Chapter 4: The Gala and The Ghost of the Past
“The mayor’s annual winter charity ball is tomorrow night,” Jack announced one quiet evening over dessert. “It will officially be our very first high-profile public appearance together. The city press will be heavily present.”
He wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. “You will wear the specific red silk gown Martha has expertly selected for you. And you will smile flawlessly.”
The following night, Sarah was entirely transformed into a mobster’s perfect trophy. The bright red silk gown clung beautifully to her curves, incredibly elegant but dangerously striking. An expensive makeup artist had flawlessly contoured her face, and a massive, heavy diamond necklace—a priceless Sterling family heirloom, Martha had informed her—rested heavily against her pale collarbone.
When she walked slowly down the grand, sweeping staircase, Jack was already waiting silently in the marble foyer. For a split second, as his steely eyes met hers, his cold, calculating mask entirely slipped. His gray gaze darkened instantly, aggressively sweeping over her body with a primal, intense heat that made her breath violently catch in her throat.
But just as quickly as the fire appeared, the icy mask slammed violently back into place. “You look acceptable,” was absolutely all he said, politely offering her his arm.
The grand ballroom at the historic Drake Hotel was a chaotic sea of blinding, flashing cameras and wealthy, elite socialites. The absolute moment they stepped elegantly out of the armored Maybach, Jack’s large hand rested incredibly firmly on the small of her back. It was an intensely possessive grip, a silent, unmistakable warning to every single man around them: She is entirely mine.
Inside the roaring gala, they played their fabricated parts completely perfectly. Sarah smiled beautifully on command. She politely laughed at the terrible, dry jokes of corrupt local politicians, and she intimately leaned into Jack’s shoulder whenever a flash photographer approached. He expertly played the convincing role of the smitten, newly reformed, legitimate businessman flawlessly.
But about an hour into the exhausting event, Jack was urgently pulled away by a powerful city alderman to aggressively discuss a pending zoning permit.
“Stay directly by the champagne tower,” Jack murmured softly in her ear, his breath warm against her neck. “Do not wander off.”
Sarah nodded obediently, quietly nursing a tall glass of sparkling water. That was exactly when she felt it: the terrifying, creeping prickle of being intensely watched by a predator. She turned slowly and saw an older man aggressively approaching her. He was perhaps in his late fifties, with heavily slicked-back, thinning gray hair and a sickening smile that absolutely didn’t reach his cruel, pale eyes.
“Sarah Hayes,” the older man said smoothly, stopping entirely too close beside her. “Or, I suppose I should formally say, Mrs. Sterling.”
“Do I know you, sir?” she asked, taking a subtle, defensive step backward in her heels.
“I am Richard Vance,” he purred, the smell of cheap, overpowering cologne and stale cigarette smoke rolling off his suit. “I used to be a very close business associate of Albert Thorne, right before your violent new husband slaughtered his way into acquiring Thorne’s entire territory.”
Her stomach violently plummeted. Vance stepped even closer, aggressively crowding her personal space.
“I have to admit, I was incredibly surprised when I heard the great Jack Sterling married a total nobody. A junior paralegal with a pathetic, junkie brother,” Vance’s smile widened maliciously, revealing slightly yellowed teeth. “But then, I decided to do some quiet digging. I found out exactly who your father was.”
Sarah froze completely. “My father died in a tragic accident when I was ten years old.”
“Yes, Robert Hayes. A truly brilliant numbers guy,” Vance nodded. “But did you ever know exactly who he kept the bloody books for before he suddenly died?”
Vance leaned incredibly close, his voice dropping to a venomous, hissing whisper. “Your father was the chief accountant for the Sterling family, Sarah. He was the exact man who cowardly testified in a closed-door federal hearing, providing the irrefutable evidence that sent Jack’s uncle to federal prison for the rest of his life.”
The delicate crystal champagne flute slipped completely from her numb fingers, shattering violently into a hundred pieces on the marble floor.
“Jack absolutely didn’t pick you out of a random hat to be his sweet little PR stunt,” Vance sneered, thoroughly enjoying her absolute horror. “He specifically married the daughter of the rat who betrayed his family. You aren’t his beloved wife, sweetheart. You are his living trophy of revenge.”
Before her spinning brain could even begin to process the horrifying words, a massive, heavy hand clamped violently down on Vance’s tailored shoulder.
“Vance.” Jack’s voice was a low, terrifying, lethal growl that seemed to aggressively vibrate the very air around them. “I believe you were standing entirely too far in my wife’s personal space.”
Vance paled instantly, taking a very quick, terrified step backward. “Just politely offering my congratulations on the nuptials, Sterling.”
“Offer them from a significantly greater distance,” Jack commanded softly, his eyes dead. “Before I officially decide that your outstanding debt to me desperately needs to be collected in blood tonight.”
Vance practically fled the crowded ballroom in terror. Jack turned slowly to her, his steely eyes dropping to the shattered glass at her feet, then slowly tracking back up to her completely terrified face.
“What exactly did he say to you?” Jack demanded, his jaw clenched tight.
Sarah stared in absolute horror at the man she had legally bound herself to. The man who had seemingly saved her brother, the man who had promised her a safe, clean business arrangement. Her heart hammered against her ribs exactly like a trapped, desperate bird in a cage.
“He said…” she swallowed incredibly hard, physically stepping back away from her husband. “He said you intimately knew my father.”
Jack’s sharp jaw clenched so tightly a muscle ticked violently in his cheek. The heavy silence between them aggressively stretched cold, hard, and entirely damning. He hadn’t bought her to generously save her life. He had bought her to totally own the bloodline that had crossed his family.
The incredibly tense ride back to the fortress estate in the back of the armored Maybach was completely suffocating. The thick, soundproof partition separating them from the armed chauffeur was raised, perfectly sealing Jack and Sarah in a mobile vault of pure tension. Outside, the glowing, blurred streetlights of Michigan Avenue raced past the tinted bulletproof glass, but she couldn’t tear her terrified eyes away from the dangerous man sitting in the shadows beside her.
Jack slowly, methodically poured himself a heavy measure of Macallan 25 from the car’s crystal decanter. His movements were incredibly slow and deliberate. He absolutely didn’t offer her a glass.
“Is it actually true?” her voice trembled violently, finally breaking the heavy silence. “Did you genuinely know my father?”
Jack didn’t even look at her. He just stared blankly at the amber liquid swirling in his glass. “Yes, I intimately knew Robert.”
The cold confirmation hit her exactly like a physical, brutal blow to the chest. “My father was a boring corporate accountant for a mid-sized, legitimate logistics firm in the loop! He absolutely wasn’t involved in… in this violent mob life!”
“He was the chief financial officer for Sterling Imports,” Jack corrected her, his deep voice entirely devoid of any emotion. “It was a massive shell company my uncle, Charles Sterling, aggressively used to illegally launder tens of millions of dollars directly through the port of Chicago. Your father was an absolute genius, Sarah. He hid the dirty money so flawlessly that the IRS spent half a decade blindly chasing ghosts. Until Robert suddenly decided he desperately wanted out of the life.”
Sarah pressed her trembling back aggressively against the cold leather of the car door, desperately putting as much physical distance between them as possible. “Vance said my father testified against your family to the FBI.”
Jack finally turned his head slowly. His gray eyes perfectly caught the passing amber streetlights. They were completely, terrifyingly unreadable.
“In 2011, your father bravely approached the FBI field office located on Roosevelt Road. He successfully cut a deal for total immunity. He handed over a highly encrypted ledger that meticulously detailed every single bribe, every bloody extortion payout, and every hidden offshore account my uncle Charles held. Because of Robert Hayes, Charles Sterling is currently rotting in the ADX Florence Supermax prison in Colorado. He will die alone in a concrete box.”
“And then my father tragically died,” she whispered, her voice breaking as the confusing, puzzled pieces of her childhood violently rearranged themselves in her mind. “A horrific hit-and-run on Lake Shore Drive. The police absolutely never found the driver who hit him.”
“Because there was absolutely no driver to ever find,” Jack stated flatly, swirling his drink. “It was a highly paid, contracted professional hit. My uncle Charles ordered it directly from his holding cell before he was even officially convicted.”
Hot, incredibly fast tears violently spilled over her lower lashes, completely ruining the incredibly expensive makeup Martha had painstakingly applied. The profound, agonizing grief she had desperately buried when she was ten years old came violently clawing up her throat, aggressively mixed with a pure, blinding terror.
“You completely bought me,” she gasped, her chest heaving as she sobbed. “You paid off David’s massive debt not because I am a clean, respectable PR stunt! You bought me to aggressively punish me! I am literally sleeping in the house of the exact men who murdered my father in cold blood!”
In a flash of aggressive movement so incredibly fast she barely even registered it, Jack violently crossed the spacious cabin. The crystal glass of expensive scotch hit the floor mats with a dull thud, spilling entirely onto the carpet. His incredibly large, powerful hands gripped her bare shoulders, forcefully pinning her flat against the car door.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, bracing for the impending violence, waiting for the devil to finally bare his teeth and strike her.
“Look directly at me,” he commanded, his voice shaking the glass.
She adamantly refused, shaking violently in his grip.
“Sarah, look at me right now.” The cold, terrifying edge in his voice was completely gone, instantly replaced by something remarkably rougher, something that sounded almost desperate.
She slowly opened her terrified eyes. He was mere inches away from her face, his skin pale, his sharp jaw locked tight.
“If I desperately wanted to punish you,” Jack breathed heavily, his calloused thumb gently brushing a stray, hot tear from her cheek. “You would absolutely not be wearing a million dollars in flawless diamonds, safely sleeping in a warm silk bed. If I wanted pure revenge, I would have happily let Albert Thorne’s men finish beating your brother to death in that freezing alley.”
“Then why?” she sobbed, pushing vainly against his solid, immovable chest. “Why on earth am I trapped here?!”
“Because Vance absolutely wasn’t telling you the entire, dangerous truth,” Jack growled, pulling back just enough to look her squarely, intensely in the eyes. “Your father didn’t just heroically hand over the ledgers to the FBI. He stole something incredibly valuable before he went to the feds.”
“He stole something my uncle had securely hidden away. A safety deposit box key, or an encrypted account number holding nearly $50 million in entirely untraceable bearer bonds.”
Sarah stared at him, her mind violently spinning out of control. “I honestly don’t know anything about any stolen money! We grew up completely poor! We lived in a tiny, cramped, freezing apartment in Logan Square. If my dad actually had $50 million, he absolutely didn’t leave a single penny of it to us!”
“I absolutely know you don’t have the money,” Jack said, gently releasing her shoulders and sitting back heavily on his side of the car, aggressively running a hand through his dark hair. “I’ve had my best men aggressively tear through your financial records, your brother’s messy records, every single shoe box in your apartment. The money is completely gone.”
He looked at her grimly. “But Richard Vance and the violent remnants of the Thorne family absolutely do not believe that. They found out exactly who you were. They believed your brother’s massive gambling debt was just an elaborate front to slowly launder the bonds your father stole. Vance was actively planning to violently kidnap you, Sarah. He specifically bought your brother’s debt just to force you out into the open, so he could brutally torture the location of the $50 million out of you.”
The oxygen in the car completely evaporated.
“So… you legally marrying me was the absolute only way to make me legally untouchable,” she whispered, the realization hitting her like a freight train.
Jack nodded slowly. “Vance absolutely cannot touch the legal wife of the Sterling boss without immediately starting a massive war he knows he will lose. I absolutely didn’t buy you to torture you, Sarah. I bought you to put a permanent, impenetrable shield around you.”
“But why?” she asked, the word aggressively scraping against her dry throat. “Why on earth would you aggressively protect the daughter of the exact man who put your own uncle in a federal prison?”
Jack looked out the tinted window, his sharp profile perfectly silhouetted against the glowing Chicago skyline. For a very long time, the absolute only sound was the low hum of the massive engine.
“Because my uncle Charles was a ruthless, unhinged butcher who was aggressively driving this family straight into the bloody ground,” Jack said incredibly softly. “I desperately wanted him gone just as much as the FBI did. Your father actually did me a massive favor, Sarah. And I am simply paying his debt back by keeping his children alive.”
They absolutely didn’t speak another word for the rest of the tense ride. When they finally arrived at the heavily guarded estate, Jack escorted her to the grand staircase. His large hand rested incredibly lightly on the small of her back—it was absolutely no longer a possessive grip, but a deeply protective one.
“Go to sleep, Sarah,” he said quietly, turning toward his dark study. “Vance aggressively showed his hand tonight. Things are going to get incredibly ugly very soon.”
Chapter 5: Blood on Oak Street
For the entire next month, the massive Sterling estate became an impenetrable, armed fortress. The already heavy security detail tripled in size. Large, completely silent men in dark suits with earpieces heavily patrolled the frozen winter gardens and stood aggressively on guard at every single entrance. Jack was a complete phantom, leaving long before sunrise and returning long after midnight. His handsome face was heavily etched with sheer exhaustion and an underlying, highly dangerous fury.
The violent, invisible war was making major headlines across the city. A massive warehouse fire broke out in the meatpacking district. A targeted car bomb completely took out a suspected Vance lieutenant on Lower Wacker Drive. The evening news frantically called it a massive resurgence of underground gang violence. Sarah knew the absolute truth: it was Jack, systematically and ruthlessly dismantling absolutely anyone who dared to stand with Richard Vance.
By the agonizing fifth week of her strict confinement, the gilded cage was actively driving Sarah completely insane. She hadn’t stepped a single foot outside the massive iron gates. She spent her endless days mindlessly reading in the sprawling library or staring blankly out at the frozen expanse of Lake Michigan.
“You look exactly like a ghost, madam,” Martha observed dryly one morning as she cleared Sarah’s entirely untouched breakfast plate. Her tone was still clipped and formal, but Sarah definitely detected a microscopic, rare fraction of genuine sympathy hiding in her stern eyes. “Mr. Sterling has officially authorized an outing for you today. A highly controlled environment.”
Sarah’s heart leaped in her chest. “Where to?”
“Oak Street,” Martha replied efficiently. “Private, locked-door appointments have been explicitly arranged at Tom Ford and Cartier. You desperately need a fresh wardrobe for the upcoming spring charity season.”
John and Mark would officially accompany her as her two primary, armed shadows. John was significantly older, incredibly stoic, and physically built exactly like a brick tank. Mark was much younger, incredibly sharp, with quick, darting eyes that absolutely never stopped aggressively scanning the room for threats.
Two hours later, Sarah was eagerly stepping out of a heavily armored SUV onto the luxury-lined, pristine sidewalks of Oak Street. The biting, freezing Chicago wind was an incredibly welcome shock to her isolated system. For one blissful hour, she happily pretended to be a completely normal, wealthy socialite. She comfortably sipped hot espresso in the heavily guarded VIP room of Tom Ford, while a quiet tailor expertly pinned a sleek, black evening gown to her exact measurements.
“We need to move right now, Mrs. Sterling,” Mark said suddenly, aggressively stepping into the private fitting room without even bothering to knock. His right hand was resting completely inside his tailored jacket, sitting right over his shoulder holster. His young face was completely pale.
“What is it?” she asked, her blood running instantly cold.
“Our comms are completely jammed. I absolutely cannot reach the armed drivers waiting outside, and John absolutely isn’t answering his radio from the front door,” Mark said, his voice a remarkably tight, panicked whisper. “Take the dress off right now. We are going out the back loading dock.”
Pure, unadulterated panic completely seized her chest. She frantically scrambled out of the expensive gown, desperately pulling her heavy wool coat directly over her thin silk slip. Her hands were shaking so violently she couldn’t even manage to fasten the buttons. Mark didn’t wait. He aggressively grabbed her arm, forcefully pushing her out the back of the fitting room and into a narrow, dark employee corridor.
They violently burst out into the frigid, freezing air of the back alley. The armored SUV was parked exactly at the mouth of the alley, but to her absolute horror, the driver was slumped lifelessly over the steering wheel.
“Down!” Mark roared at the top of his lungs, aggressively shoving her hard against the freezing brick wall, directly behind a massive stack of industrial green dumpsters.
A deafening, terrifying crack violently split the cold air. Red brick dust aggressively sprayed directly over her head as a high-caliber bullet impacted the wall exactly where her skull had been a split second before. Mark drew his weapon instantly, firing three rapid, deafening shots toward the roof of the building across the narrow alley.
“Vance’s men,” Mark cursed loudly, desperately pulling a cheap burner phone from his pocket and hitting a single speed dial button. “Boss, we are completely pinned down in the alley behind Tom Ford! We have a sniper actively on the roof, and at least three shooters aggressively advancing from the street! John is down at the front door!”
Sarah forcefully clamped her trembling hands over her ears, aggressively squeezing her eyes shut as the rapid gunfire erupted around them. It absolutely wasn’t anything like the movies. It was impossibly, deafeningly loud—a violent, physical pressure that actively vibrated in her teeth. She heard the terrifying, metallic ping of heavy bullets aggressively tearing through the metal dumpsters actively shielding them from death.
Mark aggressively grabbed her shoulder, physically forcing her to look at him. “When I explicitly tell you to run, you absolutely sprint for the loading door of the Prada boutique directly across the alley! Do not stop for anything! Do not look back!”
“I am not leaving you here!” she screamed over the deafening noise.
“You are the primary target!” he yelled back. “If they capture you, Jack loses absolutely everything! Go!”
Mark stood up aggressively, providing loud, suppressing covering fire. Sarah scrambled desperately to her feet, her expensive designer heels slipping dangerously on the icy, treacherous asphalt. She made it exactly five terrifying steps before another loud shot rang out, followed immediately by a sickening, heavy thud. She turned around.
Mark was on the freezing ground, tightly clutching his upper thigh. Dark blood was rapidly, violently pooling onto the dirty white snow. Two large men in heavy tactical jackets aggressively rounded the corner of the alley, their weapons raised, aimed directly at her chest.
Sarah completely froze, her panicked breath caught tight in her throat. This was exactly it. The bloody debt was finally being collected.
Suddenly, the deafening, monstrous roar of a massive engine echoed violently off the brick walls. A pitch-black, heavily modified G-Wagon tore aggressively into the narrow alley at fifty miles an hour, smashing brutally, directly into the two gunmen. The violent physical impact threw them exactly like broken ragdolls against the harsh brickwork.
The massive G-Wagon violently slammed on the brakes, the heavy tires screaming aggressively against the ice. The passenger door was kicked violently open, and Jack stepped out into the chaos. He absolutely wasn’t wearing a bespoke, tailored suit. He was wearing a heavy tactical vest directly over a black sweater, and he firmly held a matte black assault rifle. His gray eyes, usually incredibly cold and highly calculated, were filled with pure, unadulterated hellfire.
He didn’t hesitate for a single second. He raised the rifle smoothly and fired a precise, highly controlled burst directly at the rooftop, permanently silencing the hidden sniper. He then aggressively swept the alley, ensuring the crushed men on the ground were absolutely no longer a threat.
“Sarah, get in the damn car!” Jack roared, his deep voice cutting sharply through the intense ringing in her ears.
Sarah violently snapped out of her paralyzed shock, rushing desperately toward Mark. “Help me get him up!” she screamed at her husband.
Jack slung his hot rifle quickly over his shoulder, grabbed Mark effortlessly by the heavy tactical harness, and aggressively hauled the bleeding, wounded man into the back seat. Sarah frantically scrambled into the passenger seat just as Jack violently threw himself behind the steering wheel. He forcefully threw the massive G-Wagon into reverse, aggressively tearing backward out of the alley and merging violently into the terrified civilian traffic on Michigan Avenue.
Her hands were completely covered in Mark’s warm, sticky blood. She couldn’t stop shaking violently. “Are we going to the hospital? We have to go to Northwestern!”
“If I take him to a highly public hospital, Vance’s men will completely finish the job right in the ER,” Jack said. His sharp jaw was clenched so incredibly tightly it looked like it was carved from solid granite. “We are driving to a highly secure safehouse in Galena. I have a private, off-the-books surgeon waiting.”
He reached out, his incredibly large, warm hand completely covering her small, bloodstained ones resting on the console. The grip was fiercely tight, aggressively anchoring her back to reality. “Are you hit anywhere?” he demanded, his eyes darting frantically from the road to her body.
“No,” she choked out, tears finally spilling. “I’m okay.”
Jack let out a heavy breath that sounded exactly like a shudder. “Vance is a dead man walking. I am going to completely tear his entire empire down to the bare studs, and then I am going to aggressively bury him underneath it.”
Sarah looked at the dangerous man who had bought her life. The ruthless mafia boss, the calculating businessman, the violent monster who had just successfully killed three men without even blinking an eye. But as his incredibly warm hand gripped hers tightly, she realized something deeply, truly terrifying. She absolutely wasn’t afraid of him anymore. She was terrified for him.
The legal contract she eagerly signed was explicitly supposed to be a strict business deal. But as they aggressively sped out of the city limits, leaving the bloody, chaotic streets of Chicago far behind them, she knew exactly that the formal lines had entirely blurred. They were absolutely no longer playing a fake part for the public. They were deeply at war, and they were entirely, irrevocably tethered together.
The frantic drive west was an absolute blur of high adrenaline, the smell of copper blood, and the deafening roar of the G-Wagon’s massive engine eating up the highway miles on Interstate 90. They aggressively left the glittering, highly dangerous skyline of Chicago far behind, plunging deep into the stark, completely frozen wilderness of Joe Daviess County. By the time they finally crossed into the town of Galena, the winter snow was falling in incredibly thick, heavy sheets, almost completely burying the winding rural roads.
Jack’s private safehouse absolutely wasn’t a rustic, charming cabin hidden at the end of a heavily wooded private drive near the resort. It was a massive, brutalist architectural masterpiece crafted entirely from reinforced concrete and floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass. It was meticulously designed to look exactly like an architectural retreat, while fully functioning as an absolutely impenetrable fortress.
The exact moment the heavy tires crunched to a halt inside the heated underground garage, the estate’s highly trained skeleton crew descended upon them. A man Sarah hadn’t met before, introduced extremely simply as Dr. Evans, was already anxiously waiting in a sterile, brightly lit room in the basement that looked absolutely identical to a modern hospital trauma bay.
“The femoral artery is miraculously intact, but the heavy bullet completely fragmented against his femur,” Dr. Evans assessed rapidly, aggressively cutting away Mark’s blood-soaked trousers with heavy medical shears. “I urgently need him heavily sedated. Mrs. Sterling, if you are going to pass out from the blood, leave this room right now. If you are staying, put on these blue gloves and hold extreme pressure exactly right here.”
Sarah didn’t run away. The terrified, naive girl who had trembled helplessly in Jack’s office a month ago felt exactly like a distant, faded memory. She aggressively snapped on the blue nitrile gloves, pressing her small hands down exactly where the frantic doctor indicated. She could physically feel the incredibly hot, terrifying pulse of Mark’s lifeblood pumping erratically beneath her palms.
For two agonizing, exhausting hours, she stood bravely beside the surgeon, obediently handing him hemostats and sterile gauze, while Jack stood aggressively in the dark corner of the room exactly like a protective stone gargoyle. His heavy tactical vest was discarded on the floor, his black sweater pushed aggressively up to the elbows, revealing incredibly thick forearms corded with tension and deeply etched with faded, violent scars. He absolutely never took his dark eyes off her.
“He will live,” Dr. Evans finally announced with a sigh, stepping back from the bloody operating table and pulling down his surgical mask. “The metal fragments are out. He desperately needs heavy, intravenous antibiotics and at least six full weeks entirely off his feet, but he absolutely gets to keep the leg.”
A ragged, exhausted exhale violently tore from Sarah’s dry throat. She peeled the bloody, sticky gloves from her hands. Her trembling knees suddenly threatened to entirely buckle as the massive wave of adrenaline that had successfully kept her upright since Oak Street violently evaporated from her system. She blindly stumbled out of the sterile medical bay and practically crawled on her hands and knees up the cold concrete stairs to the main floor.
The massive house was entirely, completely silent, save for the howling, violent wind aggressively battering the thick glass walls. She finally found a massive master bathroom lined beautifully in dark, expensive slate. She simply collapsed onto the floor of the glass-enclosed shower, fully clothed in her slip, pulling her trembling knees tightly to her chest.
She genuinely didn’t know how long she sat there violently shivering before the heavy bathroom door finally opened. Jack stepped quietly inside. He had completely washed the dark blood from his large hands, but his handsome face was still a tight mask of complete, exhausted devastation. He didn’t speak a single word. He just walked directly into the massive shower, reached down gently, and firmly gripped her arms, pulling her effortlessly to her feet.
He reached past her trembling body and turned on the water. It was scalding, beautifully hot, instantly soaking completely through her wool coat and silk slip in mere seconds, washing the dried, itchy brick dust and the sticky blood down the dark slate drain.
“Take the heavy coat off, Sarah,” he murmured, his deep voice incredibly rough.
Her frozen fingers were shaking entirely too badly to manage the small buttons. Jack gently batted her failing hands away with a terrifying, profound tenderness that completely, utterly contradicted the extreme, brutal violence she had personally seen him commit just hours earlier. He unbuttoned the completely ruined wool coat and let it drop heavily to the wet floor.
“You absolutely saved Mark’s life today,” he said incredibly quietly, his steely gray eyes intensely searching hers through the rising, hot steam. “Most normal people would have completely frozen. You bravely held the line.”
“I was absolutely terrified,” she whispered, the hot water pasting her blonde hair flat to her skull.
“Fear successfully keeps you alive. Blind panic is exactly what kills you. You did not panic,” Jack stated firmly.
Jack stepped incredibly closer. The immense heat aggressively radiating from his large, muscular frame was deeply magnetic. “I promised you on paper to keep you completely safe, Sarah. I entirely failed you today. Vance got entirely too close to you.”
“You came aggressively for me,” she countered softly, looking up at his incredibly sharp jawline and the dark, rough stubble shadowing his face. “You aggressively put yourself directly in the dangerous crossfire. You absolutely didn’t have to do that just for a PR stunt.”
A dark, incredibly bitter laugh aggressively escaped his chest. “Do you honestly, truly still think that is exactly what this is? Do you genuinely think I would aggressively risk my entire empire, the lives of my men, and my own life simply for public optics?”
He reached up slowly, his calloused thumb gently tracing the soft line of her jaw, his intense touch actively branding her skin. “The legal contract was a completely fabricated excuse, Sarah. It was just a flimsy piece of paper to legally justify doing the absolute only thing I could possibly think of to get you safely out of that hospital waiting room and permanently into my house. I saw you sitting there, entirely ready to trade your life to a monster to save your brother. And I knew in my soul I was absolutely never going to let another man own your debt.”
Sarah’s breath caught violently in her chest. The small, remaining distance entirely evaporated between them. She genuinely didn’t know exactly who moved first, but suddenly his hot mouth was aggressively on hers. It felt exactly like striking a match in a completely sealed room heavily filled with gasoline.
The profound kiss was desperate, incredibly punishing, and entirely, overwhelmingly consuming. Her small hands tangled aggressively in his dark, wet hair as he forcefully backed her against the cold, wet slate wall of the shower. His incredibly large hands mapped her waist perfectly, his grip entirely possessive and absolute. There was absolutely nothing transactional or business-like about this. This was an undeniable claiming.
“Tell me to stop,” Jack growled intensely against her lips, his broad chest heaving aggressively against hers. “Tell me to walk away right now, Sarah, and I swear to God, I will.”
“Don’t,” she gasped desperately, pulling him even closer by his neck. “Absolutely don’t walk away.”
The sterile business arrangement completely, violently shattered on the wet slate floor, exactly along with the remaining remnants of her old, safe life. They aggressively consumed each other with the frantic, raw urgency of two people who had just miraculously cheated a violent death, desperately anchoring themselves in the absolute only real thing left in a terrifying world built on lies and blood.
