I kept my rifle sweeping the horizon, eyes never leaving the tree line. “Cameras look fine from out here. We clear?” I asked into comms.
Alex’s voice came back steady in my ear. “All sensors reset. No movement. I'm resetting the cameras again. South gate is secure.”
Cam latched the crate with an easy motion and set it in the back of the SUV. She gave the gate one last pull, checking the lock twice before nodding up at me. Everything read clear, at least for now.
The road stretched ahead in the sweep of the headlights, gravel crunching under the tires. My rifle lay across my lap, stock against my shoulder, ready even though the threat had dissolved into nothing more than stray animals. My pulse was steady now, but the edge remained sharp.
False alarms didn’t lower the danger. They reminded you how close it sits. If this had been real, if someone had breached that fence, they would be dead. That is not bravado, only fact. That is the job. That is the line between Sabine's safety and the world outside.
The house came into view, lights cutting across the courtyard. Cam slowed, parking the SUV by the garage. She swung out, lifting the crate in her free hand. The faint sound of mewling kittens carried through the night air.
I stayed where I was for a second longer, one hand sliding into my pocket to touch the cold steel of the lighter.
No breaches tonight. Tomorrow, maybe not. The line holds either way.
She will never touch that danger. Not while I am breathing.
16
Sabine
The alarm shrieked throughthe walls, drilling into my skull until it felt like my bones carried the sound. Ellie’s order to stay put still rang in my ears, but she was gone, boots pounding down the stairs. The library door gaped open, leaving me in the roar of that siren and the thunder of movement below.
I clenched the armrests to anchor myself, lungs straining for air that tasted of dust and old leather. Every instinct said to move, to follow, but the shriek pinned me in place as surely as if the door had been locked.
This wasn’t a drill. If they were reacting with that kind of urgency, then something was out there. Something close enough to shatter the illusion of safety I had barely begun to trust. And I was alone with it.
I could hear movement through the house and wondered what was happening out there. Closing my eyes only made the alarm drill harder, pressing images of each of the women into my head. Kara, shoulders squared, voice like cut glass. She gave orders sharp enough to bite. She moved through a room with every step measured like it had been rehearsed. There was nothing casual in her, nothing that allowed slack. And where did that leave me? On crutches, ankle swollen, dependent. A flaw. Women like her didn’t tolerate flaws.
My mind slid to Cam, and the heat that still clung to me from the bathroom. Her silence had been heavier than a command, her words few but direct, wrapping around me until I gave in without realizing it. She had bent me with hardly any effort at all, and I had let her. The thought made my stomach twist. If she could push me that fast, if she could steer me with nothing more than quietdirection, what else could she take from me? What else could she demand, and how quickly would I yield before I even understood what was happening?
I tried to push the memory aside, but Ellie’s face broke through next. I pictured her crouched in front of me, unwinding the bandage without preamble, her hands steady and professional as if I were no more than a field dressing. Her efficiency had cut deep, colder than her scolding words. When she caught me on the stairs, she had treated me like a problem to be solved, not a person to be considered. And yet, when she kissed me, touched me on the stairs, just for a second, something had slipped. A spark under all that ice. I didn’t know if that made her safer than the others or more dangerous. A woman who could keep herself that tightly bound might snap in ways I could not predict.
Their faces crowded me. Kara’s sharpness, Cam’s silence, Ellie’s control. I was surrounded by strength that had already proven it could contain me. I had stepped into this house thinking I could maneuver, that I could stay on guard. The truth pressed harder with every second the siren screamed. I was at their mercy, and I didn’t know yet if any of them had it to give.
My mind wandered. Ugly details from my research into the Bellante family floated to the top, unbidden. The family in New Jersey, gone overnight, neighbors whispering about suitcases in the dark. An accountant pulled from the river weeks apart, his mouth filled with silt and his ledgers gone with the waves.
One photograph had never let me go. A man collapsed on the floor of his own living room, his throat cut wide. His wife and two children slumped against the wall, each with a single bullet hole neat between the eyes. Their faces were frozen in shock, the blood spray bright against the pale paint behind them.
Punishment under the Bellante name never missed its target. I had charted the patterns, lined them up against arrests and disappearances, and the conclusion had always been the same. They made examples, and those examples stayed permanent.
I had stared at that image until I couldn’t eat, until I had seen it when I closed my eyes. I told myself it was fuel, that I had to see the truth if I wanted to write it. But now, alone in this house with the alarm screaming, I felt the weight of itpressing close. If the Bellantes could erase entire family for one man’s disloyalty, what chance did I have if I was sitting within their reach?
My pulse matched the alarm’s pitch, my body braced though there was nowhere to run. Every blast felt like foreshadowing, as if the sound itself was spelling out what I had known from the start. It was not a question of whether their reach would find me, but when.
I pressed my palms harder into the velvet chair, breath shallow. The house had seemed like a fortress when I first arrived, stone and locks and women with rifles on every wall. Now it felt like the gates of a prison, a cage waiting to be breached. I had thought I could use the Bellante family as a story, hold them at a distance with facts and interviews and paper trails. Instead, I was sitting in their silence, hearing the siren carry the echo of my own name.
I couldn’t sit still anymore. The chair felt like it would swallow me whole if I stayed pinned there, so I pushed myself upright, fumbling for the crutches. They rattled against the carpet as I wedged them under my arms, the motion clumsy, but forward was better than frozen. Every swing of my body felt unsteady, but I forced it, one stride at a time, until I reached the tall windows that lined the far wall.
The glass stretched far above my head, the view beyond washed in pale light. Land unrolled in every direction, wide and endless. The tree line pressed thick against the horizon, dark and close-knit, swallowing the edges of the property. No road in sight. No gate. Nothing that suggested an outside world existed past the forest.
The realization closed in sharp. Even if I screamed, even if I shattered the glass and cried until my throat tore, no one out there would hear. The sound would die against the trees, just another echo swallowed by the night. I was sealed inside with them, my world narrowed to stone walls and locked doors, my life hanging on women I didn’t fully trust.
My grip tightened on the crutches until the pads dug into my ribs. Panic surged in a dizzy rush, my breath shallow against the rise in my chest. I made myself inhale, slow, pulling air deep enough to keep from collapsing under it.The window gave me nothing but the proof of my isolation, so I turned back, dragging my gaze across the library.
Shelves climbed to the ceiling, stuffed with volumes that smelled of dust and old paper. The velvet chairs hunched in the corners like silent witnesses. My eyes swept the room again, searching for any distraction, any anchor that could hold me steady against the certainty pressing in.
My gaze caught on a shelf of leather-bound books. Their spines gleamed with gold embossing, the surface worn smooth by years of hands pulling them free. The detail that stopped me was a small but sharp monogram: a curling “B”—ornate and looping, stamped into every single spine.
