Page 137 of The Beast

He pressed a finger to his lips, then crossed the room in three strides and dropped to his knees even as he pulled her into his arms. She was shaking. Trembling. But alive. Whole. His.

“I’ve got you,” he breathed against her hair. “You’re safe now.”

“I knew you’d come.” Her voice cracked. “I knew it.”

“Always.” He pulled back just enough to look at her—checking for injuries, for damage, for any sign that they’d hurt her beyond the raw skin at her wrists where they must have bound her. “Can you walk?”

She nodded.

“Then we need to move. Leo’s team is on the way.”

At a sound from the doorway, Gabriel spun, shoving Bella behind him, raising his gun in one fluid motion.

Sterling Hart stood in the threshold.

He looked worse than Gabriel remembered. Older. Grayer. The polished facade cracked and crumbling. He had a gun of his own—a sleek silver pistol pointed directly at Gabriel’s chest.

“Mr. Grimm.” Sterling’s voice was calm. Almost pleasant. “I had a feeling you’d show up eventually.”

“Let us walk out of here.” Gabriel kept his voice steady. The beast was howling for blood, but he forced it down. For Bella. For the promise he’d made. “Do that, and maybe you live long enough to see a courtroom.”

Sterling’s laugh was dry. Hollow. “And endure years of trials? My name dragged through the mud? Everything I built dismantled?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“Everyone has choices.” Sterling’s eyes flicked to Bella, then back. “I could let you walk out. Or I could end this on my own terms.”

Behind him, Bella’s hand found his back, gripped the fabric of his jacket.

“You’d kill your own daughter?”

Something flickered in Sterling’s eyes. Pain. Regret. Then it vanished.

“She stopped being my daughter when she chose you.”

“Father, please.” Bella’s voice was barely a whisper.

Sterling’s gun hand trembled. “Don’t.”

Gabriel felt the beast strain against its leash. Every instinct screamed at him to attack—to close the distance, to rip that gun from Sterling’s hand. But Sterling’s finger was on the trigger. And Bella was directly behind him. Any sudden move, and the bullet meant for him could find her instead.

So he waited. Watched.

The distant wail of sirens grew closer. Leo’s team. Or the FBI. Cavalry coming, but not fast enough.

“Put down the gun,” Gabriel said. “It’s over.”

For a moment—just a moment—something in Sterling’s expression shifted. Softened. The gun wavered.

Then his eyes went cold.

“You’re right,” he said. “It is over.”

Everything happened at once.

Sterling’s finger twitched, and Gabriel whipped around, shoving Bella to the ground with one hand as he used the other to fire his own weapon in time with Sterling’s shot. The gunfire exploded through the warehouse—deafening, disorienting—and for one horrible second Gabriel didn’t know who had fired or who had been hit.

Sterling staggered.