Chapter 8 - CheckmateTen minutes later, the heavy oak doors of the manor swung open, and heavy boots echoed through the foyer.
Chloe stood in the doorway of the veterinary suite, wiping a smudge of dirt from her cheek, holding a roll of medical tape in one hand.
Gabriel walked down the hall, his suit jacket torn at the shoulder, a fresh graze of blood along his jawline. Behind him, two guards dragged a bound and gagged Marcus Vance, while a third guard carried reports indicating the remaining mercenaries had been completely neutralized or captured.
Gabriel stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Chloe standing upright, perfectly unharmed, guarding the door to the medical suite.
He stared at her for three long seconds. Then, his dark eyes dropped to the unconscious mercenary tied up with surgical tubing just down the hall.
"Did you... take out a trained Bratva operative with an oxygen tank?" Gabriel asked, disbelief warring with profound awe in his voice.
"He was standing in my hallway," Chloe said defensively, crossing her arms. "And he looked like he was about to track mud onto my freshly sanitized floors."
Gabriel let out a sudden, deep laugh—the first real, unrestrained laugh she had ever heard from him. It transformed his cold, terrifying face into something devastatingly handsome.
He walked up to her, closing the distance between them until she could feel the heat radiating off his body, smelling the rain and gunpowder clinging to his clothes.
"You are out of your mind, Chloe Harper," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave.
"And you are an impossible, arrogant criminal who brings a war zone into an animal hospital," she shot back, though she didn't step away.
Gabriel reached out, his warm, calloused fingers gently brushing a lock of hair from her forehead. "Rostova is finished. Marcus is talking. The city is ours again. And you..." He paused, his dark eyes burning into hers with absolute finality. "You are still right here."
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"I never agreed to stay," she whispered, though her pulse was hammering a frantic, betraying rhythm against her throat.
"You didn't have to," Gabriel replied softly, leaning down until his lips brushed the shell of her ear. "Because once you save a Costa dog and outsmart a cartel, you don't walk away from the table. You rewrite the rules."
