Chapter 4 - The Whispers Behind the Walls
The estate turned into a mobilized fortress within ninety seconds. Spotlights carved through the frozen lake mist, heavy steel gates sealed shut, and thirty heavily armed guards swarmed the grounds with tactical dogs.
In the second-floor medical suite, a private physician stitched the graze along Garrison’s ribs while Bennett stood by the door, his silver tray replaced by an encrypted satellite phone. Garrison sat on the edge of the examination table, refusing local anesthesia, his jaw set in a hard line as the needle pulled through his skin. He never took his eyes off Meline, who sat on a leather chair in the corner wrapped in a thick wool blanket, trembling from the shock.
""The trajectory came from the old lighthouse pier on the northern boundary,"" Bennett reported quietly. ""A single shooter with a suppressed .338 Lapua Magnum. Our perimeter scouts found the spent casing, but the sniper evacuated via a modified speedboat.""
Garrison hissed slightly as the doctor tied off the suture. ""Who owns the maritime fuel rights at that pier, Bennett?""
""The Moretti syndicate,"" Bennett answered, his eyes lowering. ""Salvatore Moretti signed the lease two weeks ago.""
Salvatore Moretti. The patriarch of the oldest crime family in the Midwest, and Garrison’s fiercest rival.
Garrison waved the doctor away, pulling on a clean black shirt and buttoning it with steady, methodical fingers. He walked across the tiled room and knelt directly in front of Meline’s chair. His broad hands reached out, gently pulling the edges of the blanket tighter around her shoulders. His gaze was fierce, unyielding, and terrifyingly tender.
""You’re safe now, Meline,"" he said, his voice dropping into a register that only she could hear. ""I will have three personal bodyguards outside your door tonight. Tomorrow, we move you to the fortified compound in Geneva Lake.""
""No,"" Meline whispered, shaking her head. Her voice was small, but the stubbornness behind it surprised even Garrison.
He raised an eyebrow. ""No?""
""My mother is at Riverbend,"" she said, looking straight into his formidable gray eyes. ""If Salvatore Moretti knows I play for you... if he knows I'm in this house, will he go after her?""
Garrison’s expression darkened into something lethal. ""If Salvatore Moretti takes a single breath within five hundred yards of your mother’s facility, I will personally hang him from the mast of his own yacht.""
He paused, studying the pale, delicate curve of her jaw, the dark brown eyes filled with an impossible combination of vulnerability and courage. For thirty-eight years, Garrison had lived in a world where everyone had an angle, a hidden price, or a dagger tucked behind their smile. Meline had walked into his nightmare with empty hands and a cleaning bucket, asking for nothing but thirty days for a dying mother.
""Why did you come back to the piano that first night?"" Garrison asked softly, his thumb lightly grazing the edge of her collarbone. ""When I smashed the wood, any sane person would have run out the front gates.""
Meline looked down at his scarred hand. ""Because when my mother started losing her mind, she screamed at the walls too. She broke dishes. She threw books across the room. Everyone told me to lock her away and walk away. But I knew... she wasn't angry. She was just terrified of the dark. And when I looked at you that night, on the floor with your head in your hands... I didn't see a mafia boss. I just saw someone begging for the dark to stop.""
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Garrison stayed frozen for a long moment, his chest rising and falling heavily. Slowly, with an infinite gentleness that defied every rumor ever told about the ruthless Vance family, he leaned in and pressed a lingering, reverent kiss against her forehead.
""Then I will make sure,"" he whispered against her hair, ""that the dark never touches you again.""
