A Heartbeat Away

"I need you," I whispered.

My voice was raw, stripped of pride, stripped of the stubborn silence I had wrapped around myself for half a decade.

"Where are you?" Everett’s tone shifted instantly. The gentle brother vanished; in his place was the commander of an empire, the man who moved international markets with a quiet nod. "Maddie, give me coordinates."

"Greenwich," I breathed, clutching Sophie against my hip as she sobbed silently into my collarbone. "Caleb’s estate. On Meadowbrook Lane. Everett, he... he took a strap to my back. Thirty times. In front of Sophie."

The silence on the other end of the line was heavier than thunder. It was the sound of a predator opening its eyes in the dark.

"Don't move," Everett said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Keep Sophie with you. Silas and Dean are already with me. We are twenty minutes out by air."

The line went dead. The screen blinked black. One percent battery was gone.

Across the room, Caleb let out a sharp, derisive bark of laughter. He tossed the leather training strap onto the dining table, right across Sophie’s ruined cake.

"Who was that?" Caleb sneered, stepping closer, adjusting the gold cufflinks on his wrists. "Another desperate call to some college ex? Or did you hire an actor to save face in front of Vanessa?"

Vanessa stepped toward him, slipping a delicate hand onto Caleb’s tailored sleeve. "Caleb, please... she's clearly having a breakdown. Look at her eyes. She’s completely unhinged. Maybe you should just have security escort her to a clinic for a psychiatric hold. For Sophie's sake."

I looked at Vanessa. Truly looked at her. The ripped dress, the trembling lower lip, the predatory glee dancing in her pale blue eyes. She didn't just want my husband; she wanted the master bedroom, the Harlan name, and the erasure of everything I had built in this house.

"Don't speak about my daughter," I said, my voice steady despite the fiery agony radiating across my back.

"You don't get to make demands anymore, Madeline," Caleb barked, reaching out to grab my wrist. "Give me Sophie. You’re leaving this house tonight in the back of an ambulance or a cruiser. You think you can slash Vanessa's belongings, cause a scene in front of my board members, and then summon someone to my gate?"

"Touch me again, Caleb," I whispered, holding his gaze with absolute coldness, "and you will spend the rest of your life regretting it."

He froze. For seven years, I had lowered my eyes whenever his voice rose. I had smoothed over his explosive rages, blamed his high-stress acquisitions, absorbed his venom so it wouldn't splash onto our child. Seeing fire in my eyes rattled him.

Before he could speak, the chandelier above our heads began to rattle.

A deep, rhythmic vibration thrummed through the floorboards. Outside, the freezing rain was whipped into violent sheets as twin searchlights swept across the manicured lawns. A twin-engine Sikorsky helicopter was descending directly onto Caleb’s pristine polo grounds.

Simultaneously, the estate's heavy iron gates down the driveway gave way with a deafening screech of rending metal. Three midnight-black Cadillac Escalades roared up the winding cobblestone drive, their high beams blinding the floor-to-ceiling dining room windows.