Chapter 7
Harper was pacing the length of the library when the heavy oak doors opened. She spun around, her heart in her throat. Silas walked in, looking completely unruffled, though the air around him felt highly charged, like the atmosphere right before a lightning strike. Bane trotted in beside him and immediately walked over to Harper, nudging her hand with his wet nose.
"He's gone," Silas said simply, crossing the room to pour a glass of scotch from the crystal decanter on the desk.
Harper collapsed into a leather armchair, burying her face in her hands. A ragged sob tore from her throat, a mixture of pure relief and residual terror. "Thank you. God, thank you, Silas. I thought... I thought he was going to take me back."
Silas paused, the glass halfway to his lips. He set it down and walked over to her. He knelt in front of the chair, his large frame dwarfing her, and gently pulled her hands away from her face.
"Look at me," he commanded softly. When she met his gaze, she saw a fierce, unyielding protectiveness burning in his ice-blue eyes. "I meant what I said. This is a fortress. You are safe here. Marcus is a coward. He won't come back. And if he does, he won't leave breathing."
Harper searched his face, finding nothing but absolute sincerity. The walls she had built around herself for three years began to crack. She had spent so long being afraid, being invisible, that the sheer weight of Silas’s protection felt intoxicating.
Without thinking, she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Silas stiffened. For a man accustomed to violence, intimidation, and isolation, the sudden, genuine embrace of a vulnerable woman was entirely alien. He froze for a long moment. Then, slowly, with a hesitant tenderness that belied his brutal nature, his large arms wrapped around her waist. He pulled her against his chest, burying his face in the crook of her neck.
"You're shaking," he murmured against her skin, his breath sending a shiver down her spine.
"I've been shaking for three years," Harper whispered back, clinging to his broad shoulders. "But I'm not right now."
They stayed like that for a long time on the library floor, two broken people seeking refuge in the wreckage of each other's lives. Bane lay down beside them, his heavy head resting on Silas's boot, completing the strange, fractured picture of a family.
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When they finally pulled apart, the air between them had shifted. The boundaries of employer and employee were gone, burned away by the adrenaline and the raw honesty of the moment. Silas looked at her lips, his gaze darkening with a sudden, intense hunger. But he pulled back, clearing his throat, the ghost of his dead wife standing between them like a wall of glass.
"Get some sleep, Harper," he said, standing up quickly. "You're safe now."
