Chapter 34
CHAPTER 34
NORTH CAROLINA
B ryson startled awake.
His body was drenched in sweat, muscles aching from a sleep that felt more like a battlefield than rest.
Something was wrong.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on the dark room, but a creeping unease settled in his gut. His pulse pounded in his ears. The air was thick, suffocating, charged with something unspoken—something violent.
A scream. It split the silence, raw and terrified.
Adrenaline spiked through him, tearing away the last remnants of sleep.
Another scream.
Followed by the sharp shatter of breaking glass.
What the fuck?
Bryson bolted upright.
“Kay!” His voice was hoarse, desperate. He scanned the dimly lit room. Empty.
“Kaydon!” he shouted again, already moving.
He grabbed the first thing he could—a pair of sweats—pulling them on as he lunged for the door. His fingers curled around the handle. He yanked.
Locked .
“Fuck!” His heart hammered in his chest.
His hands fumbled for another way out—a vent, a chair, anything—but another scream tore through the house, and his body went ice cold.
Bryson’s breath hitched. His mind went blank.
The door crashed open.
Blinding light flooding the room.
“What the fuck is going on?” Kaydon said in a hushed voice, his shoulder still hunched from ramming the door down.
Kaydon’s movements were stiff, and Bryson reluctantly remembered the evening’s events.
“I’ll kill him for what he did to you,” Bryson said, touching Kaydon’s face.
“You’re gonna have to beat me to it,” Kaydon said, putting a hand over his.
Bryson wanted to hold him, to touch him. To take all his clothes off and inventory his injuries. To kiss every bruise and every strike.
Another scream, this one less shrill and more like a wail, broke through the silence.
“That’s Adria,” they both said in unison.
Seth met them in the hall, and the three of them ran.
“What do we do?” Seth asked.
“Where is Eric?” Kaydon said.
They rushed in the direction of the screams. When they reached the first floor, the house was eerily quiet. Bryson put a finger to his lips.
Barefoot, they crept through the living room and into the kitchen. Near the breakfast bar Bryson stood still, listening. Adria’s bedroom was on the second floor of the east wing, but the commotion had clearly been from the first.
Bryson thought about the north wing. It was off-limits, but he followed his instincts, moving into the front foyer and then right to the north hall, Kaydon and Seth behind him.
A faint glow flickered ahead. Adria’s muffled cries cut through the silence, growing clearer with every step.
Bryson’s hand itched for a gun, a knife—something—but they had nothing.
They needed to find Eric. Fast.
Moving further, his eyes adjusting to the dim lighting. His pulse spiked as two figures came into focus at the end of the hall.
Then—a click .
A gun.
Bryson froze, lifting his hands slowly. His voice was steady, but his heart wasn’t.
“We heard a commotion?”
The light flickered on, and fear slammed into Bryson’s gut.
Eric.
Blood poured from Eric’s side, his hand barely holding pressure against the wound. A gun pressed tight against Crest’s temple, but the massive bodyguard didn’t even flinch—his eyes locked on Eric, like a predator waiting for its moment.
“Holy shit.” Kaydon moved, quick and controlled, relieving Eric of the gun and pressing it to Crest’s forehead.
Eric staggered back, hitting the wall hard, his face ghostly pale.
“Seth, get pressure on that!” Bryson said, pointing to Eric’s wound.
His attention already shifting—the cries ahead sending bolts of ice through him.
The double doors loomed at the end of the hall, warm light bleeding from the cracks beneath them.
Bryson’s survival instincts screamed at him to stop—to think—but his body ignored them .
His hand closed around the handle.
Beyond the doors, the red glow of the fireplace barely cut through the darkness. But the dim light did little to hide the monster within.
The moment Bryson stepped inside, his eyes locked on her.
Adria lay naked, struggling, her body trapped beneath Jonathan, who loomed over her, cock in hand.
The room reeked of sweat and metal. A heavy hand pressed onto his shoulder—Eric.
Blood poured freely from Eric’s side, drenching his shirt, but even half-dead, the force of him radiated danger. His presence filled the room, his body rigid, his gaze a promise of death.
Jonathan, either blind or too arrogant to care, pressed closer to Adria.
Eric’s grip on Bryson tightened.
“Leave.”
Eric’s tone was pained. Like the very notion of talking, and not murdering, was killing him.
It was then that Bryson noticed the broken glass and the blood.
A lot of blood.
Jonathan didn’t move.
Instead, he smirked, casually, wiping a streak of Adria’s blood from his fingers. “I assure you, I’m almost done.”
His hand reaching for her.
But Bryson noticed Seth a split second before Jonathan did. He was small. Most people didn’t give him a second glance. And Jonathan didn’t register him as a threat until it was too late.
Seth erupted out of the corner, grabbing Jonathan’s arm. Jonathan turned, putting a hand around Seth’s throat. Seth brought his arm up. Turning, he slammed it down on Jonathan’s forearm, before bringing his elbow back to connect with Jonathan’s face not once but twice.
The cracks filled the room and blood oozed from Jonathan’s nose as he stumbled. Seth was on him like a wild animal. Grabbing an arm, he twisted it behind Jonathan’s back, the other hand coming up, knife to his throat.
“We usually don’t ask twice,” Seth said, breathing even.
“Don’t kill him,” Eric said, tensing above Bryson.
A shit-eating grin broke out on Jonathan’s face.
“By all means, continue, but you will be sealing your death warrants,” Jonathan said, sneering. “ Her death warrant.”
He sounded sure, but Bryson noticed the bob in his throat as he tried to swallow under Seth’s blade.
“Bryson?” Seth asked, looking at him to make the call.
Kill him.
It was all Bryson wanted to say. But he didn’t know what was going on here. Would he be putting them in more danger? Her in danger?
The sight of Adria’s limp body next to Seth made the soft shake of his head painful.
Jonathan relaxed in Seth’s grip, his smug smirk widening, reveling in his own arrogance.
But then Seth leaned in, voice low and deadly, whispering something only Jonathan could hear.
And whatever it was—it wiped the grin off his face.
Seth let him go, but before Jonathan could scramble away, Seth moved like a shadow, circling behind him.
A twist. A push.
Jonathan’s right hand slammed against the wall, and Seth drove the knife straight through his palm.
A choked scream tore from Jonathan’s throat, his body convulsing against the pain .
Bryson’s chest tightened with pleasure, watching red spill from the wound.
Jonathan thrashed, his free hand grasping desperately at the blade. “You little shit, you are going to pay for that.” But the moment he touched the handle?—
“I’d stop talking if I were you,” Bryson said smoothly.
Jonathan’s furious gaze snapped to him, his breath ragged, but he was smart enough to listen.
Seth stepped in, pressing his chest against Jonathan’s back, leaning close. “You’ll live.”
Then, without hesitation, he ripped the blade free.
Jonathan shrieked, stumbling backward, clutching his bleeding hand, his body trembling as he scrambled for distance.
Bryson watched, pride swelling in his chest as Seth twirled the knife, poised like a master artist, a predator with his prey.
Jonathan’s pale face twisted in rage, his hand dripping red as he hastily yanked up his pants, wrapping his ruined white shirt around the wound. He threw his suit jacket over his shoulder, the fabric speckled with blood.
Some of it was Adria’s.
But now, thanks to Seth, a lot of it was his own.
Jonathan glared, but his voice was all bravado, his power slipping between his fingers like sand. “Crest, our little princess is in no position to entertain us further. It is time for us to take our leave.”
As if Crest wasn’t kneeling, Kaydon’s gun pressing into his skull.
Eric, bleeding but unwavering, gestured to Kaydon.
“Make sure he leaves,” Eric said, still looking into the room, eyes not leaving Adria.
Kaydon took a slow step back, his stance steady, his expression unforgiving. Jonathan straightened, attempting to salvage his dignity, and left without a backward glance. Kaydon followed behind them, gun still in hand .
Eric tried to take a step further into the room, but collapsed when his hand left Bryson’s shoulder.
“Call an ambulance!” Bryson shouted.
“No,” Eric said. “Get Adria—call the doc.”
That was all he said before passing out.
“Seth, get over here,” Bryson shouted, before going to check on Adria.
He noticed more blood the closer he got. Putting a hand on her shoulder, her painful groans threatened to crack his resolve.
There was still time to kill Jonathan.
Adria pressed her hands into the desk and turned to face him.
Bryson sucked in a breath; blood matted down a tangle of hair in her face. Her lip was broken and swollen.
He tried to lift her, but she flinched.
“Get Eric,” she said, shrinking away from him.
Bryson’s heart squeezed; she was able to make herself look so small.
“Eric isn’t in great shape either,” he said, voice thick.
She turned awkwardly and sank down the desk until she was in a sort of sitting position. Her head lolled unnaturally to one side, wincing when she saw Eric.
Bryson saw hundreds of slashes across her body, face, and arms. It was so much like his sister that he struggled to stay in reality.
Biting his cheek, he willed himself to stay in the present. Adria and Eric needed a level head.
“Do you have someone we can call?” Bryson asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
She nodded, her voice soft, barely a whisper. “In my office, in my top drawer is a phone. Bring it to me.”
She groaned as she attempted to take a key from her neck .
Kaydon skidded into the room. “He’s gone…fucking hell, what happened?”
Bryson grabbed her key and turned. “Stay with Adria. I have to get her phone.”
Kaydon looked confused until he locked eyes on her. The color draining from his face.
Bryson moved.
Seth hovered over Eric.
“He’s alive, but barely,” Seth said as Bryson ran past.
Moving up the stairs two at a time, he opened the door to her office.
Opening the drawer, Bryson pushed past the pile of paper and notes until he found a phone.
Taking the stairs three at a time, Bryson ran back to the north wing. Halfway down the hallway, he ran into Kaydon. He was holding Adria, wrapped in a blanket.
He wasn’t hurt that she had let Kaydon touch her and not him. Instead, he felt relieved that she was allowing someone to help her.
“Who do I need to call?”
Her head listed to one side.
Bryson shook her shoulder. “Adria, I need to know who to call?”
She didn’t answer.
“Mistress!” Bryson said, voice on the verge of panic.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Fell.”
Thank God.
He moved through the contacts.
The phone rang twice before the doctor’s groggy voice answered. “Doc, it’s Adria. She needs you right now.”
The line was quiet, before the doctor’s voice cracked through. “She can’t speak for herself?”
Bryson looked at the pale woman in Kaydon’s arms.
“Jonathan was here.”
It was a risk, but he needed him to come .
“I’ll be right there.”
The line went dead.
Bryson looked up at his brothers. “He’s coming.”
Kaydon sat down in one of the large armchairs and brushed some hair out of her face.
Seth was still with Eric, holding pressure on the wound.
Bryson stood with the phone still in his hand. Guilt washing over him.
This was his fault.
He watched Adria’s small form taking shallow breaths in Kaydon’s arms.
Jonathan attacking Adria was not something he expected.
They needed help.
Bryson picked up the phone and dialed the number of the only person outside of this room that he could trust.
She picked up on the first ring.
He turned, walking into the entertainment room. “It’s me. We need your help.”