Livvie's perfume. There’s a faint hint of it in the air.
Voices carry from deeper in the warehouse, my ears pricking to hear them more clearly. Roman's voice reverberates between the concrete walls, calm and controlled. And Livvie’s follows, thank fuck.
My fierce, stubborn wife who won't break even when she should.
I let out an unsteady breath. She's here. And she's alive.
We stalk deeper into the warehouse, anticipating each and every move his crew could make. Six more guys jump out of the shadows. They fight like they’re better trained than the idiots outside.
But it won’t be enough.
It doesn’t take long to eliminate the obstacles. The firefight is quick and brutal. I plugtwo guys in seconds flat. The others scatter, bullets cracking the air. We dive behind some metal boxes. Bronx leans around our cover and drops two more guys.
While I blast another one with a spray of bullets, Reign puts the last guy down with a headshot that explodes like a goddamn watermelon.
Eerie silence falls over the place, my ears still ringing, pulse hammering against my throat.
Then a sharp piercing scream shatters the air.
I don’t think. I don’t breathe. I just run. Everything crumbles.
Our plans dissipate like a fart in the wind. The only thing I can think about right now is saving my wife from that crazy bastard. My shoes pound against the floor, my lungs constricting as all the air is sucked from them. I dart down a long corridor, the sounds getting clearer and closer.
She screams again. And then I realize… it’s not out of fear. It’s rage. Pure, unadulterated fury.
That's my girl.
I round a corner, driving forward, and everything inside me morphs into ice when I skid to a stop in the doorway.
Livvie is sitting in a steel chair in the middle of an empty space, her wrists secured and sitting on her lap. Her face is bruised, lip split, hair hanging around her swollen face. Heavy, ragged breaths puncture the air.
But her eyes… they blaze with hatred and ire.
Roman stands over her with a knife pressed to her throat, the steel tip digging into her skin enough where a tiny drizzle of red stains her flesh. He looks like shit. Thin, wild-eyed, desperate. Like a man who's been surviving on revenge alone.
"Kingston!" Livvie shouts when she sees me. "Behind you!"
I whip around just in time to face off with another one of Roman's guys lunging at me with his rifle raised. I put three rounds in his chest before he can squeeze off a single shot. He spins and crashes into a stack of oil drums, metal clanging, rattling my eardrums.
More gunfire erupts back where I just ran from. Fuck, I hope it’s my brothers making those shots and not taking them.
"Well, well," Roman says, voice steady despite the distant chaos. "The devoted husband comes back to collect his property. I’ve been waiting for you, Kingston. What took you so long?"
"Let her go." I ignore him and keep my rifle aimed at his head. But he's hauled Livvie to her feet and is using her body as a shield. One twitch of his hand and she’s dead. "This is between us."
"Is it?" He presses the blade deeper. More blood drizzles out of the wound. Livvie's jaw clenches but she doesn't make a sound. "Because your wife's family owes me a debt. And I’m gonna collect."
"What debt?"
"My brother, Sean." Roman's eyes narrow, fury swirling in the depths of his fiery glare. “Your father-in-law had him tortured and killed three years ago."
"They broke his legs with hammers before they put bullets in his knees,” Roman bites out. "Let him roll around in his own blood for an hour before he died alone.”
The madness in his eyes is damn evidentnow. This isn't business. This is grief twisted into something monstrous, something Livvie had nothing to do with.
"So you blame her?"
"She's an O'Callaghan. She benefits from their violence. That makes her complicit." The knife shakes against Livvie's skin. "An eye for an eye."
