"Sleep, little fox." The creepy whisper came through the cheap monitor on Damen Cross’s mahogany desk,

The impact sounded like an axe striking wet timber.

Julian roared in agony, stumbling backward as blood sprayed from his split lip, his balance shattered by the surprise strike. The dead-man's transmitter on his wrist scraped against the corner of the metal table, flashing an angry, rapid amber.

"Nora! Now!" Damen bellowed, throwing his entire two-hundred-pound frame across the table, tackling his massive brother around the waist.

The two giants crashed onto the concrete floor in a tangle of limbs and fury.

I didn't think. My body moved on pure, unadulterated maternal adrenaline.

I vaulted over the safety railing of the catwalk, catching the heavy iron chain of the cargo hoist, sliding fifteen feet down the links until my boots slammed onto the concrete floor. The friction scorched through my palms, but I felt no pain.

I sprinted across the illuminated circle, sliding on my knees across the slick floor, scooping Toby off the wooden crate into my arms.

"Mommy!" Toby shrieked, wrapping his little arms around my neck with bruising force, burying his wet face in my hair.

"I've got you, baby! I've got you!" I gasped, scrambling backward, dragging him toward the cover of a row of heavy steel shelving units thirty feet away.

Behind us, the warehouse had descended into savage, feral violence.

Julian was a berserker. Despite taking a solid brass scale to the face, the older brother surged upward with terrifying strength, driving his knee into Damen’s solar plexus, throwing Damen off him like a sack of grain.

Damen slammed against the concrete floor, coughing up blood, but scrambled to his feet instantly, drawing a tactical blade from his boot.

Julian wiped the crimson from his mouth with the back of his tactical glove, his amber eyes completely wild, glowing with psychotic rage under the harsh glare of the floodlights. He drew a heavy, serrated combat knife from his chest rig, the six-inch steel blade gleaming in the light.

"You should have died in the cradle, Damen!" Julian roared, lunging forward with blinding speed, the knife cutting a vicious arc through the air.

Damen sidestepped by a fraction of an inch, the serrated blade slicing cleanly through his tailored suit jacket, parting the wool and grazing the skin over his ribs. Damen countered with a vicious palm strike to Julian’s throat, followed by a low, sweeping kick that took Julian’s feet out from under him.

Julian hit the floor hard, but rolled with the momentum, coming up on one knee.

Instead of engaging Damen, Julian’s eyes snapped toward me where I was crouching behind the steel shelving, shielding Toby with my body.

A horrific, manic grin stretched across Julian’s scarred face.

"If I can't have my dynasty..." Julian snarled, his thumb pressing down on the transmitter button on his wrist, "...nobody leaves this pier!"

The transmitter clicked.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

A high-pitched, electronic countdown tone erupted from the four-hundred-pound crate of ammonium nitrate.

Ten seconds.

"Damen!" I screamed in pure, unadulterated terror.

Damen didn't look at the bomb. He didn't run for the exit.

He lunged directly at Julian, catching his brother by the collar of his heavy overcoat, driving both of them backward toward the massive, open loading bay doors that looked out over the black, freezing waters of Boston Harbor.

"You always were a terrible loser, Julian," Damen hissed into his brother's ear as they tumbled through the open bay.

The two brothers cleared the concrete ledge together, falling twenty feet through the freezing sea mist, plunging into the churning, pitch-black tide below with a violent splash.

Three.

Two.

One.

BOOM.

The four-hundred-pound crate detonated with the force of an artillery strike.

A blinding wall of orange flame and concussive pressure tore through the center of the warehouse. The shockwave ripped the corrugated metal roof from its rafters, blowing out every window, sending heavy steel shelving collapsing in a deafening, cascading avalanche of twisted metal.

I threw myself flat on the concrete floor, pressing Toby beneath my body, wrapping my arms and legs around my child as fire, dust, and burning debris rained down like hail around us.