Nolan had a lot of enemies. He had expected that being on top of the world. He had always gotten what he wanted in the end though. The only true thorn in his side was this mystery man in the black suit.

So when he found out they struck again in three separate laboratories on the same night he was apoplectic with rage. How?! How many of them were there?

New York. California. Massachusetts. Pennsylvania. Florida. Did the man in the suit live in any of these places or somewhere else entirely? How many people did he have behind him? He had to have informants but how many? And how many black-suited men were running around trying to destroy everything he was working for?

A horrible realization washed over him. His enemies were joining forces. Handling them alone was child's play but in numbers…especially when he wasn't sure how large they were…

Nolan could feel his enemies closing in on him. It had all started with the secret room being destroyed. The bombing of the factory, that fool Leah filing for divorce then disappearing before he could find a way to make her death look like an accident, and the loss of the mind control laboratory in Pennsylvania had all happened in a matter of months.

He was certain the man in the suit was behind all of it. Leah started acting strangely after losing the mind control data. She must have overheard him on the phone that day. This was entirely the suited man's fault!

He needed to get rid of her but how could he when the only contact he was getting was through her lawyer? Either he didn't know where she was or wouldn't tell. The former seemed more likely considering he dug into the man's communications and found nothing from her that wasn't encrypted beyond belief.

Who was Nolan dealing with here? The man in the suit had superhuman abilities but it was impossible to tell if it was due to tech or superpowers. He was also either a proficient hacker or had one close by handling things for him.

He had other hackers trying to work on this but nothing worked. The encryptions and IP address bouncing were airtight.

Whoever he was working against may very well be the best hacker in the world. An army of lesser hackers wouldn't be able to take him down. Everyone who tried had their entire systems fried by viruses.

The man in the suit was impossible to track because of this hacker. So was Leah. And Nolan had no way of finding out who either of those annoyances were!

No leads. No information. His people were still digging through all of the incidents that had happened at his holdings from workplace problems to theft in New York City alone and now he had four other states to contend with. This was going to take too long!

Whoever they were, they knew about the mind control project. That had been their goal from the beginning. They knew about it and wanted to stop it so badly that they had kidnapped or killed all of the scientists on the project. They managed to track down every last one, which meant they had to have stolen the data from the secret room instead of simply destroying it.

What was their goal? Stopping the mind control project or stealing it?

Nolan didn't know their motivations. That was impossible without knowing who they were and how deep their network of his enemies ran.

At times like this he wished he didn't HAVE so many enemies in the first place. It would make it a lot easier to narrow down suspects when things like this happened. As it was he didn't even know where to start.

He had killed a lot of people either directly or indirectly. Casualties were inevitable in his line of work. He had wronged too many insignificant people to possibly wade through them all and he hadn't cared until some of them turned out of be significant after all.

Now he needed to find the culprits before they destroyed everything he had worked toward all his life. It had taken decades to reach this point both in terms of power and available technology and he wasn't about to let anyone take it from him! He would tear the world apart if he had to in order to find and kill them.

===

Avery was able to relax once the big mission was behind her. She only had a few insulin runs to do before she was married and could take a whole, glorious month off. She was planning on doing a double delivery in December to make up for her absence.

She focused on finishing up wedding planning as much as she could aside from last minute details and enjoying the holidays. Angelo was already working on the next battle plan but that didn't involve her.

He had relaxed a little too. To the point that he had once again rejoined the land of the living and was sleeping properly and occasionally leaving his apartment for something other than work or delivering food to Leah and her kids.

Angelo, Vanessa, Avery, and Christian had all gone to a Halloween party together and had a lot of fun. It was nice spending time with all of the people she loved most at once.

Things after that were kind of a blur until Thanksgiving, which she had genuinely been looking forward to. The only members of the Cruz clan Christian had met before then were Angelo and Jorge.

There were a lot of them. Horatio and Elena were only able to have one child but he had three younger sisters and all of them had multiple children. Felisa, Jorge's mom, had three. Beatriz had two. Domenica had four. Beatriz and Domenica's kids were all under the age of ten so it certainly made family gatherings lively.

Avery and Christian arrived at Domenica's house early to help with the cooking and Angelo and Jorge were already there helping to keep the little kids out of the way. Rather loud yells in Spanish could be heard through the door and she was willing to bet they were playing some sort of game.

Domenica's six-year-old son Hector saw them first and he grinned toothlessly at them before exclaiming, "Mom! White girl is here with some guy!"

Avery reached out to ruffle his hair. "This is my fiancé, Christian. He doesn't speak Spanish though."

He switched to English immediately. "What's a fiancé?"

"It means I'm going to marry him. You already agreed to be the ring bearer, remember?"

"Oh, yeah! Mamá said I was gonna be in your wedding. And Sofia is too, right? She gets to throw flowers or something and she's real excited about it."

Sofia was Beatriz's eight-year-old daughter and she insisted on being the flower girl opposed to either of her younger female cousins who could have done it because she had always wanted to be one. Avery wasn't about to crush her little dreams.

Christian didn't have any young kids in his family. All of his cousins were older than him so the roles of ringbearer and flower girl fell to her side. Neither of which she shared a blood tie with but she had been around since both of them were born so they felt like her cousins as much as Angelo's.

"Yeah," Avery said with a smile. "Is your mom in the kitchen?"

"Uh huh! With the rest of the tías. They're waiting for you," Hector informed her before returning to the living room where it looked like an extravagant game of Twister with multiple mats was taking place.

A few of the kids waved and chorused "hola, Güera" when she passed and she waved back on her way to the kitchen. She would have to introduce Christian to them later.

"Who was that?" he whispered.

"Domenica's son. You'll meet her in a minute," she whispered back.

The tías spotted them as soon as they appeared in the doorway. Felisa's eyes lit up and she rushed over to give her a bone-crushing hug. "Güera! My beautiful girl! You finally brought your fiancé around!"

Avery laughed. "Yep, as promised. This is Christian, everyone."

They all tried to introduce themselves to him first and Felisa hushed the rest with a look. She had that power as the oldest sibling still alive.

"It's so nice to finally meet you, Christian! I'm Felisa Trujillo. I heard you've met my oldest, Jorge?"

Christian nodded. "I have when he was picking up a cake Avery made for his girlfriend."

"Ay, that boy! Shamelessly taking advantage of family!"

"It was my idea, Tía. He wasn't taking advantage of me. I owed him a favor, that's all," Avery insisted. "And Maribel was so happy with it. You know I love to bake so it wasn't a big deal."

Felisa shook her head but accepted it and introduced the rest of her sisters. "I'm sure our husbands are around here somewhere. Probably off examining Rodrigo's power tools and hiding from the noise."

"Wouldn't surprise me at all," Beatriz said with a laugh. "They do love their power tools."

"Alright! Let's get to work. We can get to know Christian better as we get going on the food. Are you any good in the kitchen?" Domenica asked.

"Not as good as Avery but I'm decent. Tell me what to do and I can probably do it," he told her.

"Good boy! Rodrigo can't cook to save his life. You got yourself a catch, Güera!"

Avery grinned at her. "Oh, I know."