Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Gabriel killed the engine a half a block away and studied the broken-down building.
Two vehicles in the lot—a black SUV that matched the description from the security footage, and a silver Mercedes that probably belonged to Sterling.
No visible guards outside, but that didn’t mean anything.
Men like Sterling didn’t leave their perimeters unprotected.
Gabriel checked his phone. Leo’s team was fifteen minutes out. The FBI was twenty, maybe more—they were mobilizing a tactical unit, which meant paperwork and protocols and all the bureaucratic bullshit that got people killed while lawyers covered their asses.
Fifteen minutes was too long. Twenty was an eternity.
Bella was in there. Every second he waited was a second something could go wrong.
He got out of the car.
The gun was a comfortable weight at his back—a Glock 19, the same model he’d trained with for years.
He moved carefully to the side entrance, gun in hand, as he checked the door. Unlocked.
Either Hart’s men were sloppy or they were setting a trap.
Gabriel didn’t care either way.
He slipped inside, moving silently through the shadows. The warehouse was cavernous—high ceilings, rusted equipment, the smell of mold and pigeon shit to give it that extra homey feel. And something chemical underneath it all.
Light filtered through grimy windows, casting everything in shades of gray.
He heard voices ahead and pressed his back against a wall, the gun held ready if they came his direction. The voices were low. Male. At least two, maybe three.
He held his breath and listened.
“We need to move.”
“Move where?”
Sterling. That was Sterling Hart’s voice.
“The feds have eyes on every port, every airport,” Sterling continued. “We try to run, we’re done.”
“But they’re out there.” The speaker had a slight accent. The Bronx, maybe. “You’re saying we just sit here and wait for them to kick down the door?”
“We have leverage,” Sterling said. “As long as we have the girl, we have options.”
Gabriel’s hands curled into fists, and the beast stirred within, hungry and eager.
Carefully—silently—he slid away from the door, then moved deeper into the warehouse, skirting pools of light, keeping to the shadows.
The voices faded behind him as he worked his way toward the back of the building, where a row of doors lined the wall.
Storage rooms, maybe. And wouldn’t those make handy cells?
The first two were empty. The third was locked.
Gabriel tried the handle. Solid. Industrial. The kind of lock you couldn’t kick through, not without making enough noise to bring every guard in the building running.
He pulled out his lockpick set—another skill he’d learned in the years after Aspen, when he’d had nothing to do but plan and prepare and teach himself all the ways a man could destroy another man’s world.
Thirty seconds. The lock clicked open.
He pushed the door inward, gun raised, ready for anything.
Bella was huddled against the far wall, knees pulled to her chest, face streaked with tears. When she saw him, her eyes went wide—shock, then recognition, then something that looked like a prayer answered.
“Gabe!”
His name was barely a whisper, but the love and relief behind it filled him to the brim.
He pressed a finger to his lips, then crossed the room in three strides and dropped to his knees even as he pulled her into his arms. She was shaking. Trembling. But alive. Whole. His.
“I’ve got you,” he breathed against her hair. “You’re safe now.”
“I knew you’d come.” Her voice cracked. “I knew it.”
“Always.” He pulled back just enough to look at her—checking for injuries, for damage, for any sign that they’d hurt her beyond the raw skin at her wrists where they must have bound her. “Can you walk?”
She nodded.
“Then we need to move. Leo’s team is on the way.”
At a sound from the doorway, Gabriel spun, shoving Bella behind him, raising his gun in one fluid motion.
Sterling Hart stood in the threshold.
He looked worse than Gabriel remembered. Older. Grayer. The polished facade cracked and crumbling. He had a gun of his own—a sleek silver pistol pointed directly at Gabriel’s chest.
“Mr. Grimm.” Sterling’s voice was calm. Almost pleasant. “I had a feeling you’d show up eventually.”
“Let us walk out of here.” Gabriel kept his voice steady. The beast was howling for blood, but he forced it down. For Bella. For the promise he’d made. “Do that, and maybe you live long enough to see a courtroom.”
Sterling’s laugh was dry. Hollow. “And endure years of trials? My name dragged through the mud? Everything I built dismantled?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Everyone has choices.” Sterling’s eyes flicked to Bella, then back. “I could let you walk out. Or I could end this on my own terms.”
Behind him, Bella’s hand found his back, gripped the fabric of his jacket.
“You’d kill your own daughter?”
Something flickered in Sterling’s eyes. Pain. Regret. Then it vanished.
“She stopped being my daughter when she chose you.”
“Father, please.” Bella’s voice was barely a whisper.
Sterling’s gun hand trembled. “Don’t.”
Gabriel felt the beast strain against its leash. Every instinct screamed at him to attack—to close the distance, to rip that gun from Sterling’s hand. But Sterling’s finger was on the trigger. And Bella was directly behind him. Any sudden move, and the bullet meant for him could find her instead.
So he waited. Watched.
The distant wail of sirens grew closer. Leo’s team. Or the FBI. Cavalry coming, but not fast enough.
“Put down the gun,” Gabriel said. “It’s over.”
For a moment—just a moment—something in Sterling’s expression shifted. Softened. The gun wavered.
Then his eyes went cold.
“You’re right,” he said. “It is over.”
Everything happened at once.
Sterling’s finger twitched, and Gabriel whipped around, shoving Bella to the ground with one hand as he used the other to fire his own weapon in time with Sterling’s shot.
The gunfire exploded through the warehouse—deafening, disorienting—and for one horrible second Gabriel didn’t know who had fired or who had been hit.
Sterling staggered.
The silver pistol clattered from his hand. He stood there for a moment, swaying, a look of surprise on his face. Then he looked down at the red bloom spreading across his chest.
“Well,” he said quietly. “I suppose that’s that.”
He collapsed.
Gabriel stood frozen, gun still raised, smoke curling from the barrel. Behind him, Bella was scrambling to her feet, her eyes fixed on her father’s body.
“Gabriel.” Her voice sounded far away. “Is he dead?”
He forced himself to move. To lower the gun. To check for a pulse, even though he already knew what he’d find.
“He’s dead.”
Gabriel stared at the body—at the man who’d stolen five years of his life, who’d tried to kill him, who’d threatened everything he loved. He waited for the satisfaction. The triumph. The vindication of finally, finally seeing his enemy destroyed.
It didn’t come.
All he felt was tired. And sad. And desperately, achingly grateful that Bella was still alive.
He turned away from the corpse. Bella was standing now, arms wrapped around herself, staring at her father’s body with an expression he couldn’t read.
“Bella?”
Slowly, her eyes lifted to his. They were dry. Shocked. But not grieving. Whatever complicated feelings she had about Sterling Hart, she’d worked through them before Gabriel ever walked through that door.
“Is it over?” she whispered.
Gabriel crossed to her, pulled her into his arms. Held her tight against his chest, feeling her heart beat against his, proof that she was alive, that they were both alive, that this nightmare was finally, finally finished.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s over.”
The sirens were closer now. Louder. Blue and red lights flickering through the grimy windows as vehicles pulled into the lot outside.
Gabriel held Bella and waited.
He’d made his choice. He’d chosen justice. Chosen the courts. Chosen to let Sterling live if Sterling would let him.
Sterling hadn’t let him.
And Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
Later—after the FBI had swarmed the building, after statements had been given and evidence had been catalogued, after Leo had arrived and wrapped Bella in a blanket and pressed a cup of terrible coffee into her hands—Gabriel found himself standing outside the warehouse, staring at the gray morning sky.
Bella appeared beside him. Silent. Warm. Alive.
“You killed him,” she said. Not an accusation. Just a fact.
“He was going to shoot you.”
“I know. If I’d had the gun I would have shot him myself.” She slipped her hand into his. “I’m numb.”
“That’s normal after something like this.”
“Is it?” She laughed—a small, broken sound. “I don’t think anything about our lives is normal.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
They stood together in silence, watching the agents move in and out of the warehouse. Watching the coroner’s van pull up.
Watching the end of Sterling Hart’s empire play out in real time.
“What happens now?”
Gabriel squeezed her hand. “Now we go home. We sleep for about a week. And then we go on.
“Together?”
He turned to her. Cupped her face in his hands. Looked into those dual-colored eyes that had haunted his dreams for five long years—first with hatred, then with longing, now with love so fierce it burned.
“Together, Izzy,” he said. “Always.”
She rose on her toes and kissed him, soft and sweet. Like a promise. “Day by day,” she whispered against his mouth.
“Day by day.”
The sun broke through the clouds, spilling golden light across the wreckage of everything they’d survived.
It wasn’t a happy ending. Not really. But it was a beginning.
And it was theirs.