CHAPTER 5 — The Midnight Attack
The prison lights switched off at exactly 10:00 PM.
Most inmates pretended to sleep.
Almost nobody actually did.
Rumors spread faster than electricity.
"The undercover investigator."
"The federal operation."
"Raven's empire is over."
But another rumor spread even faster.
Someone had offered fifty thousand dollars...
To anyone willing to kill Emma before sunrise.
No one knew who made the offer.
But everyone knew it wasn't Raven.
She no longer had that kind of power.
Which meant...
Someone even higher was involved.
At 2:17 AM...
The emergency generator suddenly failed.
Darkness swallowed Cell Block C.
Every surveillance camera went black.
Every electronic lock briefly disengaged.
Emma slowly opened her eyes.
She had been expecting this.
Soft footsteps echoed through the hallway.
One.
Two.
Three people.
The cell door creaked open.
Three masked inmates slipped inside carrying homemade prison knives.
One whispered,
"Make it quick."
Before the first attacker could move...
Emma calmly stepped sideways.
She grabbed the woman's wrist.
Twisted.
The knife clattered across the floor.
Another attacker rushed forward.
Emma redirected her momentum, sending her crashing into the concrete wall.
The third hesitated.
Emma never punched.
Never kicked unnecessarily.
Every movement was controlled.
Precise.
Within fifteen seconds...
All three attackers were lying on the floor unable to continue.
Not seriously injured.
Simply defeated.
The emergency lights suddenly flickered back on.
Armed officers stormed into the block.
Everyone froze.
One guard stared in disbelief.
"How did you do that?"
Emma quietly answered,
"I spent twelve years teaching defensive tactics."
Nobody had known.
Before becoming a federal investigator...
Emma had trained special response teams.
She had never needed to prove it.
Until now.
As the attackers were escorted away...
One of them suddenly shouted,
"It wasn't Raven!"
"She paid us through someone called..."
The woman suddenly stopped talking.
A loud gunshot echoed from outside the prison walls.
The prison window shattered.
The inmate collapsed.
Silence.
A sniper.
Someone had just murdered the only witness.
Emma looked toward the broken window.
Her expression hardened.
May you like
"This operation..."
"...goes much higher than we thought."
