CHAPTER 7 THE GLASS TOWER POV SYBIL #2
"Okay," I whisper, stepping back, wrapping my arms around my waist in a protective, comforting gesture. "I'm sorry. I won't ask again."
Maria lets out a shaky exhale of relief. "Thank you, Donna. I will return for the tray in one hour."
She turns and walks quickly back to the double doors. She knocks twice on the wood. A second later, the deadbolt slides back, the door opens just enough for her to slip out, and it slams shut again. The lock clicks.
I am alone again.
I look at the food on the silver cart. Scrambled eggs, thick-cut bacon, fresh fruit, and steaming tea. The smell of it makes my empty stomach clench violently, but the anxiety coursing through my veins makes the thought of swallowing anything completely repulsive.
I walk over to the table and pick up the porcelain teacup. The warmth seeps into my freezing fingers. I take a small sip. It is chamomile, sweetened with honey. Exactly what my childhood therapist used to recommend for my panic attacks.
He knows everything.
I carry the teacup to the window and look out at the mist again. Time begins to warp. The heavy silence of the room presses against my eardrums until they ring. Every shadow feels like a threat. Every creak of the massive house settling makes my pulse jump.
Thirty minutes pass.
Then, I hear it.
It is incredibly faint. Not the heavy, metallic thud of the deadbolt on the main doors. It is a soft, metallic click coming from the opposite side of the suite.
I slowly turn my head.
To the left of the walk-in closets is a secondary door. I had assumed it led to another closet or perhaps a private study.
The brass knob is turning. Slowly. Agonizingly slowly.
My heart stops completely. The teacup in my hands trembles, the hot liquid sloshing over the brim to burn my knuckles, but I don't feel the pain. The survival instinct, honed over eighteen years of living with a violent man, immediately hijacks my nervous system.
The door opens with a soft whisper of hinges.
A man steps into the master suite.
He is dressed in the standard tactical gear of the Syndicate soldiers—black combat pants, a heavy vest, a dark long-sleeved shirt. But the moment my eyes lock onto his face, my blood runs colder than ice.
He isn't looking at the floor.
He is looking directly at me. His eyes are dead, professional, and entirely devoid of the fear that every other guard in this compound possesses when my name is even whispered.
He reaches behind him and pushes the door shut. He slides a heavy, internal bolt across the frame, effectively locking us in from the inside.
"Who are you?" I breathe, the teacup slipping from my numb fingers. It hits the thick carpet with a dull thud, the chamomile tea soaking into the dark fibers.
The man doesn't answer. He reaches down to his tactical boot. With a smooth, practiced motion, he draws a long, serrated combat knife. The dark metal absorbs the muted light of the room, promising absolute, silent violence.
"The Commission sends their regards, Sybil Vance," the man says. His voice is a low, raspy whisper, designed not to travel through the soundproof walls.
The Commission. The rival family. The people my father sold me to.
A strangled scream tears its way up my throat, but it never makes it past my lips. My vocal cords are completely paralyzed by sheer, primal terror.
The man lunges.
He is incredibly fast, crossing the massive distance of the bedroom in seconds. I stumble backward, my heel catching on the thick pile of the rug. I fall hard, the impact jarring my spine, my hands flying up in a pathetic, desperate attempt to shield my face from the blade.
But the blade never connects.
The heavy, double-vaulted mahogany doors of the main entrance do not just open. They explode.
The solid wood splinters violently inward, the brass locks shearing right off the frame with a deafening, catastrophic crack that echoes like a bomb detonating in the suite.
Before the wood even hits the floor, Thayer is inside the room.
He does not look like a man. He looks like an apex predator that has finally been entirely unleashed from its cage. He is wearing a dark, bespoke suit, but the jacket is unbuttoned, his tie gone, the primal, violent fury radiating from his massive frame distorting the very air around him.
The assassin registers the breach a fraction of a second too late. He pivots, raising the combat knife, but Thayer is already on him.
It is not a fight. It is an execution.
Thayer doesn't draw a weapon. He uses his bare hands. He intercepts the assassin’s wrist with a sickening, audible snap of bone breaking. The assassin drops the knife, a wet, agonizing scream ripping from his lungs.
Thayer doesn't stop. With fluid, terrifying momentum, he drives his fist into the side of the man’s knee, shattering the joint instantly. The assassin collapses, but Thayer catches him by the throat before he hits the ground.
I scramble backward on my hands and knees, pressing my back against the cold glass of the window, my chest heaving violently, my eyes wide with unadulterated horror.
Thayer lifts the man entirely off the ground by his neck, his muscles bulging against the fabric of his suit. The glacial gray of Thayer’s eyes is completely gone, replaced by a bottomless, ruinous black void.
"You brought a blade into my bedroom," Thayer hisses, the demonic vibration of his voice making the hair on my arms stand straight up. "You aimed it at my wife."
"The Commission..." the assassin gurgles, blood spilling from his lips, completely broken, completely defeated. "...will burn you."
"Let them try," Thayer whispers.
With a brutal, merciless twist of his wrist, Thayer snaps the man’s neck.
The sound is a sharp, wet crack that will haunt my nightmares until the day I die.
Thayer drops the lifeless body to the floor. It lands with a heavy, unceremonious thud just feet from where I am cowering against the glass. The stark contrast between the pristine, luxurious bedroom and the broken, bleeding corpse on the rug is enough to completely fracture my mind.
The suite descends into a ringing, absolute silence, save for the frantic, jagged sound of my own hyperventilation.
Thayer stands over the body for a long, heavy moment. His chest is rising and falling in slow, deliberate rhythms. The knuckles of his right hand are split and bleeding, bright crimson stark against his pale skin.
Slowly, he turns his head.
His dark, hollow eyes lock onto mine.
I press myself harder against the window, my hands trembling violently as I pull the oversized cashmere sweater down over my knees.
The monster has just killed a man with his bare hands.
He is covered in blood. He is radiating a lethal, unrestrained violence that should make me want to throw myself through the glass to escape him.
But as he steps over the corpse and slowly walks toward me, the cognitive dissonance completely shatters my sanity.
He killed for me.
My father sold me to this assassin. My father wanted me dead. Thayer Thorne just ripped a man apart with his bare hands to ensure I kept breathing.
Thayer stops a foot away from me. He doesn't crouch down. He towers over me, his massive frame blocking out the light, casting me entirely in his dark, protective shadow.
He reaches down.
I don't flinch. I look up at him, my midnight-blue eyes wide and fractured, my breath catching in my throat as his large, bloodstained hand gently, impossibly gently, cups the side of my face.
His thumb brushes across my cheekbone, smearing a tiny streak of the assassin’s blood against my pale skin. It is a brand. A permanent, violent claim.
"You see?" Thayer murmurs, his velvet voice dropping to a low, obsessive hum that vibrates straight down into my core, completely bypassing my fear and igniting a dark, terrifying heat in my belly. "I am the only thing keeping you alive, Sybil."
He leans down, his face hovering mere inches from mine, the scent of fresh blood mingling perfectly with his heavy cedarwood cologne.
"You don't leave my sight," he commands, his gray eyes burning into my soul. "Ever again."