A gun fires twice before I grab a huge, dark shape. With a roar, I spin and hurl it down the stairs,awayfrom Lucas.
The flashlight goes flying, slashing wildly through the air. The heavy body is tumbling, and I’m stomping down the stairs behind it. That’s all it is to me. A body. An opponent. Someone who threatened what’s mine.
He gets up. He shouts something, but I’m past words. I don’t hear them.
The sideways beam from the flashlight makes him into a big, vague shape as he starts to scramble back, trying to get space to raise his gun. I’m two steps above him, and I kick him so hard in the chest that he goes flying back into the sitting room, crashing into a chair.
He’s on his feet by the time I reach him, but he’s lost his weapon. He swings at me. I twist to avoid the worst of it. He gets my shoulder instead of my throat. I nail him in the gut. He curls around my fist and drops. He’s not down long. He lunges up to catch me around the middle. He’s big and manages to drive me back several steps before I sling him off me. He slams into a wall.
As I stalk toward him, the constriction around my torso becomes intolerable. I tear at the straps and rip off the vest.
It gives my opponent just enough time to get to his feet, but it does him no good. I pin him to thewall and start hammering him like a punching bag. He doesn’t stand a chance. He never did.
I wish he had. I wish he could really fight me so that I could really fight him because all this does is uncap my rage. It’s not even close to enough to drain it.
I’m brutal. I fucking obliterate him. I don’t know at what point he dies. He was only ever a body to me.
I’m very loud now. I can hear the animalistic sounds I’m making over the dull thuds of fists on flesh and flesh on hard surfaces. Blood is warm and wet under my hands.
It stops being satisfying when the body gets loose and pulpy. With a roar, I finally sling it away.
Everything is still dark. Like the prison. Like the spaces inside me that hold all this rage. But it feels good to be roaming free in it. I know what I am, pacing in the dark with blood and death at my feet.
The Beast.
But soon I’ll be back in my cage, and thiswasn’t enough.
“Roman.”
My head swings toward the voice. I don’t register the name, just the presence of someone who can’t control me. I won’t go back in my cage, not yet.
I stalk toward the voice, but I never get there because another speaks from the other direction: “Roman.”
Thatvoice I would know anywhere, even in the darkest places.
I turn toward Lucas. I stalk his way. He doesn’t move at my approach. He doesn’t scream when I grab him. He just wraps his arms and legs around me and lets me carry him up the stairs to our room.
ELEVEN
Lucas
Roman locks the door behind us. The bedroom is very dark because Sasha cut the power when the DiMaggios showed up.
Roman carries me to the bed. I let go of him because I expect him to get in the bed with me, but he doesn’t. He walks around the foot of it to the sliding glass door and looks out. Then he walks into the dark closet. Next it’s the bathroom.
He returns to the sliding glass door, unlocks it, and steps out to look around. He comes back in and locks it again.
“Roman,” I say.
He ignores me and paces back across the room toward the bathroom, then toward me. He goes to the sliding door, looks out, then walks away again, allbut vanishing into the darkness of the room. He’s making harsh sounds. His hands, when he’s visible to me, are fisted at his sides. I haven’t seen him like this since our captivity, and I think that’s where his mind is, at least partially.
I didn’t see the fight, but I could hear some of it, even from the roof. I’m sure it was ugly. I know what Roman’s capable of. Besides, from the roof, I saw him arrive, how fast he was driving, how panicked he was.
I also saw how he was moving toward Vitali in the sitting room. It was dark, but Roman should have known Vitali’s voice. Thank god he knew mine.
Thank god Sasha and I had already come down from the fortified platform build into the roof. I’d been up there several times already with Quinn, running through security protocols. I knew what to do, and I knew how to get to each of the ladders if need be. But Roman arrived, then Vitali and Quinn, and all Sasha and I had to do was wait for Quinn’s all-clear.
I’m glad Quinn knew not to keep me away from Roman, and I’m glad that Roman is too worried about protecting me to leave this room. I need him to stay with me. I need him tobewith me.
