My Daughter Was Beaten, Locked Away, and Threatened by Her Millionaire Husband’s Family—When They Laughed at Me and Said My Military Rank Didn’t Frighten Them, I Slowly Turned Around and Made One Move They Never Expected. / Chapter 48 / 100

Chapter 48 - Severing the Tether

Pain is merely information. It is a signal the body sends to the brain, and thirty-five years of command had taught me how to silence that signal when the mission demanded blood.

A high-velocity round grazed my left shoulder, tearing through the pressurized fabric of my tactical suit and searing the flesh beneath. Another slammed into the ceramic plate over my ribs, cracking the bone and driving the breath from my lungs in a ragged gasp.

I didn't slow down.

I charged the remaining Praetorians with the monstrous, unyielding fury of a father whose child had been pushed to the edge of the grave. I fired my sidearm until the slide locked back on an empty chamber, driving two rounds through the eye-slit of the nearest guard. Closing the distance before the second could bring his rifle to bear, I lunged forward, slamming my combat knife through the soft seal beneath his jaw, twisting the blade, and ripping it free as his body went limp.

To my flank, Vance was fighting with savage efficiency. He had discarded his empty shotgun and was engaging the remaining guards with his sidearm and tactical knife, trading blows in a brutal, close-quarters grapple on the slick, trembling grating.

"Arthur!" Julian Sterling’s voice cracked through the roar of the water and the sirens.

The old patriarch had activated his exoskeleton’s motorized servos. With terrifying, mechanical speed, the octogenarian lunged across the walkway, his reinforced fist striking me across the chest with the force of a pneumatic ram.

I was thrown backward, skidding across the wet grating, the breath ripped from my lungs. My knife clattered over the edge, disappearing into the magma. Blood bubbled in my throat.

"You are an anachronism, Gardner!" Julian roared, towering over me, his armored boot rising to crush my skull. "A pathetic, sentimental relic who thinks a soldier’s honor can stand against the evolution of power!"

Beneath us, the central cavern gave a colossal groan. A massive section of the basalt ceiling collapsed, crushing two quantum server banks and releasing a massive torrent of ocean water that exploded into steam upon contact with the magma. The chamber filled with a blinding, scalding fog.

"I may be a relic," I choked out, blood coating my teeth as I reached down with my right hand, grasping the heavy, titanium pin of an incendiary grenade strapped to my combat vest. "But I raised a daughter who knows how to tear down tyrants."

Before Julian could bring his boot down, a gunshot cracked through the steam.

The bullet struck the hydraulic line powering Julian's right knee. Fluid sprayed in an oily arc. The exoskeleton seized with a violent mechanical whine, forcing the old man down onto one knee.

He turned, his face twisting into a mask of pure disbelief.

Standing at the master console, holding my discarded sidearm in two steady hands, was Abigail.

"This is for the basement," she said.

She fired a second shot through his left shoulder servo, disabling his remaining arm.

Julian collapsed forward, pinned by the dead weight of his own mechanized suit, his pale eyes wide with shock and helpless rage.