Chapter 2 - The Suite in the West Wing
The scream shattered the stillness of the estate like an iron ball dropped through a glass skylight.
Silverware dropped from frozen fingers, and thirty-five business tycoons went completely rigid in their seats.
“Chloe!”
The cry tore from my throat before my mind could measure the consequences. I dropped my silver platter, letting the crystal glasses shatter against the parquet, and bolted for the arched foyer.
A manicured hand shot forward, fingers hooking viciously into the collar of my black uniform.
“Stay right where you are, Maya!” Camilla hissed, her face contorted in vicious, desperate rage. “You do not stampede through this house like an animal in front of my guests!”
She twisted the fabric, trying to haul me backward.
Before her knuckles could set, a hand wrapped in tailored black wool stepped between us.
Gabriel Thorne didn't raise his voice. He didn't issue a threat.
He simply placed his bare, calloused palm over Camilla’s wrist.
He squeezed.
A sharp, agonized gasp broke from Camilla’s lips as her fingers snapped open involuntarily. She stumbled back two paces, clutching her bruised wrist against her gold-embroidered bodice, her eyes wide with unadulterated shock.
“Gabriel!” she gasped. “She is domestic staff—”
“Lay another hand on her,” Gabriel whispered, his voice smooth as polished slate and colder than winter ice, “and you will leave this property in an ambulance.”
He didn't spare her a second breath. He looked toward the archway where Marcus, his head of tactical security, was already stepping into the hall with four armed men in dark suits.
“Lock the estate gates,” Gabriel commanded, his deep baritone cutting through the cavernous foyer with undisputed authority. “Drop the perimeter grates. Disarm Arthur Vance’s private drivers at the gatehouse. If any vehicle attempts to breach the line, put two rounds through the radiator.”
“Right away, Don Gabriel,” Marcus barked, drawing a suppressed sidearm.
Gabriel turned back to me. The terrifying, vacant stillness of his obsidian eyes softened by a fraction of an inch, offering an anchor of immovable protection.
“Which room, Maya?”
“The... the west guest wing,” I stammered, my vision blurring with panicked tears. “Suite nine. The blue suite.”
Gabriel took my cold, shaking hand into his massive palm. He didn't tell me to wait behind. He pulled me alongside him as he cleared the marble staircase three steps at a time, moving with the terrifying, explosive speed of an apex predator unleashed.
Behind us, another muffled cry echoed from the upper corridor.
The door to Suite Nine was solid, iron-reinforced oak.
Standing sentry outside was Arthur Vance’s personal bodyguard—a hulking six-foot-four private enforcer wearing a heavy leather trench coat with an earpiece running into his collar.
When the guard saw Gabriel Thorne charging down the gallery with lethal murder in his eyes, his hand immediately reached inside his coat toward his holster.
“Mr. Thorne, this suite is occupied under private executive privilege—”
Gabriel didn't break his stride.
He covered the final eight feet in half a heartbeat. His left hand slapped the guard’s drawing wrist aside, pinning it to the plaster, while his right elbow drove upward with concussive, freight-train force directly into the man’s throat.
CRACK.
The guard’s airway crumpled. His skull slammed back against the oak doorframe, his eyes rolling into his head as he collapsed limp onto the Persian runner.
Gabriel stepped over the unconscious body, drew back his heavy leather dress shoe, and kicked the brass deadbolt straight through the frame.
BOOM.
The heavy wood splintered in half, the door flying inward and crashing against the wall.
The scene inside the room turned my blood to liquid ice.
My nineteen-year-old sister, Chloe, was pinned across the mahogany desk in the corner. Her white blouse was torn at the collar, her silver hair clip snapped on the floor, and a dark red bruise was rising along her cheekbone. She was fighting like a wildcat, swinging a heavy brass reading lamp with both hands at Arthur Vance’s twenty-eight-year-old son, Julian Vance—an entitled trust-fund monster who had pinned her waist against the desk with one hand while trying to tear her skirt with the other.
“Get off me!” Chloe shrieked, swinging the lamp with blind terror. “Get away from me!”
Julian had his tie pulled loose, his face flushed with whiskey, sneering down at her: “Stop scratching, you little brat, Camilla already cashed the deposit—”
He never finished the sentence.
Gabriel entered the room like a localized hurricane.
His hand closed around the back of Julian Vance’s neck, lifting the two-hundred-pound man clean off the floor as if he weighed nothing at all, ripping him completely away from my sister.
Gabriel slammed him face-first into the plate-glass window overlooking the frozen gardens.
The heavy reinforced pane spider-webbed with a high, crystalline screech beneath the impact.
“Do you know whose roof you're bleeding under, Julian?” Gabriel whispered.
His voice was so low, so stripped of human warmth, that Julian began to shake uncontrollably, his hands clawing uselessly at Gabriel’s tattooed forearms as blood dripped from his smashed nose onto the glass.
“M-Mr. Thorne... please!” Julian choked out, his eyes bulging in terror. “Camilla said... Camilla said the girl was paid for! She said she was an agency temp who needed the cash!”
I fell to my knees beside the desk, gathering Chloe into my arms. My sister was sobbing hysterically, her entire frame convulsing as she buried her face into my chest, her fingers clutching my uniform apron until her knuckles turned white.
“Maya... he locked the door,” Chloe wept, her voice breaking into ragged gasps. “He took my phone and threw it against the wall... he told me no one would hear me over the music...”
“I’m here, baby,” I choked out, wrapping my arms around her, kissing her bruised forehead, pulling my uniform sweater over her torn collar. “I’m here. He will never touch you again. Nobody will ever touch you again.”
Gabriel let Julian Vance drop like a sack of wet flour onto the broken glass on the floor.
He turned toward the shattered doorway.
Arthur Vance and Camilla Laurent stood in the corridor, flanked by Marcus and three armed security operators with carbines leveled at their chests.
Arthur’s face was the color of sour cream.
Camilla’s diamond bracelets rattled violently against her wrists.
Gabriel walked out into the corridor with slow, measured strides, stopping three inches from Arthur Vance’s face.
“You wanted to discuss the concrete permits, Arthur?” Gabriel asked softly.
The developer swallowed hard, his voice cracking into a high-pitched wheeze.
“Gabriel... listen to me. Julian acted entirely on his own. I had no idea he came up here—it was a misunderstanding between the kids—”
Gabriel didn't let him finish the lie.
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With the unhurried, terrifying precision of an executioner, Gabriel drove his right fist straight into Arthur Vance’s jaw.
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