The package sat on the counter like a coffin waiting to be opened, its black ribbon tied with the precision of someone who understood that presentation mattered when delivering nightmares to fathers who'd forgotten how to fear.
Ethan's hands didn't shake as he lifted the lid.
Though every instinct screamed that some boxes should remain sealed forever.
Inside wasn't a bomb.
It was something infinitely worse.
A single high heel, its red patent leather cracked and stained with substances that made his enhanced senses recoil in horror. Attached to the ankle strap was a piece of flesh—blackened, carved away while the victim was still breathing, bearing the unmistakable scent of someone he'd loved more than his own life.
The card beside it bore elegant script that dripped with malicious poetry: "Since you enjoy games so much, Lord Polaris, let's play a new one. Next delivery: her fingers. The one after that: her eyes. She's been asking about your daughter. Such a sweet voice, even when screaming."
"Daddy?" Lily's small voice cut through his paralysis like a blade through his heart, innocent and trusting in a world that had just revealed new depths of cruelty. "That shoe smells like mommy. Why does it smell like mommy?"
Roxanne's face went white as recognition hit her like a physical blow—she'd seen this shoe in case files, evidence photos from five years ago when the world believed Ethan's wife had simply run away from debt and responsibility.
But she hadn't run.
She'd been taken.
Tortured.
Kept alive for five years as leverage against a man whose enemies had no concept of the line between warfare and genocide.
**[SYSTEM OVERRIDE DETECTED]**
**[EMOTIONAL THRESHOLD: CATASTROPHICALLY EXCEEDED]**
**[ACTIVATING: DIVINE WRATH PROTOCOL]**
**[WARNING: MORAL CONSTRAINTS PERMANENTLY DELETED]**
**[STATUS: GOD MODE ENGAGED - UNLIMITED AUTHORIZATION]**
---
The change in Ethan was immediate and terrifying.
The gentle father vanished like smoke in a hurricane, replaced by something that made the air itself seem to recoil in primal fear. His eyes became winter storms that promised the end of civilizations, and when he moved, it was with the fluid grace of someone who'd transcended the limitations of mere mortality.
"Princess," he said softly, his voice still warm despite the arctic fury building in his chest like a nuclear reactor approaching critical mass, "daddy needs you to put on these special headphones and listen to your favorite songs. Daddy has to go clean up some garbage that's been making a mess of our world."
He placed noise-canceling headphones over Lily's ears with infinite gentleness, then kissed her forehead with the tenderness of someone saying goodbye to everything pure and innocent in his existence.
Then he turned to the darknet terminal in the corner of the safe room.
His fingers moved across the keyboard like a pianist performing a symphony of digital destruction, each keystroke carrying the weight of divine judgment and the promise of absolute retribution. Firewalls that had taken years to build crumbled in seconds as he carved a path through the digital underworld with the subtlety of a nuclear explosion and twice the devastation.
Within moments, his face appeared on every screen in the global criminal network.
Unmasked.
Unafraid.
Radiating the kind of fury that made hardened killers reconsider their life choices and pray to gods they'd forgotten existed.
He held up the bloodstained shoe like a prosecutor presenting evidence to a jury of demons who'd just realized they were about to be judged by something far more terrifying than any earthly court.
"The rules have changed," he said, his voice carrying across encrypted channels to every corner of the shadow world with the authority of someone rewriting the laws of reality itself. "The game is no longer hide and seek. It's now open season on everyone who thought they could hurt my family and live to tell the story."
---
His fingers danced across the terminal with movements that seemed to bend space and time, and bank accounts around the world registered transfers that made national budgets look like pocket change found between couch cushions.
**[TRANSFER COMPLETE: $100 BILLION USD]**
**[DARKNET BOUNTY SYSTEM: ACTIVATED]**
**[TARGET: THE ABYSS ORGANIZATION - ALL MEMBERS]**
**[PAYMENT METHOD: IMMEDIATE CRYPTOCURRENCY TRANSFER]**
"One hundred billion dollars," Ethan announced to his global audience of assassins, mercenaries, and monsters who'd just realized they were staring at their own extinction event. "That's the price I'm placing on every member of the organization that calls itself 'The Abyss.'"
The numbers appeared on screens worldwide like a digital apocalypse:
**[FOOT SOLDIERS: $1 MILLION EACH - CONFIRMED KILLS ONLY]**
**[LIEUTENANTS: $10 MILLION EACH - PROOF REQUIRED]**
**[COMMANDERS: $100 MILLION EACH - ALIVE PREFERRED]**
**[INFORMATION LEADING TO MY WIFE: $10 BILLION - IMMEDIATE PAYMENT]**
The effect was instantaneous and beautiful in its brutality.
In a van three blocks away, mercenaries who'd been preparing to storm the mall suddenly found themselves staring at their Abyss handler with the kind of interest usually reserved for winning lottery tickets. The man's radio crackled with confused reports from other teams, but his words were cut short by the sound of gunfire as his own men decided that loyalty was worth significantly less than early retirement in the Bahamas.
Similar scenes played out across the city as the criminal underworld turned on itself with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine designed for betrayal and lubricated with more money than most people could count.
But Ethan wasn't finished painting his masterpiece of vengeance.
A knock echoed through the safe room—three sharp raps that carried the weight of someone who understood that interrupting a god's wrath required proper protocol and exceptional timing.
---
The security monitor showed a man kneeling outside the door, his clothes soaked in blood that wasn't entirely his own. In his right hand, he held something that made Roxanne gasp in horror—a severed head with the distinctive scars of someone who'd earned the codename "Wrath" through years of making strong men weep.
In his left hand, he held a piece of paper written in what appeared to be his own blood, the words still wet and dripping with desperate hope.
"Mr. Blackwell," the man called out, his voice carrying the trembling excitement of someone who'd just bet his life on a single hand of cards and was about to discover if he'd won or lost everything, "my offering has arrived. The first payment toward redemption and the honor of serving true power."
Ethan studied the monitor with the detached interest of someone evaluating livestock at an auction where the currency was measured in souls rather than dollars.
"Open the door," he told Roxanne, his voice carrying no more emotion than if he'd asked her to pass the salt or comment on the weather. "Let our first dog inside. He's earned the right to grovel at our feet."
Roxanne's hands trembled as she approached the door, her legal mind struggling to process the transformation she'd witnessed like a courtroom observer watching justice become something far more primal and absolute.
"Ethan," she whispered, her voice barely audible above the sound of her own heartbeat, "what have you become?"
He looked at her with eyes that had seen the heat death of universes and found them disappointingly brief.
"I've become what I should have been five years ago," he said quietly, his words carrying the weight of regret and the promise of correction. "A father who understands that some sins require payment in blood, some debts can only be settled with the complete annihilation of everyone foolish enough to threaten his family, and some lessons can only be taught through the systematic destruction of everything his enemies hold dear."
The Supreme Dad System hummed with satisfaction that bordered on ecstasy:
**[BOUNTY HUNTERS ACTIVATED: 47,000 WORLDWIDE]**
**[ABYSS CASUALTIES: RISING EXPONENTIALLY]**
**[ESTIMATED TIME TO TOTAL ELIMINATION: 72 HOURS]**
**[WIFE'S LOCATION: TRIANGULATION IN PROGRESS]**
**[REVENGE EFFICIENCY: 847% ABOVE PROJECTED PARAMETERS]**
Outside the door, the bloodied man waited with the patience of someone who understood that his next few seconds would determine whether he lived to see another sunrise or became another cautionary tale about the dangers of disappointing fathers who'd learned to rewrite reality through pure paternal fury.
Inside, a father prepared to build an empire of vengeance on the bones of everyone who'd dared to make his daughter ask why her mother's shoe smelled like pain and suffering.
The hunt had become the hunted.
The game had become genocide.
And the world was about to learn why some fathers were more dangerous than armies, governments, nuclear weapons, and the wrath of gods combined into a single force of absolute destruction.
The war for his wife's freedom had begun.
And it would end with either her rescue or the complete erasure of everyone who'd ever heard the name "Abyss."
There would be no middle ground.
No negotiation.
No mercy.
No survivors.
Only the sound of a father's love expressed through the systematic annihilation of everyone who'd forgotten that some lines should never be crossed.