My blood runs entirely cold. "I don't... I don't understand. The wedding... he said the wedding cleared the ledger."
"He lied to you, Sybil," Thayer states methodically. "He used the wedding as a distraction. While all of my capos and soldiers were at the cathedral focused on securing the perimeter for the ceremony, Arthur Vance ordered his remaining loyalists to firebomb my largest weapons shipment warehouse on the west side."
The words hit me like physical blows. Firebombed. Weapons. Distraction.
My mind spins violently, desperately trying to piece together the shattered fragments of my reality. "No," I whisper, shaking my head in frantic denial. "No, he wouldn't do that. He knows you would kill him. He knows you would..."
The realization slams into me with the force of a freight train, completely knocking the remaining oxygen from my lungs.
He left me here.
"He left me," I choke out, the words completely hollow, completely devoid of life.
Thayer doesn't offer false comfort. He doesn't sugarcoat the betrayal. "Yes. He vanished from his estate three hours ago. He boarded a private jet out of O'Hare under a false alias. He left you in the center of the Thorne Syndicate's fortress, married to its Don, fully aware that a normal mafia boss would execute the daughter of a traitor before the sun came up."
The emotional wound I have carried for eighteen years—the deep-seated belief that I am entirely worthless, a burden to be discarded—rips wide open, bleeding hot and fresh.
My father didn't just sell me. He sacrificed me. He dressed me in white silk, walked me down the aisle, and handed me over to the devil, knowing full well that by morning, I would likely pay for his treason with my life. I was never a wife to him. I was a meat shield. A pawn sacrificed on the board to buy him a three-hour head start.
A ragged, agonizing sound tears itself from my throat. It isn't a sob. It is the sound of my soul completely hollowing out.
My hands fly up to cover my mouth, my body folding entirely in half as a wave of profound, debilitating physical pain crashes through my chest. The betrayal is an acid burning through my veins. I can't breathe. I can't think. The room begins to spin in violent, dizzying circles. The edges of my vision blur with dark, fuzzy static.
"Sybil."
Thayer’s hands are on me instantly. He grips my shoulders, hauling my collapsing body upright. I fight him blindly, completely lost in the blinding panic of the panic attack, my hands pushing frantically against his solid chest.
"Don't touch me!" I scream, the sound completely raw, entirely broken. "Don't! He left me! He left me to die!"
"You are not going to die," Thayer barks, his voice a sharp, commanding crack of thunder that cuts through the fog of my hysteria. He doesn't let go. He pulls me flush against his chest, wrapping his massive arms around me in a crushing, unyielding grip, completely immobilizing my thrashing limbs.
"Let me go!" I sob, tears blinding me, soaking into the skin of his bare shoulder.
"Never," he growls directly into my ear. He forces me backward until my spine hits the headboard, his body caging mine in, entirely surrounding me with his heat, his scent, and his absolute, terrifying power. "Listen to me, little bird. Do you hear me? Focus on my voice."
I am hyperventilating, dragging short, jagged gasps of air into my burning lungs.
"Arthur Vance is a dead man walking," Thayer murmurs, his voice dropping to a dark, lethal hum that vibrates against myribs. "I will hunt him to the ends of the earth. I will carve the skin from his bones for what he has done to you. But you are not a casualty of his war. You are a Thorne now. You belong to me. And nothing I own gets broken unless I am the one breaking it."
The possessive, twisted logic of his words is a sick, twisted anchor in the middle of a catastrophic hurricane.
I should be terrified of him. I should be fighting with everything I have to escape this gilded cage. But as the sheer scale of my father's betrayal completely destroys my old life, a dark, terrifying realization blooms in my shattered mind.
I have absolutely no one else.
The only thing standing between me and the ruthless violence of the Chicago Syndicate is the monster holding me in his arms. My captor is my only shield.
The fight completely drains out of my body. My muscles go slack, my head dropping forward to rest heavily against the hollow of his shoulder. I clutch the fabric of his dark boxer briefs, my fingers digging desperately into his waist, anchoring myself to the only solid, unmoving thing left in my universe.
Thayer’s grip shifts. The crushing restraint softens into a heavy, possessive embrace. One of his large hands comes up to cup the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my dark hair, holding me securely against him. He rests his chin on the top of my head, his breathing slow and steady, waiting patiently for the storm inside me to pass.
We stay like that for what feels like hours. The silence in the penthouse is heavy, charged with the shifting dynamics of our twisted reality.
When my tears finally dry, leaving my eyes burning and my throat completely raw, Thayer slowly pulls back. He doesn't let me retreat to the opposite side of the bed. He keeps his hands firmly planted on my hips, holding me in place directly in front of him.
His gray eyes scan my exhausted, pale face. He reaches up and uses his thumb to wipe a stray tear from my jawline.
"Get up," he commands softly. The lethal edge is back in his voice, but it isn't directed at me. It is directed at the world outside the bulletproof glass. "We are leaving."
