Chapter Thirty-Three
In which it is all muscle memory.
Afton…
No one ever sits on the ubiquitous couch you find in every fancy ladies’ room. It’s there to look pretty as you wash your hands and touch up your lipstick.
But Aria and I find ourselves lounging on the really spectacular velvet one in the bathroom here because once she started on the story about how Mason took over the legitimate Investments and Acquisitions department at MacTavish International at the tender age of twenty-four, I had to hear the ending.
“I suspect the Chieftain was hesitant at first. Mason was so young. He’d finished his Master’s degree in Finance at Cambridge a year early,” she says proudly. “I know he hates it when I brag about him, but he’d been making investments for the King Syndicate - my side of the family - since he was sixteen.
"To be honest, I was disappointed that he chose to take a position at MacTavish International instead of coming home to Canada, but I understand. He needed to try something new and I wanted him to become closer with his cousins.”
Aria is beautiful, with silvery blonde hair, like Mason’s. She’s tall and elegant, and I get that same sense of lethal grace from her that her son radiates like a beacon.
“There’s an image in my mind of Mason dressed in a suit, being the sensible one, maybe making some stock trades on his phone while watching his cousins start a bar fight.” I laugh a little. “Then taking off his expensive jacket, rolling up his sleeves and diving in.”
“Just two months married and you seem to have a very good grasp on who he is,” Aria says happily. She tentatively touches my hand. “I know you didn’t have the right beginning.”
I flush and look down.
“An arranged marriage can be anything from unfortunate to barbaric,” she continues. “Somehow though, you and Mason seem to understand each other. I know he’s complex, and based on those fading bruises on his face, I can see he hasn’t retired from his extracurricular activities in underground fighting.”
Oh,crap.
Mason wasn’t kidding when he said nothing stays a secret in the MacTavish family.
“He thinks I don’t know.” Aria rolls her eyes. “I am hoping now that he has someone to come home to - someone hewantsto come home to - that he won’t need that outlet as much.”
Well… since shedoesknow. “Michael took me to one of Mason’s bouts last night,” I confess. “I had no idea what was going on until he came storming up to the cage. His opponent was bigger than he was, which I did not know was statistically possible. Mason knocked him unconscious within… I think it was three minutes. The crowd, though,” I shudder. “The crowd wanted him to kill the guy. He didn’t.”
“I didn’t know it was that horrific,” she says, shoulders sagging a little. “It’s not like he doesn’t see enough violence just by being a MacTavish.”
What happens next is a blur, and it will take me a couple of days afterward to let myself fully remember the sequence of events before I stabbed that man.
We rise to our feet as two women come into the restroom, looking ready to touch up their makeup, chattering to each other and giggling.
“Shall we head back?” Aria says, “I’m sure Mason’s impatiently rearranging the silverware into a more efficient pattern.”
Then the door is shoved open wider by a man who swiftly locks it behind him. He’s short, thickly muscled and he’s staring at me.
“What are you doing in here!” Aria shouts as loud as she can. “Get the hellout!”The two women aren’t giggling any more, they’ve both grabbed her arms, slamming her against the wall.
He pulls a knife from his jacket. There’s no subtlety, he charges at me as I try to back up. There’s no room, I’m in heels and he’s angling the blade like he wants to gut me.
It all comes back, muscle memory.
I cross my forearms, blocking his knife hand between them, twist my arms up and pull his knife hand to my right side as I use my left elbow, jamming it viciously up into his throat and grabbing the knife as he chokes, eyes wide and shocked, as if he can’t imagine I would have done anything but cower and cry.
With a barking sort of cough, he comes at me again and I jam the knife in his closest point, his stomach, pulling the blade up with all my strength.
We’re locked a staring match, both unable to look away as he puts his hands on his stomach, trying to keep everything inside,oh god blood is welling between his fingers and I can see greyish-pink loops of intestine and-
“Don’t let go of the knife.” I recite mindlessly. “One cut may not be enough. Enough…”
Two simultaneous crashes. One is from Mason with his gun in hand, slamming the door open, smashing it into the wall. The other crash that I don’t hear or understand for a moment is Aria knocking the two women’s heads together.
There’s hushed, urgent voices outside and Lachlan bursts in, then Talon, eyes wide with horror.
