I slam my heel into his knee, and he howls in pain. Once he catches his breath, desperation shines into his eyes.
The man’s bleeding badly now. From the gut, from the scalp where his head met concrete. He’s shaking, breath hitching, eyes darting past me like someone’s about to burst through the door and save him.
No one is coming. I killed them all already.
“Didn’t—didn’t think it mattered.” He pants and strains, trying to push further away from me and only gaining inches. “Man, it was just a payday. That’s all. Knox said?—”
I crouch in front of him slowly, level with his eyes.
He swallows and keeps talking. People like him always do.
“It’s just a girl.” He shrugs, like it’s a rounding error. “He said she wasn’t yours. Said she belonged to some rich dude running for office.”
Something in my chest goes quiet. Not rage. Clarity.
My fist connects with his mouth hard enough to split skin and knock out teeth. His head snaps back, skull cracking against the wall, and this time when he cries out it’s wet and broken.
I grab his jaw, fingers digging in until he whimpers, forcing him to look at me.
“You don’t get to talk about her,” I say, low. Calm. “Not like that.”
He’s sobbing now. Blood bubbles at his lips. He nods too fast, terror flooding every line of his face.
“I didn’t know. I swear?—”
I break his fingers one by one. Slow. Precise. Each snap earns a scream until his voice is gone, and he’s just choking on sound.
I lean closer, my mouth near his ear so that he hears this part clearly. So it sticks. “She’s mine now.”
I let him go. He collapses in a heap, ruined, alive just long enough to understand what he’s done.
Then I stand, wipe the blood from my hands on his jacket, and turn toward the back of the building.
Toward Wren.
That’s when I hear her: Wren calling my name through the walls, muffled.
Everything else stops.
I find her bound and dirty but alive. She looks up, and her face says it all—relief, fear, disbelief.
I cut her loose, hating that my knife is coated in blood, that any of it gets on her. She’s trembling. The moment she’s free, she reaches for me. I attempt to pull back—to keep her from being stained with blood—but she clings to me, arms around my neck, face pressing into the side of my neck.
Good. She doesn’t need to see what I’ve done.
Giving into the other side of myself, I gather her against me, her legs circling around my waist, and I carry her out of the building.She’s shivering and cold, her tight grip and nails digging into my shoulders.
Outside by my bike doesn’t change how tightly she holds onto me. “I need you to let go of me, pretty girl.”
She shakes her head.
And fuck it, I mount my bike with her still wrapped around me. If I revel in holding her against me for a moment more than it would normally take me to start my bike, who’s to say?
Her knees tighten around my waist. “I’ve never ridden on a bike before.”
My hand smooths down her back, feeling her tremble around me, even with the way the engine makes us vibrate. I like the idea of being the first for her in a few ways. Her first ride means something.
To me anyway.
