Chapter 27 – Ben
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
BEN
A scream shattered the stillness in the lodge. It cut clean through stone, storm, and distance, hit the center of my chest, and detonated.
Chrissy.
I didn’t think. I didn’t move through steps, logic, or training. My body just reacted.
One second I was in bed in my room in the west wing, and the next second I was sprinting down the hall, barefoot, in nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants. I thundered down the hallway to the landing.
Her voice rose again, the scream thinner this time, strung tight with terror.
Every instinct I’d spent years burying roared to life.
Mine.
I tore down the staircase, shoulder slamming into the banister hard enough to make it crack. I didn’t feel it, and didn’t feel the cold marble under my bare feet, either, or the way the storm rattled the old lodge around us like it was trying to shake the roof off.
Another scream tore through the air, this one closer to a sob. It was coming from outside… from the barn.
My hand hit the front door and I didn’t bother with the handle.
I just threw my weight into it. Wood banged against stone.
Wind punched into me, icy needles shredding my skin.
The storm had only gotten worse; the yard was a nightmare of slick ice, swirling crystals still falling, and barely visible shapes.
I didn’t grab a coat, didn’t grab shoes, and didn’t grab a weapon.
All I saw was that barn, standing out through the white blur like the only thing left in the world.
I ran, ignoring the way the ice bit at my bare feet. It tried to take my feet out from under me. I almost went down twice, one knee hitting hard enough to send a shock of pain up my thigh, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.
My lungs screamed, my ribs ached, the frozen ground was cutting into the soles of my feet, but none of it mattered.
My angel was out here, she was screaming, and this was all my fault.
I’d put her here, in this game, in the storm, in that goddamn barn.
I’d treated her like a puppet, like I could test her and twist her up and shape her. I treated her like a fucking puzzle piece I could maneuver until she fit the shape I wanted.
Another sound cut through the wind, and this one wasn’t hers. It was a man’s harsh laugh.
Number Two. Hayden, I think his name was.
Everything went hot and white in my head.
The barn doors loomed in front of me, outlined by a thin line of light, barely there through the gap. I didn’t slow down. I grabbed the edge of the big rolling door and wrenched it open wider, so hard one of the hinges shrieked.
I stepped into chaos.
Chrissy was on the ground, heels skidding on icy concrete as she tried to scramble backward.
Number Eight, Brett, had a fist wrapped in her coat at the shoulder, holding her in place.
Hayden stood just to the side, blocking the path back toward the doors, his handsome face twisted into something ugly.
Between them, she looked small and furious and terrified all at once.
One of her knees was torn through her leggings. Her hair was a mess around her shoulders, eyes wild and wet. Her cheek was already bruising from where someone had grabbed or hit her.
My vision tunneled. Noise thinned to a high ringing whine in my ears.
I didn’t see decoys I’d hired. I didn’t see employees who’d broken contract. I saw two men who had their hands on my woman.
“Let. Her. Go.”
I barely recognized my own voice.
They both startled, then spun toward me. Chrissy’s gaze snapped to mine at the same time, and I felt that look like a punch.
“Ben—” she choked out.
Hayden recovered first, mouth twisting into a sneer.
“Looks like the lord of the manor finally decided to join us,” he said. He still had his hand too close to her. Far too close. “Bit late, don’t you think?”
Brett laughed under his breath.
“She was about to run, boss. We were just convincing her that was a bad idea, that’s all.”
It wasn’t all. They were both hard and Brett’s jeans were unzipped
He squeezed her shoulder and she flinched.
That was it. I moved without thinking.
There was a shovel propped against a support beam a few feet away, metal blade glinting dull under the weak barn light.
My hand closed around the handle as I passed it.
I didn’t consciously decide what I was going to do.
No, I moved on autopilot, my mind nothing but a hive of infinite rage and white noise.
I crossed the space between us in three long strides and swung for Brett’s head.
He saw the movement a split second before it connected, trying to duck away, which meant instead of taking his head off, the edge of the shovel smashed into his shoulder and upper back.
Bone cracked.
He went down, face-first, with a shout, Chrissy ripping free of his grip.
“Jesus — Ben!” he coughed, scrambling on hands and knees.
It wasn’t enough. They’d tried to take Chrissy from me. They were going to rape her and do God only knows what else after that.
I shifted my grip and swung again.
This time I caught him along the ribs with the flat of the shovel head.
Air rushed out of him in a strangled wheeze.
He curled in on himself, trying to protect his sides, but there was nowhere for him to go.
The barn floor was slick with ice melt and tracked-in mud; his boots slipped out from under him.
“Get the hell away from her,” I snarled.
Hayden rushed me from the side, aiming high, fist flying. He’d always been decent in stunt work, but he’d never fought someone who wasn’t pretending.
I let the punch catch my jaw, used the momentum to pivot and bring the shovel up from below.
The metal rim connected with his gut.
He folded over it, gagging, all the wind driven out of him. I yanked the blade back and brought it up again from the other side, catching him higher this time, along the ribs.
He went to his knees, breath coming in short, shocked gasps.
“Please—” he hacked. “We just wanted a piece of the whore, too. She screamed so pretty for you—”
I saw red, raising the shovel with the intent to swing for the fences.
He spat blood into the ice on the floor. His eyes flicked past me, toward the door, as if still calculating the odds of getting past me, as if there was any version of reality where I’d let him slip by and live a comfortable life somewhere else off my money.
The answer hit him about a second too late.
He lunged anyway, trying to get around me.
I met him halfway and slammed the flat of the shovel across his face.
The sound was wet and wrong. Blood flew in a dark arc, spattering the concrete floor and the side of a stall. Hayden went down and didn’t get back up.
“Stop, Ben!” Chrissy’s voice cracked. “Stop — stop, please, you’ll kill them—”
I was breathing too hard. Heat flooded under my skin, my muscles shaking with the effort not to keep going until there was nothing left of either of them.
“That’s the idea, baby.”
Brett shifted. I turned toward him just in time to see his hand flash.
There was a small utility knife in his palm — one of the ones the staff used to cut open supply boxes. It caught the light a half-second before he drove it upward.
Pain tore across my side, just under my ribs, white-hot and bright.
The shovel slipped in my grip for half a beat.
I roared and brought the handle down like a club. It cracked against his forearm. The knife clattered to the floor. Brett yelped, rolling onto his back, clutching his arm.
I planted my foot on his chest and shoved him flat.
“You signed a contract,” I growled, voice low. “You swore you understood the limits. You went off-script. You tried to take what’s mine. You tried to hurt her.”
“It wasn’t supposed to—” He coughed, breath hitching. “You’re the one who set this circus up, Stonewood. You wanted her tested—”
“I wanted her tested,” I snapped, shoving down harder, “not hunted… not by anyone but me.”
His eyes went wide.
I hit him with the shovel one last time, hard enough that his head snapped sideways and then lolled, his body going slack.
The barn dropped into a sudden, ringing silence.
The only sound left was the ragged rasp of my breathing and Chrissy’s quick, shallow, panicky inhales.
Blood was running hot and steady down my side now, soaking the waistband of my sweatpants. The cold air bit into the wound with vicious teeth.
I turned away from the two men on the ground to face Chrissy.
She was pressed back against an empty stall, half crouched, hands braced on the boards behind her. Her chest rose and fell fast. Tears streaked her cheeks, but her chin was tilted stubbornly high.
Her gaze dropped to the shovel in my hand, then to Hayden and Brett, then slowly dragged its way back to me.
“Are they—” she whispered.
“Dead,” I said, voice rough. “You bet your sweet ass they are.”
Relief and horror tangled across her face.
“Why the fuck would you do that,” she said, stepping forward, hand shaking as she reached for the shovel. “You could go to jail for murder. They’re not worth that, no matter what they did.”
I let the handle slide out of my fingers. It hit the floor with a dull clang.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
She blinked, thrown by the question.
“I—” She looked down at herself for the first time, like she hadn’t checked yet.
Her sweater had dirt on it, one sleeve torn at the shoulder.
Her knee was bleeding in a thin line under the rip in her leggings, a smear of blood on one palm where she’d braced on rough wood.
“No. I don’t think so. Not really, anyway. ”
The breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding left me in a shaky exhale.
Good.
Then my knees nearly buckled. The room tilted sideways.
Chrissy moved faster than I expected, closing the space between us, shoulder slamming into my side as she grabbed my arm.
“Whoa, hey — hey,” she said, voice suddenly panicked. “You are not allowed to pass out on me right now, Stonewood. Absolutely not. Stand the fuck up.”
“I am standing—” I muttered, but it came out slurred.