Noche Sin Paz (2022) Apr 2026

As Scrooge’s lead enforcer burst into the room, he found not a terrified child, but a floor covered in micro-machines and a tripwire rigged to a heavy bowling ball. It was Home Alone played for keeps, and as the mercenary tumbled backward, Santa was there to meet him.

Upstairs, young Trudy Lightstone clutched her walkie-talkie, whispering prayers to the man in the red suit. She was the only one who still believed. Her belief was a beacon, a tether that kept the old man from simply hopping on his sleigh and leaving this pit of vipers to their fate. Noche sin paz (2022)

In the shadows of the wine cellar, a man in a soot-stained red suit groaned, leaning against a rack of overpriced Chardonnay. This wasn't the Christmas Santa Claus—the real Santa Claus—had envisioned. He was tired. He was disillusioned. He was nursing a gut wound and wondering when children stopped wishing for wooden trains and started wishing for cold hard cash. As Scrooge’s lead enforcer burst into the room,

The first mercenary died near the chimney. He didn’t hear the heavy boots; he only felt the crushing weight of a sack filled with heavy toys smashing into his jaw. Santa didn't use a silencer; he used a sharpened candy cane and a heavy-duty sledgehammer he’d nicknamed "Skullcrusher" back when he was raiding coastal villages a thousand years ago. She was the only one who still believed

The wind howled across the sprawling Lightstone estate, but inside, the air was thick with a different kind of chill: the cold, calculated greed of a family that hated each other almost as much as the mercenaries currently holding them hostage.