Chapter 2 - THE TURN OF THE CYLINDER
The brass key rasped in the lock.
It sounded like dry bone grinding against iron.
My breath stopped in my throat.
Every muscle in my back seized with blinding agony.
Rhett stood between me and the wooden door.
He did not draw a weapon.
He did not shout.
His tall, broad frame simply blocked the entrance like a wall of dark granite.
He had removed his silk tie earlier to wrap my bleeding wrist.
His white shirt collar was open, stained with my blood.
"Isa, sweetheart," the voice purred from the hall.
"I brought your medicine."
"Don't make me kick this frame in again."
Julian.
Julian Vance.
The man who had signed my marriage certificate four years ago.
The man who had promised my dying mother he would protect me.
The man who had spent three years systematically destroying every friend, every job, every ounce of dignity I owned.
Rhett reached down with his left hand.
He turned the deadbolt with a single, sharp snap.
The lock mechanism engaged.
The brass key on the outside jammed instantly.
"What the hell?" Julian muttered through the wood.
A heavy boot struck the lower panel.
The pine frame splintered.
"Isa! Who is in there with you?!"
Rhett took half a step forward.
His voice dropped into a low, terrifying baritone that made the floorboards vibrate beneath me.
"Julian."
One single word.
The hallway went dead silent.
The violent thudding stopped.
Even the creak of the floor outside ceased.
"Rhett...?" Julian’s voice lost all its greasy confidence.
It became thin.
Frail.
Rattling with disbelief.
"You're in Milan," Julian stammered through the wood.
"The syndicate summit doesn't conclude until Thursday."
"I took the red-eye," Rhett said.
His tone was conversational.
Deadly.
"My housekeeper didn't bring my coffee at six-forty."
"I don't like changes to my routine."
I heard Julian take an involuntary step backward.
His leather soles squeaked against the cheap linoleum of the corridor.
"Rhett, listen to me," Julian spoke rapidly, his words stumbling over each other.
"She’s my wife."
"This is a domestic situation."
"The Commission doesn't interfere in marital matters."
"You know the code."
Rhett reached inside his suit jacket.
He didn't draw a gun.
He pulled out a silver signet ring from his pocket and slipped it onto his right pinky finger.
The ring of the Valin High Council.
"Isa has worked under my roof for fourteen months, Julian."
"She cleans my study."
"She carries my private documents."
"She sleeps under the banner of the Valin crest."
Rhett stepped right up to the door, his lips inches from the peephole.
"She ceased to be your property the morning she poured my first cup of coffee."
"She belongs to my household."
"And you broke my household's ribs."
Julian gave a high-pitched, desperate laugh.
"She ran away with three million dollars of my father's bearer bonds, Rhett!"
"She’s a thief!"
"Check her mattress!"
My heart stopped.
I tried to push myself up on my good elbow, crying out in pain.
"I didn't take them!" I wheezed, blood metallic in my mouth.
"Rhett, I swear... I left with only one suitcase!"
Rhett did not turn around.
He didn't even glance back at me.
"I don't care about your father's bonds, Julian."
"I care about the blood on my floor."
Rhett unlocked the deadbolt.
He wrenched the door wide open.
Julian stood in the dim, yellow light of the hallway.
He wore a camel-hair coat, his brown hair slicked back, a split lip from when I had thrown the kitchen kettle at him the night before.
In his right gloved hand, he held a heavy steel tire iron.
In his left, he held a suppressed automatic pistol.
Julian’s eyes darted past Rhett’s shoulder.
He saw me lying on the floor, wrapped in Rhett’s black overcoat, shivering in the pool of my own blood.
Julian’s sneer returned.
"Look at her," Julian spat.
"A pathetic, broken stray."
"You came down here for a maid, cousin?"
"Cousin."
The word slammed into my chest like an iron bar.
Rhett and Julian were cousins.
The syndicate wasn't just an employer.
It was family.
Rhett didn't blink.
He stepped across the threshold into the hall.
"Drop the iron, Julian."
Julian raised the pistol instead.
He aimed the black barrel directly between Rhett’s eyes.
"The Commission will back me on this, Rhett."
"A husband has rights over his bride."
"Step aside, or I blow your head off and take her home."
Rhett smiled.
It was the first time in fourteen months I had ever seen Rhett Valin smile.
It was not warm.
It was the terrifying grin of a wolf that had just cornered its prey.
May you like
"Shoot then," Rhett murmured.
From the fire exit at the end of the hall, the crack of a sniper rifle tore through the silence.
