Page 341 of From Rakes to Riches

Stunned, Marco released her.

Only to spin her around and deliver a merciless blow with the back of his hand.

Felicity dropped beneath the fray, disappearing from view.

An inhuman roar brought Raphael’s notice to the top of the stairs.

What he saw slackened his limbs with shock.

Mercy chose that moment to lunge so frantically toward her sister, and he almost lost his grip. “Let me go!” she screamed. “I will murder that man!”

“You won’t have to,” he said, strengthening his grip on her, pointing to the top of the stairs.

Gabriel was unmistakable, even in a lupine mask Raphael had never seen before. He charged down the stairs toward Marco. What men were not tossed over the banister became little better than smears on the wall.

To Marco’s credit, he stood against the oncoming juggernaut, pulling a knife from his belt.

A shot from the direction of the door brought time to an absolute standstill. Everyone screamed and the collective crowd ducked, subsequently checking themselves for wounds.

“Are you struck?” Raphael grasped Mercy, gripped with horror. “Dammit, are you all right?”

“I’m unharmed,” she said, her voice shaking and small.

Raphael checked the entry for the shooter but could identify none.

When he looked back toward the stairs to find that Gabriel had disappeared in the thickening smoke, he felt as though the bullet had found his own chest.

Marco was reaching down to collect Felicity, who’d yet to recover from his blow.

Raphael wheezed out his brother’s name just in time to watch him rise from behind the banister like the very specter of the black-swathed reaper.

Gabriel and Marco both lashed out at the same time, one with his blade, the other with nothing more than a scarred fist the size of a sledgehammer.

Gabriel’s punch connected with an audibly satisfying crunch of bone, though Marco’s knife barely missed the eye he’d aimed it for.

By the time the traitorous Spaniard finished rolling arse-over-end to land in a twisted heap, Gabriel had stooped to retrieve Felicity from where she’d been draped unconscious on the stairs.

Raphael’s eyes burned, his throat closed over with emotion.

Not with relief.

With horror.

Horror that echoed in the gasps and exclamations of the congregation before leaping out of Gabriel’s way as he carried the young Baron’s daughter like a bolt of cobalt cloth.

Marco’s knife had missed his brother’s flesh, but it’d cut his mask away.

Exposing his face to everyone.

Gabriel kept his chin held high, relentlessly marched forward, using his monstrous appearance to part the sea of people still ebbing toward the door.

Raphael surged forward, shoving through the crowd, knowing he’d get Mercy to safety.

Trusting his brother to save Felicity.

He could see through the doors ahead that Morley had tossed his prisoners into the police wagon. Just in time to catch a sobbing woman with a bloodied nose as she collapsed.

Raphael had half-expected the Chief Inspector to have fired the shot, as he was a famous marksman, but there was no way he could have done it.

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