Chapter 15
The heavy wooden door didn't burst open; it swung inward with agonizing slowness. A figure stepped into the dim light of the cabin.
It wasn't a Russian mercenary. It was Marcus.
He looked disheveled, wild-eyed, holding a suppressed pistol with a trembling hand. He stepped inside, closing the door softly behind him.
"Hello, Harper," Marcus smiled, a cruel, jagged expression. "Your new boyfriend’s security detail was pathetically easy to buy off. The Russians pay much better than he does."
Harper’s blood ran cold. The guards hadn't been killed; they had been bribed. Silas had walked into a trap, and she had been left entirely unprotected.
"Get out, Marcus," Harper said, gripping the fire poker so tightly her knuckles turned white.
"Or what?" Marcus laughed, raising the pistol and pointing it at her chest. "You’re going to hit me with that stick? Volkov told me I could have you back once I let his men into the perimeter. They're coming down the road now. But I wanted a few minutes alone to remind you who you belong to."
He took a step forward.
He didn't see the shadow waiting in the hallway.
Bane didn't bark. He didn't warn. He simply exploded forward. One hundred and sixty pounds of lethal muscle hit Marcus square in the chest, the sheer kinetic force throwing the man backward into the heavy oak coffee table. The wood shattered under their combined weight.
Marcus screamed, firing the pistol wildly. The bullet shattered a window, missing Harper by inches.
Bane’s jaws locked onto Marcus’s gun arm, his teeth sinking deep into the muscle and bone. Marcus howled in agony, dropping the weapon as the massive hound violently shook his head, tearing the tissue.
"Bane, hold!" Harper screamed, remembering the commands from her rescue days.
The dog didn't release, but he stopped shaking, pinning the sobbing, terrified Marcus to the floor. The beast stared down at the man, his jaws dripping with blood, waiting for Harper’s next command.
Harper walked forward, kicking the dropped pistol across the room. She stood over the man who had terrorized her for years, the man she had lost sleep over, the man she had run across the country to escape. Looking at him now, bleeding and whimpering beneath the paws of a loyal dog, he didn't look like a monster. He looked pathetic.
Suddenly, the roar of massive engines shattered the night outside. Tires screeched on the dirt road. Headlights flooded through the broken window.
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Heavy boots slammed onto the porch. The front door was kicked off its hinges.
Silas stood in the doorway, covered in soot, blood, and rain. He held an assault rifle, his eyes wild with a terror that instantly evaporated into absolute, murderous rage when he saw Marcus pinned to the floor by Bane.
