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Holy shit.
The roar wasn’t Rocco.
It was Alistair.
He slams into Rocco, sending him backward over a chair before lunging at him. His fists slam Rocco’s face over and over before the thug manages to kick him away. He lurches at Alistair, whipping out a vicious looking blade that has me screaming and scanning the loft for a weapon of some kind.
My eyes land on the poker in its little stand next to the fireplace.
That’ll work.
I rush over to grab it. When I turn back, I go still.
Alistair is straddling Rocco, the knife knocked to the side, punching him again and again and again. Blood splatters from his fists, and the dull wet thuds of meat being pulverized fill the room.
Abruptly, mid-swing, he stops.
We’re both silent. Alistair stares down at the totally still body. His bloodied fists drop, and he turns to stare at me.
“Alistair…Are you okay?”
He shakes his head grimly, standing and wiping his hands on his shirt. Then he glances down at the carnage on his clothes.
“Fuck.”
27
ALISTAIR
“Thanks for coming.”
Kratos nods, planting a heavy hand on my shoulder. “All good.” His dark brows furrow deeply. “You okay?”
I nod. “I’m fine.”
He glances past me, gesturing with his chin up to my open bedroom door, where Eloise is.
“She okay?”
“She will be.”
We both turn and glance at the rug he brought over, which is now wrapped around a tarp, which in turn is wrapped around Rocco’s body.
Kratos glances to me. “That your first…time?”
He means first kill. The answer is yes. I’ve hit men. I’ve seriously fucked people up, and sent them to the hospital, but that’s the first life I’ve taken.
I feel nothing.
Not a poetic “gnawing cold of nothing”, I mean I literally don’t feel anything remotely approaching guilt, or shame, or any kind of “bad” for killing that piece of shit.
All I know is I’d do it again in a heartbeat to anyone who laid a hand on Eloise.
“You got anything to drink around here?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
Kratos follows me into the kitchen, where I yank a bottle of whiskey out from behind the cereal boxes on a shelf above the fridge. Yes, I hid it from Eloise. Sue me.
