“Good for you.” Folk gripped my chin. “Now take the war to him and don’t fight fair.”
“You telling me to fuck him up?”
“I’m telling you,again, to finish this so we can all go home.”
Folk knocked his forehead to mine, then moved to the middle of the ring. It wasn’t his way to be the centre of attention, but with Locke occupied, it fell to him to restart the fight.
He brought his hands down. A heartbeat passed. Maybe two. Doherty tossed the knife from one fist to the other, white powder glittering at the base of his nose, pupils already expanding. He lunged, but I was already in motion.
Take the war to him.
Folk had always preached that. If a fight was inevitable, make it your bitch. And this bitch was mine. Fuck it. They all were.
I flew at Doherty, wrapping both hands around his wrist, going straight for the knife, ramming my knee into his gut.
He went down, taking me with him, the tip of the blade an inch from my chest, and this prick was strong. Heavy. We rolled, him bearing down on me. I kicked his arms, redirecting the knife to my ribs, but his weight had me pinned.
Fuck with his head.
Not Folk’s advice.
Mine, and I heeded it.Relaxing. Giving Doherty that precious inch he needed to become a bigger fool than the one who’d rolled out of his bed that morning. The knife scraped my skin, piercing it—slicingit, spilling blood. Drawing pain and apathy from the worst parts of me.
I laughed.
Doherty’s eyes widened. His coked-up brain had a second to wonder how the fuck his shitty little life had come to this. A snatched inhale to absorb the message. “Tell your pops if he breathes near those kids again, I’ll slit his fat throat.”
Then I reared back and nutted that fucker in the face.
Doherty slumped on top of me. Unconscious or dead. Couldn’t say it mattered to me as faceless Rebel Kings dragged him away and I staggered to my feet with the flick knife.
Folk relieved me of it before I could throw it at the next person who annoyed me. “So he does listen.”
“To you? Always, brother.”
Folk snorted, pressing a towel to my bleeding torso, but my attention was already diverted, scanning the crowd, searching for the tall sharp-eyed Russian I’d glimpsed through the blood still hazing my vision.
I pushed away from Folk, ducking out of the ring and jumping into the mosh pit the yard had become. More Kings than I expected slapped my back and called me brother, but I barely noticed.
Where the fuck did he go?
The possibility that Jakov had already left spun my head more than the concussion already setting in. I pushed through bodies, searching, searching,searching, but all I found were leather-clad piston-heads and girls with inked tits wanting to suck my dick.
I liked tits.
And I liked getting my dick sucked.
But a woman going to town on my cock hadn’t crossed my mind since I’d kissed Viktor on his living room floor. BecauseViktorhad been on my mind every hour, every minute, every second I hadn’t been preoccupied with something else.
The familiar squeeze in my chest felt like death—a slow one, and call me fucking stupid, but my fight-addled brain had the daftest idea that if I could find Jakov, if I could look that cunt in the eye and get him to tell me Viktor was okay, that maybe I would be too.
If. The word of the day. I shouldered through more Rebel King foot soldiers, darting my gaze around like I was the one with a gram of sniff charging my veins.
Someone called my name.
Irish, not Russian.
I ignored them and pushed on, that fucking pain in my heart expanding into frenetic energy. Anxious. Desperate. My breath caged in my lungs.
