CHAPTER 11: THE INSIDE BETRAYAL
Clara didn’t scream, and she didn’t close her eyes.
She stared right at the massive gun aimed at her stomach, her mind racing with a hundred desperate escape plans.
“You’re a dead man, Julian,” Marcus sneered, pulling Clara roughly against his massive chest as a human shield.
“Let her go, Marcus,” Julian ordered, stepping slowly out of the ruined library doors.
His dark eyes were completely entirely devoid of mercy, locked onto the traitor who had stood by his side for a decade.
“The Valenti family owns the police out there, and they own your guards in here,” Marcus yelled, his grip tightening around Clara’s waist.
“They paid you to kill my son?” Julian asked, his voice dropping into a deadly, vibrating rumble.
“They paid me to take everything you love,” Marcus corrected, pressing the gun barrel painfully into Clara’s ribs.
Clara felt a sudden, terrifying jolt of adrenaline spike through her veins.
If you knew your death was only seconds away, would you go down crying, or would you fight back with everything you had left?
Clara chose to fight.
She slammed the sharp, heavy heel of her shoe down onto Marcus’s foot with all her remaining strength.
The giant man let out a sharp grunt of pain, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second.
It was all the time Julian Vance needed.
A single, deafening gunshot echoed through the hallway.
Clara screamed, hitting the ground hard as Marcus’s massive body collapsed backward, dead before he even hit the carpet.
Julian was instantly at her side, his strong hands pulling her up from the floor.
“Are you hit?” Julian demanded frantically, his hands roughly checking her arms and shoulders for blood.
“I’m fine,” Clara gasped, staring in absolute horror at the dead man on the floor.
“We have to move right now,” Julian said, grabbing her hand and pulling her down the hallway. “The perimeter is breached.”
