Chapter 330
Chapter 330:
Liam crouched in the shadows, blood dripping from a cut on his forehead. He didn’t know who the new players were.
He only knew that his home had become a war zone.
Through the smoke and rain swirling in the ruined doorway, heavy tires crunched over debris. A matte-black armored SUV screeched to a halt at the foyer entrance, its headlights blinding the intruders.
The doors flew open. Alistair Thorne stepped out, flanked by three operatives from his elite security detail. He wasn’t wearing a suit tonight. He was in tactical gear, a suppressed SIG Sauer in his hand.
“Clear the room!” Alistair commanded, his voice a low growl that cut through the chaos.
His men surged forward, engaging the original intruders with terrifying efficiency. Gunshots, short, controlled bursts, echoed off the marble walls.
Behind Alistair’s vehicle, a second car pulled up, a sleek sedan. The rear door opened, and Skye stepped out. She wasn’t dressed for war. She wore a trench coat over her business attire, her face pale in the strobe-light flashes of gunfire.
“Stay in the car!” Alistair shouted over his shoulder, firing two shots at a gunman on the stairs.
Skye ignored him. She moved toward the entrance, her eyes scanning the wreckage for Liam. She hadn’t come to fight. She had come because her surveillance network had flagged a hit squad moving on the manor. She wanted him ruined, stripped of his legacy, yes, but she did not want him murdered by shadows. That was too easy an exit for a man with so much to answer for.
“Liam!” she called, her voice cutting through the noise.
Liam stepped out from behind the pillar. He was bleeding, his suit torn, holding the letter opener like a dagger. He looked wild, unhinged, a man pushed past the brink.
He saw them. Skye and Alistair, standing together in the wreckage of his home. They looked like a unit. A team.
Jealousy, hot and irrational, flooded his chest. Even now, in the middle of a firefight, seeing them together hurt more than the blow to his ribs.
“Skye!” Liam shouted, stepping into the light. “Get back! It’s a trap p>
His voice distracted her. She turned her head toward him, momentarily taking her eyes off the shadows.
𝗡о 𝗉𝘪r𝗮𝗰𝘺 𝗿е𝗮𝘥 о𝗇 be𝗹𝘯𝗈𝘃е𝘭s.𝗰𝗼𝗆
That split second was all the opening the enemy needed.
One of the original intruders, a man who had been playing dead near the overturned coat rack, surged up. He held a combat knife, the blade matte black and serrated.
He lunged at Skye’s exposed back.
Alistair was facing the man, but he was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with another assailant, his arm locked in a struggle for his weapon. He saw the threat. He shouted, but he couldn’t break free in time.
Liam didn’t have to think. He didn’t calculate the odds. He threw himself across the gap. He didn’t try to tackle the man. He threw his body into the path of the blade.
The impact was a dull, heavy thud.
Liam felt a cold pressure in his lower abdomen, followed instantly by a burning heat that spread through his entire body.
The intruder’s momentum carried them both to the floor.
“Liam p>
The scream tore from Skye’s throat. It wasn’t the scream of a lover losing her soulmate. It was the scream of someone watching a debt be paid in the wrong currency. It was frustration, shock, and a refusal to let him escape his penance through death.
Alistair moved then. He broke the neck of his opponent with a brutal twist and pivoted. He stepped over Liam’s collapsing body and grabbed the attacker’s head. With a sharp, sickening motion, the threat was ended.