“I believe your mother gave you an order,” I said, gesturing to the shattered glass in the hallway. “Clean that mess up.”

He didn’t get the chance. The front door didn’t just open — it was breached. A deafening CRACK echoed through the house.

Marcus surged inside, a dark, unstoppable force, flanked by two armored uniformed officers and three plainclothes federal agents. His face was carved from granite, his service weapon drawn and held at the low ready.

His tactical gaze swept the room in a microsecond before locking onto me. He saw the dried blood on the collar of my blouse. He saw the angry, swollen bruise along my temple.

For one terrible second, the federal agent vanished, and he was just Marcus — the big brother who used to check my closet for monsters.

Then the emotional veil dropped, and he became a lethal combination of both.