Page 208 of Fractured Allegiance
I know it in my bones.
The rescue isn’t just coming.
It’s already breaking the walls down.
The gunfire doesn’t fade. It grows more piercing, closer, slicing through the penthouse walls like they’re paper. The room feels suddenly too small, too exposed, like it’s waiting to collapse around me.
I press against the shelves, listening. Voices bark in Russian, clipped commands ricochet down the hall. The lights flicker again, then steady — but it’s too late. The fracture’s opened.
Another burst of gunfire tears through the air.
I don’t think. I move.
The corridor outside is chaos. Two guards sprint past me, rifles in hand, eyes wild. They don’t look at me — they’re too focused on whatever’s bleeding through the lower floors. I slip out behind them, keeping to the wall, pulse hammering in my throat.
Then I hear it. A voice.
“East stairwell’s dead! They cut the comms!”
Cut the comms.
My chest seizes, but not from fear. From recognition. That’ looks like Elias’s tactics.
Another shout: “Dom! They’re inside—”
The sentence cuts off in a scream. A body hits the marble somewhere below, the sound thick and final.
I force myself forward, weaving down the corridor, past a fallen glass, past the stain spreading across the carpet where someone bled too fast to hide it. The penthouse isn’t a cage anymore. It’s a battlefield.
The main stairwell looms ahead. Shouts. More gunfire. Then a shadow surges up the last steps, pistol first, eyes alert.
Elias.
Not dressed like Drazen’s men. No mask. No leash. Just black fatigues, eyes slice straight through me like they never forgot how.
For half a heartbeat, I freeze. He’s real. Here.
His gaze pins me, hard and unyielding. “Lydia.”
My throat tightens. I should answer. I can’t.
Behind him, another figure bursts up the stairs, covering his flank—taller, broader, familiar even in the storm. Silas.
His eyes find me instantly.
Not the room. Not Elias. Me.
The sight of him hits like a blade sliding between my ribs.
“Move!” Elias barks, breaking the charge in my veins.
Two guards round the far corner, rifles raised. Elias doesn’t hesitate. Two shots. Both men drop before their fingers twitch the trigger.
Silas doesn’t look away from me, even as he reloads. “We don’t have time.”
I find my voice. Barely. “How—?”
“Later,” Elias cuts in, sharp, brutal. “Right now, I need you to run.”
