Page 79 of His Contract Queen

“No—please!” she cries.

Another man from the kitchens lunges forward, trying to shield her. He’s grabbed by the back of the shirt and slammed face-first into the wall. Blood blooms instantly along the man’s temple, bright and shocking against the cream surface.

Orders snap through the air in clipped, efficient bursts as the masked men holding me speak into the radios attached to their hips.

“Cleared the west wing.”

“Restraints being made for combatants.”

“Primary target secured.”

Primary target.

Me.

The words send a cold spike of realization through my chest.

They aren’t here for my father. They’re here for me.

They drag me toward the grand staircase.

My pulse explodes into a wild rhythm.

No.

Absolutely not.

My heels skid across the runner as I fight against them with every ounce of strength I have, forcing my body weight backward to keep them from pulling me any further.

There is no way in hell I’m letting government officials take me into custody. I would rather die than spend the next decade rotting in a concrete cell while my father bargains away whatever scraps of loyalty he has left to save himself again. I refuse to become the “necessary” sacrifice that finally exposes his crimes while forfeiting my own life in the process.

“Move,” one of the men growls.

I dig my heels harder into the carpet. “Go to hell.”

The man gripping my right arm twists it sharply behind my back. Pain explodes through my shoulder, white-hot and blinding.

“Fuck!” I choke out as my vision speckles.

“Stop it,” he hisses into my ear.

But even as the pain radiates down my arm, I still refuse to take another step. My opportunity to break free finally comes when one of our family’s butlers lunges at us from the left side.

The movement is so sudden that for half a second, the men holding me don’t react. He’s been working in this house longer than I’ve been alive. A mountain of a man with shoulders like a linebacker and a mustache that has never once been trimmed differently in the twenty-two years I’ve known him. Tonight his face is red with fury as he barrels straight toward us.

He slams straight into the man on my left with the force of a battering ram, sending both of them both crashing into the wall. The masked man stumbles hard, rifle clattering against the paneling as he’s grappled.

It’s all the opening I need.

I give one last desperate wrench of my arm and drive my elbow backward as hard as I can. The point of it slams straight into the solar plexus of the man at my right. Air whooshes out of him in a strangled gasp, then he doubles over instantly.

I rip my arm free and run.

The staircase blurs beneath my feet as I bolt down it two steps at a time, my bare feet slipping slightly as adrenaline roars through my veins.

I don’t know where I’m going. I only know I have to move. There’s nowhere in this house that can keep me hidden forever now that they know for certain I’m here. But standing by and doing nothing still means being dragged out of this place in handcuffs, and that is absolutely not happening.

I reach the bottom of the staircase and skid into the foyer just as another group of masked men storms through the front hallway.