I tilt my head, eyes locked on Mark, calm settling in like a switch flipped.
Yeah.
He hasno ideawhat he’s dealing with.
I don’t look at the knife, instead, I look at the girl I now know as Harper.
“Go,” I tell her, low and sharp. “Back to your friends.”
She studies my face for a beat, eyes flicking from me to Mark, then down to the knife, then back up again. There’s a pause there, small, but loaded, like she’s clocking something she didn’t expect.
Recognition, maybe.
Her mouth curves into a slow smirk as she steps past me. “Yeah,” she says lightly, eyes cutting to Mark. “That tracks.”
She lifts her shot glass in my direction without stopping. “I was wondering who distracted her earlier. Makes sense now.”
Mark snaps, “What the fuck?—”
Then she’s gone, swallowed by bodies and lights and bass, laughter trailing behind her.
I don’t waste another fucking second. I move.
One step in. Weight shifting, and shoulders squared.
My fist connects with his face before his brain even catches up.
The impact is clean and sharp. His head snaps back, nose crunching under my knuckles, and the sound, wet and wrong, cuts through the bass just enough for me to hear it. Shock wipes the grin right off his face as blood spills down over his lip.
Before he can recover or even get a full word out, I drive a short, brutal jab into his gut.
All the air leaves him at once.
He folds forward with a choked sound, knife slipping from his fingers and clattering to the concrete between us.
The crowd reacts—gasps, shouts, a ripple of movement, but no one steps in. Even fucked off their faces, they can tell it wouldn’t be a smart move on their part to intervene.
Mark snarls and lunges anyway, wild and desperate, scooping the knife back up with shaking fingers. He swings low, sloppy, all anger and no control.
Too slow.
The blade skims across my abdomen, a sharp sting slicing through flesh. It’s shallow, more of an insult than injury, but enough to register.
Enough to piss me the fuck off.
I hiss once through my teeth.
That was a mistake.
I crash into him, shoulder first, driving him back into a concrete pillar hard enough to rattle his teeth. The knife skitters away again, this time kicked clear as I hook his collar and slam him forward.
“Stay,” I tell him calmly, voice steady as warm blood trails down my abs.
He doesn’t.
So I end it.
I wrench his arm up and twist, controlled and brutal, until his knees buckle and his mouth opens on a broken sound. I haul him upright by the collar, holding him there while his feet scramble uselessly for traction.
