her dead in the eye.

"A man doesn't let someone like that die in a dark lab just because a billionaire wants to play God with human nerves."

A soft, shuddering breath escaped her lips, and she looked down at her hands. "The injections... they aren't just keeping my nerves working, Danny. There's something else."

"What?"

"When I went to the facility on North Avenue last week," she murmured, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper, "I was waiting in the hallway while they prepared my dosage. I saw a file on the counter. It had your name on it."

My body went completely still. "My name?"

"It was a thick blue folder," Emma said, her eyes wide as she recalled the memory. "It said Subject: Mercer, Daniel. Target Analysis & Nerve Mapping. There were architectural blueprints of your house inside. There were schedules of your security guards' shifts. And there were medical files—your spinal X-rays from the hospital after you were shot."

The room seemed to drop ten degrees in an instant.

I felt a cold, sharp clarity wash over my mind—the same cold clarity I used to feel before a major takeover or an armed confrontation in the streets.

Victor Vane hadn't just shot me to take my real estate. He had shot me to create the ultimate customer.

He had spent two years perfecting a nerve-regeneration drug using desperate street patients like Emma, waiting for the day when my desperation, my pain, and my vast fortune would drive me to my knees to beg him for a cure. He was going to sell me back my legs for twenty million dollars and my entire corporate empire.

"He didn't want to kill me," I whispered, the revelation clicking into place like the tumbler of a vault lock. "He wanted to break me."

"Danny?" Emma asked, terrified by the sudden, terrifying calm that settled over my face.

"Luke!" I called out toward the doorway.

Luke stepped into the room instantly, as if he had been waiting right outside the frame. "Yeah, boss?"

"Assemble the team," I said.

Luke's eyes lit up with a fierce, long-dormant fire that hadn't burned in him since the night before the sniper took my legs. "Which team?"

"All of them," I replied. "Every operative, every driver, and every tactical asset we still have on retainer. Call Miller, call Vance, and tell the boys in the West Side warehouse to get the armored Suburban ready."

Luke grinned—a dark, wolfish expression. "It’s been two years, Danny. You sure you're ready for this?"