Page 27 of The Chief (Those (Damn!) Texas Dantes #3)

“And that’s not worth your life,” Cade said, his steady voice lethal. Then he turned to the others. “So if we’re doing this, we do it with her protected at every second. No risks. No exposure.”

A beat of silence stretched between them.

“Either we agree on that, or it’s not happening.”

Zane raised both hands, a rare flicker of respect crossing his features. “Hey, no argument here.”

Titus gave a single, thoughtful nod. “We’ll do it right. No shortcuts.”

Leif’s voice turned grim. “She’s my baby sister. Damn right, we’re not taking any shortcuts.”

Cade’s gaze flicked to each of them in turn, assessing, weighing. Finally, he nodded once. Sharp. Final. “We’ll do it. But on our terms. With eyes everywhere.”

Zane was already reaching for his phone. “I’ll pull the outer security net tighter. No one gets within a hundred yards without me knowing.”

“I’ll speak to Petra,” Leif said. “She may know more than she realizes. If Marcello angled her into this marriage, she might’ve overheard something.”

Titus looked to Cade. “We need to alert Viktor. He’s head of security for a reason. If Marcello has any leverage left inside this house, we smoke it out tonight.”

Elise stepped back just enough to look up at Cade. Her eyes were calm, but the slightest tremor shot down her spine.

“Don’t let me out of your sight,” she whispered.

“You don’t leave my side,” he promised.

She nodded and leaned into him again, as if that answer had settled something deep inside her.

Titus stepped toward the door. “We move before he does.”

Zane followed. “Let’s end this bastard.”

Cade watched them go, the gravity of what came next pressing harder with each footstep.

Leif lingered at the threshold, looking back at Elise one more time. “You okay?”

She didn’t lie. “Not yet.”

He nodded once and left.

Cade stayed where he was, holding her.

And the silence in the war room came like the last breath before a storm for all of them. But if it touched her, it would have to go through him first.

He didn’t say anything as he led her out of the war room.

The doors shut behind them with a soft click, muting the world. Elise’s steps were careful, but steady. Her hand never left his.

He walked her straight to his quarters. Past guards who didn’t dare look twice. Past staff who pretended not to see the possessive way his arm swept around her shoulders the moment they cleared the hall and headed upstairs.

Inside, he didn’t turn on the overheads.

He moved through the space with practiced ease, flipping on a single lamp near the bed, its amber glow spilling across the room, painting the walls with deep shadows and soft gold.

The light caught the curve of her cheek, skimming the trembling edge of her sleeve.

It carved a shadow beneath the sharp line of his jaw, etching them both in gold and silence.

It came like a pause in time. A breath held between chaos and clarity.

“You need to rest,” he said, voice coaxing. But even as he said it, he knew she wouldn’t. Not yet. Not with the adrenaline still thinning from her system. Not with her thoughts still racing. And not with the memory of a gun raised to kill her echoing behind her eyes.

Elise turned to him, her expression caught somewhere between vulnerability and resolve.

The quiet wasn’t just fatigue. It was memory.

Her eyes were too alert, her body too tense.

Something in her face told him sleep was the last thing on her mind.

She wasn’t done yet. Not with the day. Not with him.

“You didn’t hear what he said,” she whispered. “Grigor. Right before he pulled the trigger. It was almost like a whisper, but I heard it. I’ve heard it before.”

“I know.” His voice was quiet, steady, but inside, it scraped.

Because he had heard it. Not clearly, not in the moment.

But when Elise repeated the words in the war room, they hit him like a blow to the ribs.

The debt is finished. It hadn’t registered in the chaos, not with the gun, the blood, the fear.

But it had been there. His focus had been on Elise.

On saving her. But the voice had lodged itself deep, waiting. And now, it echoed.

“It was meant to end me.”

Her voice came soft, but it didn’t shake. It was steady. Final. Not about the bullet or the pain. About what had been taken—almost taken—from her. Her life. Her agency. Her future. Her name. That one phrase had tried to erase all of it.

He closed the distance between them, his eyes never leaving hers. “It didn’t end you,” he said, needing her to believe the truth of it. His voice was rough with restraint, edged with the fury of what could have been, and the awe of what still was. Her, standing. Breathing. Unbroken.

Her fingers brushed his chest, gentle and uncertain, as if needing to confirm he was real.

“It could have,” she whispered. Not just the bullet.

The memory. The helplessness. The way it froze her in place, as though she’d disappeared.

Like she was only the aftermath of someone else’s decision.

“It twisted everything I knew about myself. Just for a second. Like I was someone else’s shadow—fragile, helpless, voiceless. And I hated it.”

Cade didn’t answer. He just pulled her close, his hands skimming her hips with careful attention, avoiding her wound.

She appeared impossibly small in his arms, but not fragile.

Just wound tight with too many emotions, too many memories, and not nearly enough space to breathe.

He kissed her hair, breathing her in like he was trying to permanently connect himself.

Then her temple. Then the delicate curve of her face.

Each press of his lips was considerate, a wordless promise: you’re here, you’re whole, you’re mine.

“Let me,” he murmured, the words threaded with a mix of command and care.

He wasn’t asking permission. He was offering something elemental.

Not possession or comfort. A reclamation.

A re-centering of her body as something sacred and wanted, not wounded.

“Let me remind you what’s yours. What’s always been yours. ”

Elise blinked up at him, the air shifting slightly between them.

Her voice was barely audible, pulled taut between defiance and disbelief.

“Let you what?” she asked, not because she didn’t understand, but because part of her couldn’t believe he was offering, not dominance, but care.

Something gentle. Something just for her.

His mouth touched her ear, his breath hot and unshakably sure.

“Show you what he didn’t take,” he whispered.

“What no man can touch. What no one will ever break.” He let the words settle, let them soak into her skin.

Then softer, fierce in its tenderness he added, “What still belongs to you. What always has.”

She didn’t speak. Her eyes searched his for a long moment, something quiet but sure settling behind them. Then she nodded once, offering not just permission, but trust.

Cade lowered her onto the bed like she was something precious, handling her with a tenderness that held a kind of intense containment.

He adjusted the pillows cautiously, layering one beneath her head, another tucked against her spine to keep pressure off her wound.

She let him, her body pliant beneath his hands, the subtle flinch when he brushed too close to her injury not lost on him.

Every movement was unhurried, gentle. His way of showing her she was safe now.

That there would be no more harm in this room. Not tonight. Not ever again.

He kissed the inside of her knee.

Then higher.

Then higher still, until her breath caught and her fingers curled into the sheets.

But he wasn’t done.

Cade rose over her, bracing his hand near her hip as his other found the hem of her dress. He didn’t tear it, didn’t rush. Just dragged it upward inch by inch, baring skin like it was something precious to be unwrapped. Her breath hitched again as his knuckles skimmed the underside of her thigh.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he ordered. “Don’t look away. Not once.”

His fingers dragged slow and steady, watching every flicker of response in her gaze.

The pulse in her throat, the breath she forgot to take, the way her knees shifted wider beneath his touch.

She was trembling, but not with fear. Something more essential, hunger.

Her eyes never left his, wide and intensely blue, caught in that charged space between defiance and desire.

He didn’t need her words, just that look.

That heat. That surrender. The way her fingers curled like she was holding on to something only he could give her.

“You feel that?” he murmured, voice dark and quiet, pitched only for her. “That ache. That heat. That’s mine now.”

He didn’t stop moving, didn’t stop watching her face. Her lips parted, her breath bordering on frantic. His hand splayed lower, claiming every inch like it already belonged to him.

“You give me this,” he added, voice tightening with restraint, “and I take everything else off your shoulders. Every shadow. Every scar. It’s mine now. And I’ll carry it so you don’t have to.”

He peeled the fabric of her dress higher, past her hips, careful of her bandage, tracing every new inch of skin like it mattered. When it reached her ribs, he paused, eyes locked to hers. “Still mine,” he murmured. Then the dress slid over her head and was gone.

She wore only the lace bra and panties he’d dressed her in earlier, delicate and pale against her skin.

But seeing her like this, laid out beneath him, watching him with open need and rising heat, still shattered him.

The knowing curve of her body, the way her breath caught, the soft flex of her thighs beneath his hands.

It all broke past his restraint, wrecking him in ways nothing else ever had.