The silence that fell was absolute, a vacuum that sucked the air from my lungs. For a single, frozen second, no one moved. Julian, the manuscript clutched in his hand, looked like a statue of impotent greed. The two thugs stood dumbfounded. My own pain, the frantic thrumming of my heart—it all ceased, suspended in the arctic chill of Alistair’s presence.
His eyes, those searing silver-grey storms, saw everything in a single, devastating sweep. The broken door, the hired muscle, the stolen symphony in Julian’s grasp. And then, they found me. They locked onto my bleeding hand, and the glacial rage in his face seemed to solidify, to become something tangible and infinitely more dangerous.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
With a flick of his wrist, a motion so subtle it was barely there,
