Chapter 7 - The Betrayal
The sanctuary in the woods was shattered at dawn.
Hannah woke up wrapped in Gabriel's warm embrace to the shrill, high-pitched beep of a proximity alarm. Gabriel rolled out of bed instantly, pulling on his boots and racking the slide of his sidearm before Hannah could sit up.
"Stay here with Noah," Gabriel ordered in a lethal whisper. "Tiny is downstairs."
Hannah threw on her robe and rushed into Noah's room. The boy was already awake, clutching Dasher, his eyes wide with rising panic.
Downstairs, the front door burst open. Shouting echoed through the timber rafters, followed by the percussive blast of gunfire.
"Gabriel!" Hannah gasped.
She heard Gabriel’s voice roar from the great room, followed by the sound of glass breaking. Footsteps thudded heavily on the stairs. Hannah grabbed a fire poker from the corner of the room, standing in front of Noah’s bed like a sentinel.
The door flew open. It was Calvin Shaw—neat, bespectacled Calvin, holding a silenced pistol.
"Calvin?" Hannah whispered, stunned. "What are you doing?!"
Calvin offered an apologetic, cold smile. "I'm protecting my investment, Miss Brooks. Gabriel was getting weak. Soft. Spending billions on speech clinics and sentimentality. Roman Vance offered me twenty percent of the logistics lines to close the loose end."
"The loose end?" Hannah's stomach dropped. "Noah."
"He saw Roman that night on the bridge," Calvin sighed. "He was never supposed to talk again. But then you had to come along and perform miracles. Step aside, Hannah. Vance wants you alive for leverage, but the boy has to go."
"Over my dead body!" Hannah lunged with the fire poker.
Calvin dodged the strike, grabbing her wrist and twisting it brutally. The iron rod fell with a clatter. Noah screamed from the bed—a pure, unfiltered sound: "LEAVE HER ALONE!"
Calvin raised the pistol toward Noah.
With a feral cry, Hannah threw herself entirely across Calvin, dragging him to the floor. The gun discharged into the ceiling. They wrestled violently across the rug, but Calvin struck Hannah across the temple with the butt of the gun.
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Spots exploded in Hannah’s vision. As consciousness slipped away, she saw two masked men burst into the room, grabbing Noah as he screamed her name over and over into the cold morning air.
***
