My brother thought it was funny to give my daughter a dog bowl with scraps while the whole family laughed. She broke down, and in that moment, something inside me snapped. Forty-eight hours later, they all discovered exactly what a mother does when you humiliate her child.

We had the weapon, but Victor Sterling was not a man who waited around to be shot.

As we stepped out of the bank into the bright afternoon sun, my phone buzzed with an incoming text message from an unknown number.

My blood turned to ice the moment I opened it.

It was a photograph.

It showed Lily standing on her school playground, laughing with her friends.

The photo had been taken from a distance, through what looked like a sniper lens or a high-powered camera.

Beneath the image was a short text message:

'The clock is ticking, Elena. Seven days is too long to wait. Bring the silver key and whatever you found in the vault to your coastal house tonight at midnight. Alone.'

'If I see a single police car, or if Robert makes a single phone call, the next photo will be from much closer.'

I stumbled against the stone pillar of the bank, the world spinning around me.

Robert caught my arm, his face full of alarm. "Elena, what is it?"

I handed him the phone, my teeth chattering with pure, unadulterated terror.

Seeing my child in the crosshairs of a monster was a pain so sharp it physically robbed the air from my lungs.

"We call the FBI right now," Robert hissed, his eyes flashing with panic. "They can protect her."

"No!" I cried, grabbing his lapels. "You heard what you just read in those files! He has people inside the government! We don't know who to trust!"

I forced myself to breathe, forcing the panic down into that dark, cold place inside my soul where my survival instincts lived.

I had to be the smartest person in the room. I had to protect my blood.

"Robert, listen to me very carefully," I whispered, my voice turning steady, hard, and ruthless.

"You are going to take Lily right now. Take her to your sister’s cabin in the mountains. No phones, no GPS, no electronics. Keep her completely off the grid."

"And what are you going to do?" he asked, his eyes wide with fear for me.