Lena looked even more heartbreakingly fragile on camera. "As long as my sister is willing to come home, I'll give her back the position of eldest daughter. I don't want anything for myself..."

The comments section below was a cesspool of vicious abuse. The public had been whipped into a frenzy, demanding that the police launch a full investigation into the Dunn family.

The Hardings were using the media and their political clout to back us into a corner with no way out.

"Boss! We've got a problem!" Nat burst out of the elevator.

"Harold's here with police and Health Department officials! They're claiming we've been illegally holding Amy captive and they're demanding to search the hospital by force!"

"And there's more. There's a whole squad of mercenaries surrounding the building. Our guys can barely hold the line!"

I walked to the window and looked down.

The hospital courtyard was packed wall to wall with armed officers and black-clad bodyguards.

Harold sat in a wheelchair, bandages wrapped around his head, holding a megaphone aimed at the upper floors.

"Pansy Dunn! You're surrounded!"

"Hand over Amy Harding and come out with your hands up! Otherwise, today is the end of the Dunn family!"

Nelson grabbed my arm. "Pansy, don't go out there. Let me handle them. Worst case, we go back to the old ways and fight this out!"

I looked at the gray streaking my father's temples, and something twisted in my chest.

Mortals, even underworld bosses, were still impossibly fragile when pitted against the kind of power that came with real money and real connections.

But I wasn't mortal.

"Dad, stay here and watch over Amy."

I peeled off my blood-stained jacket and rolled up my sleeves.

"The Hardings want to destroy me? Today I'll show them who's really in charge."

I shoved open the corridor window and, before anyone could stop me, launched myself out.

Three stories straight down.

BOOM.

I landed square on the fountain sculpture in the hospital courtyard, the impact sending a shockwave through the stone.

But within seconds, over a dozen gun barrels swung toward me in unison, black and hollow.

Foreign mercenaries. Harold had paid top dollar for them.

Harold sat in his wheelchair, and the moment he saw me land, a flicker of manic satisfaction crossed his eyes.

"Pansy Dunn, I'll give you this much. You've got guts."

"Unlawful imprisonment. Assault with a deadly weapon. Grievous bodily harm. And let's not forget the Dunn family's lovely criminal history."

He sneered up at me. "You're going to rot in prison for the rest of your life."

Lena wheeled him forward, wearing a pristine white sundress, the picture of delicate innocence.

She stepped in front of him and let out a theatrical sigh in my direction.

"Pansy, why does it have to be like this?"

"Just hand Amy over to me. Let me take a tiny bit of bone marrow to treat my illness. I promise the Harding family will drop every single charge."

"You don't want your father, at his age, taking a bullet alongside you, do you?"

The words had barely left her mouth when the courtyard's iron gates groaned open.

Several officers dragged in a familiar figure.

Dad.

He must have come downstairs at some point. They had him pinned face-first against the ground.

"Get off me! You spineless dogs, licking the boots of the rich!" Nelson thrashed against their grip, but it was useless.

Harold looked down at him from his wheelchair and nudged my father's face with the toe of his shoe.

"Boss Dunn, times have changed. Money and power run the world now. That street thug code of yours? Take it to the gutter where it belongs."

"Go to hell!" Nelson spat a mouthful of bloody foam at him.

Harold's expression twisted. He raised his hand in a sharp gesture.

"Beat him."

A group of bodyguards closed in and laid into my father with fists and boots.

"Stop!" I roared, lunging forward.

Click.

Three submachine guns pressed against my temples, cold steel biting into skin.

The lead mercenary spoke in stilted English. "Miss Dunn. Don't move. Bullets don't have eyes."

Harold watched me pinned down and laughed, wild and unhinged.

"Pansy! Thought you were tough? Thought you could fight?"

"Go on, then. Hit me again. I dare you."

He hauled himself out of the wheelchair, limping toward me one agonizing step at a time, and raised his hand high.

"That slap from earlier? I'm paying it back tenfold."

His hand came down.

But the slap never landed.

Because I caught his wrist mid-swing.

Harold froze.

The mercenary beside me jammed his barrel harder against my skull. "Let go! On your knees!"

The Harding bodyguards, the police, every single person in that circle stared at me like they were watching a dead woman walk.

In their eyes, I was an ant at the end of the road, seconds from being crushed.

Power. Money. Firepower. Public opinion.

Every weapon the mortal world had to offer was stacked on top of me in that moment, layer after suffocating layer.

I looked at Harold's face, drunk on his own triumph, dripping with sanctimonious cruelty.

I looked at Lena, hand over her mouth in a performance of horror, eyes glittering with barely concealed excitement behind the act.

I looked at my father, pinned to the ground under boots and batons.

And I laughed.

Louder and louder.

In the dead silence of that armed circle, the sound was unnerving.

Harold yanked his wrist free, skin crawling. "Have you lost your mind? What the hell are you laughing at?"

I stopped laughing. Slowly raised my head.

Glanced at the overcast sky.

"I'm laughing because you're pathetic."

My voice was quiet.

"You throw around some dirty money, pull a few strings with the right people, and you think that makes you gods?"

"You're mortals. You're nothing."

"I am the Storm Goddess."