Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 48709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 244(@200wpm)___ 195(@250wpm)___ 162(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 244(@200wpm)___ 195(@250wpm)___ 162(@300wpm)
For a long moment, I think he might listen to reason.
He stares at me with his eyes wide as if contemplating my words. I think maybe I’ve gotten through to him. But then he moves quickly, pushing his chair out and grabbing a gun.
In a flash, I see where it was, duct-taped to the underside of the chair. It’s a small-caliber like I thought, seeming like a toy in his hand.
He yells as he swings it around, trying to aim it at me.
I don’t yell. I don’t make a goddamn noise.
Leaping across the table, I let the momentum carry my elbow around in a violent arc, catching him across the face. He screams, and the gun goes off, making a metal clang when the bullet hits the floor.
My hand darts down, curling around his wrist. I squeeze.
I squeeze hard.
He makes an animal-like noise of pain as he drops the gun. Then I spin him around, his wrist feeling brittle as I throw him across the room.
I can’t think, I can hardly see.
My vision has turned as red as the crosshair on my woman’s wrist, rage-red, making it impossible to think of anything else.
This so-called tough man collapses onto his back, gazing up at me, blubbering like a child.
“You never get to speak to her like that,” I roar, grabbing the front of his shirt and hauling him to his feet. He kicks his legs uselessly, his hands holding onto my arms.
“Please,” he wheezes. “Please. Fuck. Please.”
“You never say a goddamn word about her.”
I’m all fire, boiling up inside me, guiding my hands to his throat. The movement makes him fall, but then I’m on him, pressing until my knuckles turn white, staring down at this bastard who insulted the future mother of my children, staring down at the monster who ordered a blood-red crosshair on her wrist.
“She’s mine,” I roar, my voice echoing around the warehouse.
I can feel the tension in the place, the way everybody backs away, no idea what to do.
They’ve never seen me like this. I’ve never let anybody see me like this, just my Liliana, just when I showed her a glimpse of my fiery hunger, the bone-deep need.
As a man, as a beast, I need to throttle this sadistic fuck for what he said. For what he did.
He stares up, eyes bulging, trying to speak.
His gold teeth wink up at me as he gasps for air.
“She’s mine,” I boom, with all the force of the Bratva in me, with the force of the war and the lives lost, with Liliana’s tattooed skin, with Mom lying skeletal in bed and Dad turning his back, with all of life, this life I chose, burning through my hands.
He tried to take my escape, my woman. He tried. He failed.
Now he has to pay the price.
There’s a toll on this life. You don’t get to make mistakes, not when you threaten the Bratva queen.
Fire, fire, fire, fucking lava in my veins. I’m spewing it out; teeth gritted, roaring as I prepare to crush his neck.
“Damien.”
It’s Max, his voice sounding like it comes from far away. Through a fog.
“Damien.”
His hand is on my shoulder, slamming against it.
“It still stands,” Max yells in my ear. “He’s a pathetic piece of shit. He deserves this and worse. But it still stands. He’s a Cartel man. Damien. Please.”
I stare down at Gabriel, at his hands growing slack, still struggling to let go. Nobody ever gets to threaten my woman, make her feel less than she is, and even look at her in a way I don’t like.
But my hands start to loosen. I force them to, remembering my duty, the men, the lives we’ll lose if I do this.
If I do the right thing. The world is such a warped place sometimes.
“Don’t stand up,” I snap as I rock back, keeping my eyes pinned on Gabriel. “Where’s the gun?”
One of my men places it into my hand. It looks tiny, bits of duct tape clinging to it, as I aim it at Gabriel. He rolls around, clawing at his neck, coughing and gasping.
But alive.
More than he deserves.
“All your men saw what happened here. Your men, who, you stupid fuck, abandoned you the second you stepped in here. Anybody could see that.”
He shakes his head; his face is bright red as he glares up at me. “No, you’re wrong.”
I laugh bitterly. “Even now? Look around.”
He does, climbing to his knees, turning here and there as his face becomes hopeless. He sees the shadowed faces of the Bratva and the Cartel watching impassively, the rules of the wild, like wolves lingering beneath the darkness of trees.
“It’s done. They saw you pull a gun on me. They saw what happened between us. They saw it all. You’re finished. You’ll be killed for the sport of it if you hang around… and not by us.”