The glass paperweight had missed Luke’s head by an inch, shattering against the mahogany bookshelf and raining razor-sharp crystal shards across the Persian rug. I sat in my custom, leather-upholstered titanium wheelchair, chest heaving, the phantom pain in my shins flaring like a blowtorch.

Midnight brought the storm. Heavy, slate-gray sheets of rain lashed against the bulletproof glass of the estate, drowning out the low hum of the security generators.

I sat in the dark of my study, staring at the multi-feed security monitors on my desk. Camera Four—the rear gate—flickered and died.

"Luke," I spoke into the intercom, my voice low. "Rear gate is down. We've got company."

No answer. Only a sickening burst of static.

My heart hammered against my ribs. They hadn't come for the docks; they had come to test my vulnerability. A crippled king in a glass castle. I unlocked the secret floor compartment beneath my desk, pulling out a suppressed Sig Sauer P226 and sliding an extra magazine into my tactical lap belt.

Before I could wheel toward the reinforced doors, the study door clicked open.

It wasn't Luke. It was a man in a black tactical balaclava, holding a suppressed submachine gun, water dripping from his combat boots onto my immaculate floor.

"Evening, Danny," the intruder sneered, his voice distorted by a throat mic. "Heard you forgot how to walk. Thought we’d come see if you forgot how to shoot, too."

I didn't blink. My hand was already steady inside the fold of my blanket.

"You should have checked who owned the property line before you stepped across it," I said.

The assassin raised his barrel.

Bang.

The shot was muffled, but the heavy glass decanter behind the intruder exploded into a million amber crystals. Emma stood in the doorway behind him, holding a heavy, nineteenth-century brass fireplace poker, her chest heaving, her eyes wild with adrenaline. She had brought it down across the back of the assassin's knee with the force of a desperate freight train.