The entire NICU fell silent when a massive tattooed biker asked to hold the newborn no one had ever visited. But after he remained in the same chair for 12 hours, the nurses noticed something on his wrist that revealed a devastating secret.

"Shelby!" I screamed, bursting entirely out of the warehouse into the cold night air. "What are you doing here?! Why aren't you at the safe house?!"

Shelby stumbled out of the car, her face wild with terror, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks. She held a cheap burner phone in her trembling hand.

"He called me!" Shelby sobbed, gesturing wildly toward the phone. "Marcus called me right after you left the hospital! He said... he said if I didn't come to the riverfront, he was going to send his men to my sister's house and burn it down with her kids inside! He said he knew Wade was coming for him!"

Wade took a heavy step toward her, holding his bleeding arm tight against his chest. "Shelby, you shouldn't have come. Marcus is bluffing. The state police are raiding his properties right now."

"He isn't bluffing!" Shelby shrieked. "You don't know him, Wade! You don't know what he's capable of!"

Suddenly, the side door of the silver sedan clicked open.

My stomach plummeted.

A figure stepped out from the darkness of the backseat—a figure who had been hiding in the shadows of Shelby's car the entire time. It was Marcus Vance himself. He held a small, silver handgun pressed firmly against the plastic shell of the baby's car seat in the back.

"Step back, Grizzly," Marcus said smoothly, his voice cold and devoid of any human emotion. "Step one inch closer, and this night ends very badly for everyone."

Shelby collapsed onto her knees in the wet gravel, weeping hysterically. "I'm sorry, Wade! He was waiting at my apartment! He forced me to drive him here!"

Wade froze. The sheer weight of the moment seemed to press down on his broad shoulders, bending the iron will of the man who had seemed untouchable just moments before.

"Marcus," Wade said, his voice dropping into a desperate, guttural plea. "Take me. Do whatever you want to me. Leave the girl and the baby out of this. You know I'm the one who tipped off the D.A. They don't care about her. They want the Jackal who knows where the money is buried."

Marcus smiled, a hideous, triumphant expression. "Oh, I know you gave them the files, Grizzly. But you see, I don't care about the D.A.'s indictment. I can flee to Mexico by sunrise. What I need is collateral. A child registered in my family name ensures my uncle in Sinaloa gives me safe passage. And Shelby... well, Shelby is going to come along to make sure I stay comfortable."

"He's a newborn baby, Marcus!" I screamed, taking a furious step forward. "He was born at twenty-eight weeks! His lungs aren't fully developed! If you take him out into this freezing rain without his oxygen monitor, he will suffer respiratory distress within hours! He will die!"

Marcus didn't even blink. "Then he dies as a Vance. Move away from the motorcycle, Grizzly. Throw your phone in the river."

Wade didn't move. His eyes slowly shifted from Marcus's hand on the gun to little Liam, who was squirming in the car seat, his tiny, exhausted cries cutting through the sound of the falling rain.

"Marcus," Wade said softly. "Do you remember my daughter?"

Marcus frowned, thrown off by the sudden change in topic. "What?"

"My daughter. Lily," Wade continued, his eyes deadlocked on Marcus. "Thirteen years ago, when she was dying in the pediatric ICU... your father was the one who told me to pull the plug so I could get back to running drug shipments for the club. He told me a weak child was a liability."

" Shut up," Marcus growled, his grip tightening on the pistol.

"I listened to him," Wade said, tears finally overflowing his eyes and running down into his white beard. "I left my wife at her bedside to handle a shipment on 5th Street. And while I was standing in a warehouse just like this one... my little girl stopped breathing. She died holding a nurse's hand instead of her father's."

Wade took a single, slow step forward.

"I promised God that if I ever got the chance to stand between a child and a monster again... I wouldn't step aside. Not for a gun. Not for a gang. Not for anything in this world."

"I'll shoot!" Marcus yelled, his composure slipping as he raised the gun from the car seat and aimed it straight at Wade's chest. "I swear to God, Grizzly, I'll put a bullet through your heart!"