But there will benonetonight.
Above the crowd, I can hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. Ashland hooks his fist into Crowning's ribs. Once. Twice. The third hit makes Crowning double over, retching for a second time.
One of Marcus’s men tries to enter the ring, but Cavin grabs the back of his shirt, yanking him back and shoving him to the ground. “This istheirfight.”
Ashland grabs him by the throat. Lifts him—fuckingliftshim clean off the ground—and slams him down on the canvas so hard the whole ringshakes.
I should look away. I will see this in my dreams for the rest of my life, hear the wet crack of bone and the spray of blood, the animal sounds of a man being beaten to death.
I should close my eyes—cover them, run out of here screaming, and never look back.
But I can't. I won’t.
Because this savage, terrible, beautiful violence… it’s all for me.
Ashland hauls Marcus up by his hair, and Marcus's face is unrecognizable now. Blood pours from his nose and mouth, running in rivers down his neck. I hope the bastard’s choking on his own teeth.
Ashland slams him down again. The ring shakes. Marcus convulses, trying to curl into himself, but Ashland kicks his arms away, brutal and methodical, then drops his full weight onto Marcus's chest. I hear ribs crack like dry kindling.
Marcus screams. It's a wet, gurgling sound. There's blood in his lungs now.
“You killed them,” Ashland growls, driving his fist into Marcus's already-destroyed face. “And she was next.”
Each word is punctuated by another blow. Marcus's head snaps back with each impact, bouncing off the blood-slicked canvas. His arms flail weakly, uselessly. One of them is bent wrong, broken at the elbow from when Ashland stomped on it earlier.
This is old justice, witnessed and binding.
Ashland grabs Marcus's jaw, the part that isn't shattered, and forces his head to the side. “Look at her,” he snarls. “Look at the woman you thought you'd kill. Look at her,alive.”
Marcus's one good eye—swollen nearly shut, filled with blood—tries to find me. A wet, rattling sound comes from his throat. Not words, just the desperate wheeze of a dying man.
Ashland releases him and stands. Marcus curls in on himself, nothing but shattered bone and torn flesh. His chest rises and falls in shallow, irregular gasps. He's drowning in his own blood.
But Ashland isn't done.
He circles Marcus's broken body like a predator, and I see the monster he's always feared showing me. The thing he became in the alley six years ago when he saved a terrified eighteen-year-old girl. The weapon the McCarthys forged. The killer who protects what's his.
He's magnificent.
He's terrifying.
He'smine.
Ashland straddles Marcus's chest again, his boots on either side of his rib cage. His fist rises high, knuckles split open and dripping, his entire arm painted red to the elbow. Every muscle in his body is coiled, ready. Lethal.
This is it. The killing blow. The end.
But he stops.
His fist trembles in the air, his body tense and shaking with the effort of holding back. He's staring at me.
Our eyes meet across the blood-soaked ring, and I see the question there. The plea.Don't hate me for this. Don't fear me. Don't leave me when you see what I really am.
Something deep inside me, dark and terrible, unfurls like wings.
Somehow, the world narrows to just us. Just this moment. Just this choice.
He doesn't want me to see this side of him. The monster. The killer. But I already know what he is. I've always known.
