Chapter 13 - Burning Down the Syndicate's Crown
Julian scrambled across the floor, reaching for his fallen pistol.
Gabriel was on him before his fingers could touch the grip. He grabbed Julian by the collar of his tactical vest, hoisting the grown man off the ground with terrifying, inhuman strength, and drove him backward into the stone hearth.
The crack of bone against granite echoed through the study.
Julian choked, blood spilling over his lips, but he managed to slide a tactical blade from his boot, driving it up toward Gabriel’s throat.
Gabriel caught Julian’s wrist with his bare left hand. The blade stopped a millimeter from his jugular. Without blinking, Gabriel twisted Julian’s forearm until the radius snapped with a sound like a dry branch breaking underfoot. Julian let out a guttural shriek as the knife clattered uselessly onto the embers.
"Ten years," Gabriel whispered, leaning in until his bloody cheek nearly brushed Julian’s ear. His voice wasn't loud; it was the quiet, intimate hiss of a razor blade slicing through silk. "Ten years I fed you at my table. Ten years I trusted you with the security of my family."
"Hayes... paid ten million," Julian wheezed, spit and blood bubbling on his teeth. "You... you were slipping, Gabriel. Getting soft over a little serving girl."
Gabriel’s fingers tightened around Julian’s throat, cutting off his oxygen until his eyes bulged in panic.
"She has more spine in her little finger than your entire bloodline," Gabriel said softly.
He didn't draw a gun. He simply drove his knee up into Julian’s sternum, shattering his ribcage, then threw the broken assassin to the floor like a sack of damp laundry. Julian lay motionless, wheezing shallow, broken breaths against the rug.
Gabriel turned to me.
His clothes were scorched, smelling of burnt petroleum and cordite. His jaw was set in rigid stone, but when his eyes found mine, the terrifying fury softened into something desperate and fiercely protective.
"You're bleeding," I gasped, rushing to him, my hands reaching out to touch his face before I could stop myself. My fingers traced the cut along his cheek, trembling against his warm skin. "You turned the car around in time?"
"Your call reached me twenty seconds before the primary detonator tripped," Gabriel murmured, his hands coming up to grip my waist, pulling me so close I could feel the thunderous pounding of his heart against my ribs. "If you hadn't unmasked Julian... my entire convoy would be buried under sixty tons of industrial concrete."
He buried his face into the crook of my neck, inhaling the scent of my hair as if checking that I was still flesh and blood. The raw vulnerability of the gesture stole the breath from my lungs. This terrifying sovereign, a man feared across an entire eastern seaboard, was holding onto me like I was his only tether to the living world.
"Dante?" I whispered against his shoulder.
"Dante is alive," Gabriel said, pulling back to look into my eyes, his thumb gently wiping a tear from my cheek. "The medic got to him. He’s stable."
A squad of six heavily armed Rossi operators burst through the shattered door, led by Marcus, their weapons raised. They halted immediately at the sight of the carnage in the study.
"Secure the traitor," Gabriel commanded without breaking eye contact with me. "Keep him alive until Dante is well enough to take his pound of flesh."
"Yes, Boss!" Marcus replied, dragging Julian out of the room.
"What about Victoria and Hayes?" I asked, my heart clenching as I remembered the phone call. "They’re boarding a jet at Teterboro in forty minutes. If they reach international airspace, they’ll disappear with your offshore records."
Gabriel looked down at his watch. A cold, feral smile touched the edges of his lips—a smile that promised total, unmitigated ruin.
May you like
"They aren't reaching international airspace," Gabriel said, taking my hand and pulling me toward the elevator. "Because tonight, Harper, we are going to burn Harrison Hayes’s empire to the ground."
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