Chapter 4 - The Wolves in the Snow“Stay behind me,” Adrian ordered, his voice dropping into the cold, ruthless cadence of a man who ruled the criminal underworld.
Despite the pale sweat beading on his forehead and the raw crimson stain beginning to seep through his dark turtleneck around his left shoulder, he moved with lethal precision. He shoved the magazine into his pistol with a crisp click, flicked off the safety, and eased his bedroom door open an inch.
Downstairs, heavy boots crunched against the shattered glass of the front foyer.
“Check the kitchen and the service wing!” a harsh, unfamiliar voice barked from below. “Boss wants confirmation. If Cross is dead in this snow, we take the ledger from his office. If he’s alive, finish it.”
My breath hitched. Hitmen.
They weren’t rescue workers. They were predators taking advantage of a historic blizzard and a compromised estate.
Adrian looked back at me over his shoulder, his gray eyes flashing with a dark, terrifying resolve.
“They’re Morales’s men,” Adrian whispered, his jaw locked. “They must have tracked my security detail’s failure to check in. They think I’m vulnerable.”
“You are vulnerable,” I hissed back, grabbing a heavy brass candlestick from the hallway table as we stepped out of the bedroom. “You’re bleeding through your shirt right now!”
“Quiet,” Adrian commanded, slipping down the dimly lit hallway toward the rear service staircase.
We moved in tense, agonizing silence. Every creak of the old wooden floorboards sounded like a gunshot in the frozen night. Adrian held his pistol raised, navigating the shadows with terrifying grace, using his body to shield mine despite the fact that a single hard blow to his left shoulder could reopen his wound and incapacitate him entirely.
We reached the second-floor landing overlooking the grand marble foyer.
Below us, two men in heavy tactical gear stood near the shattered front doors, carrying short-barreled assault rifles with suppressors. A third man was kicking open the door to Adrian’s private study—the very room where I had found the photograph of Elena Cross.
“Clear!” the man in the study shouted. “The safe’s locked!”
“Blow it open!” the leader barked from the foyer.
Adrian didn't hesitate. He leaned around the carved banister, took a breath, and fired twice.
Puff. Puff.
The two men in the foyer dropped instantly before they could even raise their weapons.
“Contact!” the third man yelled, spinning out of the study with his rifle raised toward the stairs.
“Run!” Adrian shouted, shoving me backward down the narrow corridor toward the guest wing as a burst of suppressed gunfire chewed through the wooden balustrade right where we had been standing. Splinters rained down over our heads.
“Adrian!” I screamed, grabbing his uninjured right arm as he stumbled, his face turning ghostly pale as fresh blood soaked through his sleeve.
“I told you to stay back!” he snarled, dragging me into the darkened library and slamming the heavy oak door shut, throwing the antique deadbolt.
We pressed our backs against the cold wood of the door, listening to the heavy boots thundering down the hallway toward us.
Adrian slid down to one floor, his breathing ragged and shallow, clutching his shoulder as a dark stain spread rapidly across his shirt. He had pushed his body far beyond its biological limits, and the stitches had torn.
“The window,” Adrian panted, gesturing weakly toward the towering stained-glass windows overlooking the rear gardens. “There’s a snowdrift piled high against the terrace... you can slide down... get to the carriage house...”
“And leave you here to be executed?” I snapped, dropping to my knees beside him. I ripped the linen scarf from my neck and pressed it hard against his bleeding shoulder, ignoring his sharp hiss of pain. “Shut up, Adrian. You’re not dying tonight. I didn't drag you through a mile of snow just to let some thugs finish the job.”
Outside the library door, the gunman slammed his shoulder against the wood.
CRACK.
The deadbolt rattled. The heavy oak groaned under the impact.
Adrian raised his pistol with his right hand, his eyes fixed on the door, his face a mask of cold, unyielding fury. But as he looked at me—kneeling beside him in the dark, pressing my hands against his bleeding wound with absolute, unwavering fierce determination—something shifted in his storm-gray eyes.
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It was no longer the look of a mafia boss commanding a servant.
It was the look of a man who realized, for the very first time in his life, that he wasn't alone.
