Chapter 4 - Dominic shifted closer.
“The difference between you and me is how we respond when someone crosses the line.”
Tears burned Harper’s eyes.
“I walked away.”
“You ran.”
The correction was immediate.
“You hid in a dark room.”
Dominic’s voice remained mercilessly precise.
“You cried while he had his hands under your friend’s dress.”
His eyes hardened.
“You allowed him to make you the victim.”
“I loved him.”
Harper shouted.
The accumulated grief finally broke through.
She slammed the fork onto the table.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Her voice cracked.
“You’re a sociopath who breaks people’s faces over money.”
Tears spilled now.
“You don’t know anything about love.”
Silence.
Harper closed her eyes.
She braced for anger.
Violence.
Punishment.
Dominic stood.
His body blocked much of the remaining firelight.
He walked around the coffee table.
Stopped directly in front of her.
Harper pressed backward.
Dominic reached down.
She flinched.
His hand did not go toward her throat.
His calloused fingers touched her cheek.
He caught a tear with his thumb.
The gentleness was more shocking than violence would have been.
“You’re right.”
Dominic’s voice became almost quiet.
“I know nothing about love.”
His thumb rested near her jaw.
“But I know what a survivor looks like.”
His dark eyes held hers.
“Stop crying for a man who did not deserve you.”
Then his voice hardened.
“You have much larger things to survive now.”
The first gunshot tore through the moment between them.
Then another.
Then many.
The cabin exploded into violence.
The sound was not cinematic.
It was dry, concussive thunder ripping through timber.
Dominic’s hand disappeared from Harper’s face.
His body hit hers a fraction of a second later.
He drove her from the sofa onto the floor.
The oak coffee table splintered as high-caliber rounds tore through it.
Ceramic shattered.
Pasta sprayed across the rug.
Harper could not breathe.
Dominic’s weight had knocked the air from her lungs.
She curled instinctively against the floor.
“Stay down!”
The man who had touched her face seconds earlier vanished.
The predator returned.
Dominic rolled away.
He took the handgun from the side table.
Then moved low toward the stone fireplace.
He did not fire blindly.
He used the structure for cover and searched for an angle.
Outside, Leo’s rifle answered the assault from the tree line.
Harper flattened herself against the floor.
Her ears rang.
Sulfur.
Plaster dust.
Ancient wood.
Splinters fell over her hair.
For a moment, she expected Caleb to appear in her mind.
Expected to wish for the old apartment.
The wedding.
The life she had believed she wanted.
He did not.
Instead, Dominic’s words returned.
She had allowed Caleb to make her a victim.
3 years of shrinking herself around a relationship that had never been as solid as she believed.
Lying on the floor of a cabin being torn apart by bullets, Harper reached a sudden and brutal conclusion.
She was finished being anyone’s victim.
Something slammed against the front door.
“Door!”
Dominic aimed toward the entry.
The reinforced lock held.
Then another impact struck.
The hinges groaned.
Harper opened her eyes.
Through the dust, she saw a heavy iron fire poker lying beside the hearth.
Approximately 3 ft away.
She moved.
No thought.
No hesitation.
Harper dragged herself across the boards.
Her fingernails scraped the wood.
Her hand closed around the cold iron handle.
The front door broke inward.
A figure in tactical clothing entered with a submachine gun.
Dominic fired twice.
White muzzle flashes cut through the room.
The attacker collapsed into the doorway.
A 2nd man came immediately behind him.
His weapon moved toward Dominic.
Harper pushed herself onto her knees.
Both hands wrapped around the poker.
She lunged from the darkness.
Then swung with all the strength adrenaline gave her.
Iron struck the back of the attacker’s knee.
He screamed.
His leg collapsed.
His weapon fired upward.
The bullet buried itself in the ceiling over Dominic.
The distraction lasted less than 1 second.
It was enough.
Dominic changed aim.
1 shot.
The attacker dropped before his body fully reached the floor.
Then everything stopped.
The outside gunfire had also ended.
Wind blew through the damaged doorway.
Harper dropped the poker.
Her fingers shook uncontrollably.
She stared at the body.
Bile rose in her throat.
She had struck a man.
She had helped during a gunfight.
Boots moved across the porch.
Harper recoiled toward the sofa.
Leo entered.
His rifle rested over his shoulder.
He looked at the bodies.
Then at Harper.
1 eyebrow lifted.
“4 in the tree line.”
His voice remained steady.
“Handled.”
He glanced outside.
“Rossy sent a sloppy crew.”
“They didn’t even check the perimeter.”
“Clear the vehicles.”
Dominic stepped from behind the fireplace.
“We leave in 2 minutes.”
Leo nodded and returned outside.
Dominic put the safety on his weapon and pushed it into the waistband of his sweatpants.
Then he crossed the destroyed room.
He did not look at the bodies.
He looked at Harper.
White plaster covered her sweater and hair.
The shoulder of the gray fabric had torn.
A shallow scratch on her cheek left a small trail of blood.
Harper expected anger.
Expected him to call her reckless.
A liability.
Dominic stopped directly before her.
Then his thumb brushed the blood from her cheek.
“You didn’t hide.”
His voice was quiet.
Something had changed in his eyes.
Not softness.
Respect.
Harper looked at him.
Her entire body still shook.
“I’m done hiding.”
The words were unsteady.
The decision behind them was not.
Dominic watched her for several seconds.
Then a slow, dark smile appeared.
“Good.”
His gaze briefly moved toward the destroyed doorway.
“Because Rossy is paying for that door.”
He looked back at Harper.
“And you’re going to watch.”
Dominic offered his hand.
Harper took it.
His grip closed firmly around hers.
Calloused.
Warm.
Unyielding.
This time, she did not resist.
She tightened her fingers around his.
Then she stood.
Harper stepped across broken glass, splintered wood, plaster, and the remains of the life that had driven her into Dominic’s private room only days earlier.
Caleb had betrayed her.
Chloe had betrayed her.
Harper had entered the nightclub searching for somewhere dark enough to disappear.
Instead, she opened the wrong door.
Behind it was blood.
Money.
Violence.
A man who regarded mercy as a strategic weakness and boundaries as things defended through overwhelming force.
Dominic had taken her freedom because she witnessed something she was never meant to see.
His men had erased 72 hours of her ordinary existence with a few emails, text messages, passwords, and a visit to feed Barnaby.
A criminal dispute had transformed her from an accidental witness into a perceived weakness.
Rossy’s men now knew a blonde woman had entered Dominic’s private vehicle.
That alone had made her valuable.
Then the war came directly through the front door.
When it did, Harper had not stayed on the floor.
She had reached for the fire poker.
She had chosen to move.
Dominic pulled her carefully over the wreckage toward the ruined entrance.
Outside, rain continued falling over the cliff.
The ocean hammered the rocks below.
Leo moved somewhere in the darkness, securing vehicles and checking the property for additional attackers.
Harper stopped briefly at the threshold.
Only days earlier, she had been planning wedding centerpieces.
She had worried over catering deposits and the future she expected to share with Caleb.
That woman had believed security came from staying inside familiar boundaries.
Now Harper understood how quickly those boundaries could collapse.
She looked down at her hand inside Dominic’s.
The same hand that had locked the nightclub door.
The same hand that had steadied her whiskey glass.
The same hand that had controlled armed men without raising his voice.
The same hand that had touched her tears with impossible gentleness moments before bullets entered the cabin.
Dominic looked back at her.
“Move.”
The order was quiet.
Harper stepped into the storm beside him.
May you like
She no longer followed because he had threatened her.
She followed because the world outside had already changed, and for the first time since walking away from Caleb and Chloe, she had stopped searching for somewhere to hide.
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