All Chapters of the bodyguard's secret: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Dawn bled grey and cold through the cracked windshield of the derelict ambulance van. They’d driven for hours through the downpour, Silas drifting in and out of feverish sleep punctuated by whimpers echoing Dominic’s distant rage, Reynolds slipping into unconsciousness from pain and blood loss. The Sunset Rest motel, marked by Mack’s discarded horror, was miles behind them, but the phantom stench of decay and the carved word "ANCHOR" clung like frost.Winters found the refuge: an abandoned Forest Service ranger station, deeper in the wilderness, accessible only by a washed-out fire road. It was little more than a decaying log cabin and a collapsing garage, overgrown and forgotten. Isolated. Defensible. A temporary tomb.The grim task couldn’t be postponed. They buried Mack in a shallow grave beneath a gnarled pine at the edge of the clearing. No words. Harlan stood rigidly at the head, rain plastering his hair, his face a mask of grief etched in stone. He didn’t weep. He didn’t speak.

The silence in the ranger station cabin wasn't peaceful. It was the quiet after a bomb blast, thick with the acrid smell of contained dread and Petrova’s antiseptics. Silas lay unnervingly still, his breathing shallow, the blood beneath his nose a dark, dried accusation. Leo hadn’t moved from his vigil at the cot’s side, Silas’s cold hand clasped in his own, as if sheer will could anchor the drifting mind within. The vial pouch sat on the rickety table like a malevolent totem, its faint purple glow seeming to pulse in the dim lantern light.Petrova’s words hung in the air, colder than the mountain drafts seeping through the logs: *"He’ll come for it. The only thing left that was his before the fire."*Harlan finally broke the suffocating quiet. He pushed himself off the wall, his movements stiff, the grief for Mack now overlaid with the grim residue of Shale’s agonizing end and the hospital basement. **>** His voice was gravel. **>**The Ghost stood sentinel

Five Years LaterThe morning light filtered through the gauze curtains of the small art studio, casting dancing shadows across canvases propped against weathered easels. Leo Moretti stood before a half-finished painting, his brush poised in mid-air, studying the interplay of amber and gold that swirled across the canvas like captured sunlight. His hands, once smooth and manicured for Dominic's galas, now bore the honest calluses of creative work and the faint, silvered scars from that final night when purple fire had consumed everything.Five years. Five years since the cabin in the valley, since the quiet mornings on the porch steps, since the slow, careful process of learning to breathe again. The scars had faded, but they remained—not just on his hands, but in the careful way he still checked locks twice, in the way his shoulders tensed when footsteps approached too quickly behind him, in the dreams that sometimes pulled him back to marble floors and champagne flutes that felt like

The week following their engagement passed in a blur of phone calls, planning sessions, and the kind of giddy excitement that Leo had never experienced before. He found himself humming while he painted, smiling at random moments throughout the day, and catching Silas watching him with an expression of such tender amazement that it made Leo's heart skip beats.They had decided on October 15th as their wedding date—exactly one month from Silas's proposal, long enough to plan properly but not so long that the anticipation would drive them both mad. Harlan had already made two trips down from his town to survey the garden and take measurements, his notebook filled with sketches for what he was calling "the most beautiful wedding arch in the history of Oregon."It was Thursday morning when the first complication arose.Leo was in his studio, working on a new painting inspired by the golden light of their engagement morning, when he heard Silas's phone ring in the workshop. The conversation

Leo woke before dawn on his wedding day, pulled from sleep not by anxiety but by a sense of anticipation so profound it seemed to vibrate in his bones. For a moment, he lay still in the pre-dawn darkness, listening to Silas's steady breathing beside him and marveling at the simple fact that this was the last morning he would wake up as an unmarried man.The thought should have been terrifying—after years of associating marriage with control and possession, the idea of legal commitment had once filled him with dread. But this felt different. This felt like coming home to himself, like claiming something that had always been his by right but had taken years to believe he deserved.Careful not to wake Silas, Leo slipped out of bed and padded to the kitchen, where he started coffee and stood at the window watching the sky lighten over their garden. The wedding arch stood silhouetted against the dawn, draped with the white fabric Petrova had helped him hang the evening before. In a few hou