Chapter 145: A wounded animal

The last guard didn’t use his gun. He was close, lunging out of the shadows with a tactical knife. The blade caught me in the side, a hot, searing line of pain that made me grunt. Blood began to bloom across my shirt, but the adrenaline was a shield.

I grabbed his wrist, twisting it until the radius snapped like a dry twig. He screamed, dropping the knife.

I caught it before it hit the floor and buried it in his neck.

I stood there for a second, gasping, my side burning and my shoulder grazed by a stray bullet. Four bodies lay in the hallway. I was bleeding, bruised, and half-blind with fury, but I was still standing.

The stairwell door at the end of the hall burst open, and my security team finally caught up, weapons drawn and breathing hard. They stopped, staring at the carnage.

“Sir! You’re injured, ”

“Clear the rooms,” I rasped, my voice sounding like it was being dragged over gravel. “Now.”

We moved through the penthouse like a harvesting machine. I kicked in the first door, an office. Empty. The second, a guest bedroom. Pristine. The third, a bathroom. Nothing but cold marble.

My heart was thundering, a frantic, sickening beat.

Where is he?

At the end of the long hallway were two ornate, double doors. This was it. The living room. I could hear muffled movement from inside, the low, conversational hum of Alex’s voice.

My hand trembled as I touched the handle. It wasn’t fear. It was the vibration of a man about to become a monster.

If Alex had touched him, if he had hurt even a single hair on Noah’s head, there wouldn’t be enough left of Alex Hendrix to bury.

I took a single, lung-filling breath, and I kicked.

The doors flew open, hitting the walls with a crack that sounded like a gunshot.

The room was large, bathed in the soft, golden light of expensive lamps. My eyes went to the white couch in the center of the room.

And my world ended.

Noah was lying back on the cushions. His navy suit jacket was gone. His shirt was ripped open, the buttons scattered like white teeth across the floor.

His belt was unbuckled, the leather hanging limp, and his trousers were partially undone, his zipper down, the waistband dragging low on his hips.

He was conscious, but he wasn’t there. His eyes were wide and glazed, staring at the ceiling without seeing it. His pupils were so dilated they had swallowed the green of his irises, and he didn’t even flinch at the sound of the door. He was drugged. Helpless. A broken doll.

And Alex was on top of him.

Alex was positioned between Noah’s legs, one hand pressed firmly into Noah’s chest to keep him down, the other hand reaching for the waistband of Noah’s pants, his fingers hooked as if he were a second away from pulling them down. His own shirt was unbuttoned, his hair a mess of brown strands.

Alex froze. He turned his head slowly, the predatory hunger in his eyes shifting to surprise, then to a flicker of annoyance, and finally to a cold, calculating smirk.

Noah didn’t react. He didn’t even look at me. He just lay there in his own private fog, vulnerable and utterly unaware of the rescue.

The sight of Alex’s hand on Noah’s skin, the sight of the violation that was seconds away from being completed, snapped the last thread of my humanity.

I didn’t shout. I didn’t issue a warning.

I raised my gun and fired.

The first shot was a thunderclap that shattered the predatory silence of the penthouse.

It wasn’t meant to kill… not yet. The bullet tore into Alex’s shoulder, the impact jerking his body away from Noah’s with the force of a physical lash.

Alex let out a sharp, strangled cry of pain, his head snapping back as blood bloomed across the white silk of his shirt.

But he didn’t fall off the couch. He hovered there, hands clutching at his wound, still partially draped over Noah’s unmoving form.

It wasn’t enough. Not even close.

I didn’t stop. I walked forward, my boots heavy and rhythmic on the marble, each step a countdown to his ruin.

I fired again. The second bullet caught his upper arm, spinning him further away from Noah.

He shrieked, a high-pitched, pathetic sound that grated on my nerves.

I fired a third time. This one took him in the thigh, the bone shattering, his leg buckling beneath him as he finally tumbled off the sofa and onto the floor.

I was only halfway across the room. I fired a fourth shot, the round catching his side just above the hip, avoiding the vitals but tearing through muscle and nerve. He was a heap of expensive fabric and leaking red now, gasping for air.

One more. For the road he tried to take Noah down.

The fifth shot was the most deliberate. I aimed low, catching his ankle, severing the Achilles. It was a cold, mechanical disabling.

I wasn’t just shooting him; I was dismantling him. I was making sure that even if he survived the night, he would never be able to run again.

He would never be able to stalk another victim. He would never be able to stand over someone and make them feel small.

Alex understood it after the fourth shot. He saw the way I was walking… slow, steady, my eyes fixed on his limbs rather than his heart.

He realized I wasn’t trying to end his life. I was ending his agency. I was making him a passenger in a broken body, just as he had tried to do to Noah.

“Please,” he wheezed, his face a mask of primal terror. He tried to crawl, his fingers digging into the thick pile of the rug, dragging his mangled lower body toward the far wall.

He left a smeared, dark trail of blood behind him, a grotesque map of his cowardice. He looked pathetic. The “Angel” was gone, replaced by a wounded animal leaking life onto his own floor.

I fired one last time.

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