I bite down hard on the flesh of his palm. He jerks his hand back, and I suck in a breath to scream, but his fist connects with my face before I can make a sound, an explosion of pain that sends me crashing sideways against the marble counter. My lip splits open properly now, blood flooding my mouth, stars bursting across my vision.
"Fucking bitch." He's on me again, hand tangling in my hair, yanking my head back hard enough to make my neck scream. I hear the rasp of his zipper—
The bathroom door explodes inward with enough force to crack the frame.
Rafail stands in the doorway, and for a heartbeat the entire world stops. Then his expression shifts from calm to something colder and more lethal than anything I've seen before, and the drunk man's hands go still in my hair.
"Get your fucking hands off of her." His voice is soft. Deadly soft. "Both of them. Now."
The man releases me and I collapse against the wall, legs unable to hold me.
"I was just—we were just—" The guy stumbles backward, hands up. "She came onto me, I swear—"
"Liar." The word drops like a stone. "You followed her. You grabbed her. You. Hit. Her." Rafail’s hand shoots out faster than a blink, closing around the drunk’s throat and slamming him against the wall hard enough to crack the mirror with a loud boom.
"Do you want to watch?"
The question takes a second to penetrate through the ringing in my ears. Watch what? But then I understand: he's asking if I want to watch him kill this man.
I should say no. Should beg for mercy. Should prove I'm still the good person I was before I met him. But I look at the man choking in Rafail's grip—at the smirk that's fading but was there moments ago, at the belt still unbuckled—and I nod. I can’t walk away from this.
He followed me. Hit me. Was going to rape me twenty feet from a dining room full of people and leave.
He's a predator. And Rafail is asking if I want to watch him end that threat permanently.
My split lip throbs with each heartbeat, blood still flowing warm and wet down my chin. I meet Rafail's steel-gray eyes and nod.
"Yes." My voice comes out steady despite the trembling in my hands. "I want him to understand what he tried to do to me."
Rafail's expression flickers with surprise, or maybe approval—before his attention returns to the man whose face is turning purple under his grip.
"You heard her." His voice drops into a register I've never heard before, stripped of anything resembling mercy. "She wants to watch. So I'm going to make this educational."
What follows is a blur of brutal efficiency. Rafail’s fists connect with the man’s face in a series of blows that sound like meat being tenderized, the crack of bone a sharp counterpoint. Blood sprays across the marble, and it feels like justice. The man tries to fight back, tries to beg, but Rafail is methodical, breaking the fingers that grabbed me, the ribs that pressed against me, the face that leered at me.
I watch with a detached fascination that should horrify me.
By the time Rafail finishes, the man is a crumpled, gurgling heap on the blood-spattered marble. I understand something fundamental: I wanted this. I watched a monster get destroyed, and I'm not horrified. I'm not a good person. And right now, I don't care.
Rafail straightens and turns to me, blood coating his knuckles and forearms. His expression shifting from cold killer to something softer when he sees me still pressed against the wall.
"Are you hurt?" His voice is gentle now. "Besides your lip—did he hurt you anywhere else?"
I shake my head, words impossible, and then his hands are on my face—careful despite the blood coating them, tilting my chin up so he can examine my split lip.
"I should kill him again for this," he murmurs, thumb brushing carefully below the cut. "Should make it slower."
"He's already dying." I say. Not a judgement just a fact.
"Not fast enough." His jaw clenches, but then he looks at me. I'm standing here shaking and bloody. "Come. We're leaving."
Daniil appears in the doorway with the kind of timing that suggests he was waiting nearby. Rafail strips off his suit jacket and drapes it around my shoulders despite the blood.
"Take her to the car," he tells Daniil. "I'll handle this."
But I catch his hand before he can turn away. "No. I'm not leaving you here. We go together."
He studies my face for a long moment, then nods. "Together then."
