Chapter 3 - THE AWAKENING OF THE MONSTERThe gun was back at Nicholas’s forehead.
The cold metal pressed against his skin, a stark contrast to the burning fury building inside his paralyzed chest. The threat against Sue—against an innocent woman who had shown him more humanity in five days than his fiancé had in five years—shattered the final barrier of his restraint.
Chemicals could paralyze muscle tissue, but they couldn't stop pure, unadulterated rage from rewriting the brain’s pathways.
Beep.
Hiss.
Victor clicked the safety off. "Any last words, Nicholas? Too bad you can't hear them."
"He can," a voice whispered from the doorway.
Victor spun around, raising his weapon, but he was half a second too late.
The door, which had supposedly latched shut behind Sue, stood wide open. Standing in the threshold wasn't the maid. It was Marcus Vance, Nicholas’s head of security, flanked by four heavily armed enforcers holding suppressed submachine guns. Red laser sights locked instantly onto Victor’s chest and Chloe’s throat.
Victor froze, the gun trembling in his grip. "Vance? What is this? You’re supposed to be guarding the north gate!"
Marcus Vance didn't smile. He stepped into the room, his eyes hard as flint. "The north gate is secure, Mr. Rivas. Just like the rest of the estate."
Chloe’s face drained of all color, her hands flying to her mouth. "No... that's impossible. Gallagher said the security schedule was—"
"Gallagher is currently tied to a chair in his own garage with a burlap sack over his head," Marcus interrupted, his voice cutting through the sterile air like a buzzsaw. He walked past the terrified pair and stopped beside the hospital bed.
He looked down at the motionless form of Nicholas Vescari.
"Boss," Marcus said quietly. "The room is secure."
Silence descended upon the suite. For three agonizing seconds, nobody moved.
Then, the slow, rhythmic beep of the heart monitor was joined by a new sound—a deep, shuddering breath that didn't come from the ventilator tube.
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Nicholas’s eyes snapped open.
The gaze that fixed upon Victor Rivas and Chloe Harrington wasn't the look of a man recovering from a coma. It was the look of an apex predator waking up in a cage of fools, its chains broken, ready to feast.
