Chapter 7 - The Don's Retribution
"Touch her, and I will skin you alive in front of your family, Pike," a voice rumbled from the smoke.
The air in the library went dead silent. The temperature seemed to drop to absolute zero.
Gideon Sterling stepped through the shattered window frame. He didn't look like a billionaire executive anymore. He wore a black tactical vest, his face streaked with soot and blood, his ice-blue eyes burning with a demonic, unadulterated fury that made the intruders instinctively step back. Behind him stood twenty heavily armed Blackwood security guards.
Pike panicked, tightening his grip on Joan’s hair and pulling her in front of him as a human shield, his pistol pressed against her temple. "Stay back, Sterling! One step, and her brains are on the wall!"
Joan looked at Gideon through the haze of smoke and tears. She saw the absolute terror in his eyes—the fear of losing the woman he loved, just like he had lost his wife four years ago.
She remembered what he had taught her in the training room: When a predator holds you close, he forgets his own balance.
Joan jammed her elbow back with all her remaining strength, driving it straight into Pike’s fractured ribs. The sudden pain made him gasp, his grip on her hair loosening for a fraction of a second.
That was all the time Gideon needed.
A single, silenced shot echoed through the library. The bullet struck Pike perfectly between the eyes, his body going instantly limp as he collapsed backward onto the floor, releasing Joan.
Gideon dropped his weapon, sprinting across the room and catching Joan before her knees could hit the marble. He pulled her into his arms, crushing her against his chest with a desperate, trembling strength.
"I have you," Gideon gasped, his voice breaking as he buried his face in her hair. "I have you, Joan. I'm so sorry. I should have been here."
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Betty crawled out from under the mahogany desk, throwing her small arms around both of them, her loud sobs filling the quiet room. "Daddy! Joan! Don't leave me!"
Gideon wrapped one massive arm around his daughter and the other around Joan, holding the two people who had saved his humanity inside the ruins of his fortress. The war was over. The cartel was broken. And the ghosts of the past were finally laid to rest.
