“Lock us in, Gabriel,” Samson shouted over his shoulder as both he and Amaury used their combined strength to keep him from the door.
When a moment later the door fell shut and the lock clicked, he pulled back. “You have to let me go. She’s in danger. I have to help her,” Zane breathed.
“That’s not how it works, Zane,” Samson responded calmly. “Do you really think we’ll let you walk out of here after all you’ve done?”
“You have to! Portia needs me.” Desperation clawed at him. He had to convince Samson to let him go.
Amaury tilted his head. “Yeah, like a hole in the head. You have some screwed-up notion of what that means.”
“Samson, there’s no time to lose. She’s in danger. Her father—”
Samson jabbed his finger at Zane’s chest. “Her father has every right to be mad at us. You can consider yourself lucky that we’re not hanging you out to dry. He hired us for one specific reason, and one reason only, and we didn’t do our job. No! What did we do? We screwed him over! We did exactly what he wanted to avoid.”
“It was wrong!” Zane yelled.
“You bet it was wrong. What you did was wrong!”
“I had no fucking choice! You wouldn’t listen to me. I told you what was at stake. And you ignored it!”
Samson blew out a breath. “I didn’t ignore it. I was considering your accusations. I was going to investigate.”
“Too late!” Zane planted his hands at his hips and widened his stance.
“Thanks to you!”
“You have to let me go. Her father, he’ll hurt her.”
Samson shook his head. “He’ll ground her, he’ll yell at her, that’s all. She’ll survive.”
Zane grabbed Samson’s forearm. “You don’t understand. I can't let her take his wrath when I’m the one who deserves it.”
“First true words out of your mouth,” Amaury added.
Zane tossed him a glare. “None of you understands. He’ll hurt her. I know him. I know what he’s capable of.”
“What are you talking about?” Samson asked. “How would you know Lewis? He’s been gone the entire time you were Portia’s bodyguard.”
Zane closed his eyes. “I know him from the war.”
“The war?” Amaury echoed.
Zane opened his eyes and looked at the two men who had known him for decades yet knew nothing about his past. This was about to change. “World War II. I was an inmate in Buchwald. The concentration camp.”
He noticed the surprise in Samson’s and Amaury’s eyes, but they remained silent, their bodies rigid in attention.
“Portia’s father was a doctor there. His name isn’t Lewis, it was Franz Müller. If you think Josef Mengele had a reputation for torturing prisoners with his horrendous experiments, you haven’t met Franz Müller. He makes Mengele look like a choirboy. I can’t tell you all the things he did, how he tortured us, killed so many of us.”
Compassion spread in the eyes of his friends.
“He was obsessed with creating a master race. When they captured a vampire one night, he got what he wanted. I was one of his guinea pigs, so was my sister.”
“Are you sure it’s he?” Samson interrupted, his voice calmer and quieter than before.
Zane nodded. “It’s a face I could never forget. I’ve hunted him for years. Samson, you have to believe me when I tell you this: he’s just as mad and as dangerous as he was then. He’s started up an organization to create a new master race.”
“What kind of race?”
“A race of hybrids, stronger than any others, stronger than all vampires. He’s still obsessed. It was a mistake for me to send Portia away. I know that now.”
“You sent her away?” Amaury asked.
He gave his friend a rueful look. “When I saw a picture of her father and realized that she was his flesh, I told her to run or I would kill her. I threatened her.”
“Oh God, why?” Samson gasped.
“Don’t you see? I’m in love with the daughter of the man who destroyed my family, who tortured and killed my sister. I had to send her away. I couldn’t trust myself not to kill her in my rage.”
Zane dropped his head. He should have never let her go. Now he knew that even in his rage he wouldn’t have harmed her.
“My God, Zane, what now?”
When he met Samson’s gaze and realized that his boss believed him and was willing to help him, relief swept over him like a soft breeze. “We have to get her away from her father.”