The solid wood splinters violently inward, the brass locks shearing right off the frame with a deafening, catastrophiccrackthat echoes like a bomb detonating in the suite.
Before the wood even hits the floor, Thayer is inside the room.
He does not look like a man. He looks like an apex predator that has finally been entirely unleashed from its cage. He is wearing a dark, bespoke suit, but the jacket is unbuttoned, his tie gone, the primal, violent fury radiating from his massive frame distorting the very air around him.
The assassin registers the breach a fraction of a second too late. He pivots, raising the combat knife, but Thayer is already on him.
It is not a fight. It is an execution.
Thayer doesn't draw a weapon. He uses his bare hands. He intercepts the assassin’s wrist with a sickening, audiblesnapof bone breaking. The assassin drops the knife, a wet, agonizing scream ripping from his lungs.
Thayer doesn't stop. With fluid, terrifying momentum, he drives his fist into the side of the man’s knee, shattering the joint instantly. The assassin collapses, but Thayer catches him by the throat before he hits the ground.
I scramble backward on my hands and knees, pressing my back against the cold glass of the window, my chest heaving violently, my eyes wide with unadulterated horror.
Thayer lifts the man entirely off the ground by his neck, his muscles bulging against the fabric of his suit. The glacial gray of Thayer’s eyes is completely gone, replaced by a bottomless, ruinous black void.
"You brought a blade into my bedroom," Thayer hisses, the demonic vibration of his voice making the hair on my arms stand straight up. "You aimed it at my wife."
"The Commission..." the assassin gurgles, blood spilling from his lips, completely broken, completely defeated. "...will burn you."
"Let them try," Thayer whispers.
With a brutal, merciless twist of his wrist, Thayer snaps the man’s neck.
The sound is a sharp, wetcrackthat will haunt my nightmares until the day I die.
Thayer drops the lifeless body to the floor. It lands with a heavy, unceremonious thud just feet from where I am cowering against the glass. The stark contrast between the pristine, luxurious bedroom and the broken, bleeding corpse on the rug is enough to completely fracture my mind.
The suite descends into a ringing, absolute silence, save for the frantic, jagged sound of my own hyperventilation.
Thayer stands over the body for a long, heavy moment. His chest is rising and falling in slow, deliberate rhythms. The knuckles of his right hand are split and bleeding, bright crimson stark against his pale skin.
Slowly, he turns his head.
His dark, hollow eyes lock onto mine.
I press myself harder against the window, my hands trembling violently as I pull the oversized cashmere sweater down over my knees. The monster has just killed a man with his bare hands. He is covered in blood. He is radiating a lethal, unrestrainedviolence that should make me want to throw myself through the glass to escape him.
But as he steps over the corpse and slowly walks toward me, the cognitive dissonance completely shatters my sanity.
He killed for me.
My father sold me to this assassin. My father wanted me dead. Thayer Thorne just ripped a man apart with his bare hands to ensure I kept breathing.
Thayer stops a foot away from me. He doesn't crouch down. He towers over me, his massive frame blocking out the light, casting me entirely in his dark, protective shadow.
He reaches down.
I don't flinch. I look up at him, my midnight-blue eyes wide and fractured, my breath catching in my throat as his large, bloodstained hand gently, impossibly gently, cups the side of my face.
His thumb brushes across my cheekbone, smearing a tiny streak of the assassin’s blood against my pale skin. It is a brand. A permanent, violent claim.
"You see?" Thayer murmurs, his velvet voice dropping to a low, obsessive hum that vibrates straight down into my core, completely bypassing my fear and igniting a dark, terrifying heat in my belly. "I am the only thing keeping you alive, Sybil."
He leans down, his face hovering mere inches from mine, the scent of fresh blood mingling perfectly with his heavy cedarwood cologne.
"You don't leave my sight," he commands, his gray eyes burning into my soul. "Ever again."
