Gabriel.
I stagger to my feet, swaying as the room spins around me. Blood drips from my split lip, mixing with Winters’s on my shirt. My fingers find the console table, and I wrench open the drawer.
A handgun rests on a velvet lining, loaded and ready. I grab it, checking the chamber with muscle memory born from years of fighting to grow past being a victim.
As I race down the hallway, following the soundsof struggle, a trail of blood marks my path. Winters’s or mine. I can’t tell anymore.
I reach a closed door at the end of the hall and kick it open, gun raised, ready to fire.
The scene before me freezes my blood.
Gabriel stands over Darrow’s body, chest heaving, spattered with blood. His wrists bear raw circles where rope burned through skin, but his hands grip a letter opener— No, a stiletto blade, covered in crimson to the handle.
Darrow lies sprawled on the floor of what appears to be a home office, throat slashed open, staring at nothing as the carpet beneath him darkens with spreading red.
I lower the gun with a relieved exhale. “Gabe.”
He turns, blade still raised, muscles coiled to attack. When he registers it’s me, the tension drains from him all at once, and he staggers forward, dropping the knife.
“Saint.”
We collide, his arms crushing as they wrap around my shoulders, mine wrapping around his chest.
The gun dangles from my fingers, forgotten as I bury my nose in his neck, inhaling his pheromones beneath the blood and sweat. “I thought?—”
“It’s okay.” His hands cup my cheeks, thumbswiping at blood and tears I didn’t realize were there. “I’m safe.”
His mouth finds mine, tasting of salt and copper. The kiss contains all of the fear, relief, and raw need to confirm we’re both alive.
A crash from the front of the townhouse tears us apart.
“Fuck.” Gabriel dives for the bookcase, pulling out a sawed-off shotgun from beneath the shelf. “It sounds like Tony didn’t come alone.”
The gun returns to my grip, safety off, as we turn toward the new threat together.
21
Footsteps thunder across the front hall as Gabriel puts his back to the wall beside me, both of us aiming at the office doorway as we wait for Tony’s men to find us.
“Three, maybe four,” Gabriel whispers.
My gaze sweeps across the wreckage of the office, the upended desk, the blood-soaked carpet, and Darrow’s lifeless body sprawled on the floor.
“I don’t suppose your cousin has a safe room,” I whisper.
“In the basement,” Gabriel responds. “There’s no way to get there from here.”
I firm my hold on the knife in my other hand, Winters’s blood gluing it to my palm. “Rather shortsighted of him.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him that once we’re out of here.” Gabriel mirrors my movements, checking the windows for possible escape routes.
His face bears a partial mask of dried blood, and fresh red still seeps from a gash above his eyebrow. A visible tremor runs through his hands, but his grip on the shotgun remains steady.
“Behind the desk?” I tilt my head toward the heavy wooden furniture.
He shakes his head. “Too obvious.”
Sirens wail in the distance, their sounds rising and falling, but too far away to help us. The police won’t arrive in time to stop whatever comes through that door next.
