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I close my eyes at the last minute, and air whips over my face.
I wait for the stabbing sensation into my cheekbone or my eye, but it doesn’t come.
I open my eyes to see another blade flying my way, but Micah blocks this one too.
This time not with his blade, but with his body.
His shoulder blocks my vision, a groan escaping his chest.
Realization hits immediately.
Romano’s knife pierced his flesh.
I scream and scramble to my feet, gripping his arm to see the wound. But Romano doesn’t waste any time before he lunges at us, causing Micah to shove me out of the way with his bad arm, his black shirt turning even darker from the wetness spreading around the knife embedded in his shoulder. My back hits a wall the moment Romano’s collides with Micah, and the coffee table splinters under them.
I watch desperately as they grapple with each other among pieces of destroyed wood, nauseated as Romano overpowers Micah, and realizing this is the only way he could have gained advantage. By distracting him, weakening him, even if only for a moment. And I was his soft spot.
Carlton Wilde’s warnings come back to me like merciless vipers. He always told Micah and me that we were a bad idea. Every glance he ever gave me was filled with reproach. It enraged me at first, because it wasn’t like I had a choice. Micah all but took me against my will. But pretending like I didn’t want Micah to fall for me would be a blatant lie. His desire for me turned me on, and I couldn’t get enough of it. Deep down I knew that a King wasn’t supposed to have feelings if he was to stay efficient, and now I understand why.
Kings are up against men as merciless, murderous and powerful as them. They can’t afford any soft spots, or their enemies are bound to exploit them. That’s why they are put through hell as children, or are chosen from the most damaged and most hardened people. Which is why it shouldn’t surprise me now to see Micah overpower Romano, and roll over him on the floor, their legs kicking Rufus’ corpse. Pinning Romano down with one knee on his chest, Micah rams his fists into his face with a violence that should be impossible for someone with a knife sticking out of his shoulder.
Romano meets every blow with a bloodied grin, not even trying to punch back. When Micah stops, he spurs him on.
“Come on,” he growls. “Finish it. You’ve wanted this your whole life, you fantasized about it even more than you ever did about cunt.” He pauses, giving me a vile glance. “Except maybe hers.”
Micah pummels down on him, but he laughs like a man on the nastiest drugs and, when Micah stops, he goes on defying him. “I could have forced my dick down her throat that night in my car. If I knew you were there, I would have done it, just to know you were watching.”
“Motherfucker.” Micah’s fist slams into his face, this time so hard that I expect Romano’s brains to spill all over the floor. But while Micah’s blows could rival the force of iron hammers, and Romano’s face is visibly swelling from the abuse of his knuckles and the metal rings on his fingers, the pain doesn’t seem to lessen his thirst.
On the contrary. When Micah’s blows cease to fall, he lifts his head off the floor, his eyes shining like those of a masochistic beast.
“Is her pussy really that good? Is she worth the heat?”
I flinch as Micah lifts his deadly fist to hit him yet again, but this time it remains suspended in the air. The knife is still buried hilt-deep in his shoulder while the look on his face matches the grinning devil on his back. Yet his skin is turning paler by the second. He looks like a man possessed, because nothing except for power from the underworld could give him this kind of resilience to pain. He overpowered Romano and pounded him through the pain, as if it didn’t impair him in the least, even if the paleness of his face tells a different story.
“Go ahead,” Romano pushes through his teeth. “Beat me to death. Bloodlust has been running through your veins since the day you were born. In fact, you’re the most gifted killer I know. Thinking back on it, of the five men that fucked your mother that night, two were former convicts. One of them had escaped death row for being rich, powerful and obscenely well-connected. Maybe you’re his son.”
“Are you crazy?” I shriek. “Stop doing this to him! Stop provoking him!”
Romano bursts into laughter, but doesn’t even glance at me at this time. He keeps his eyes on Micah until his laughter turns into a spluttering cough.
“Your lover is beyond provocation, Eva,” he grunts, spitting blood to the side while Micah pins him down. He’s calm, but that only means he’s crazy unpredictable. “He knows exactly what he needs to do if he wants his mother to live. She may have been a filthy whore, but she’s still his mother.”
The words shoot out of me like arrows. “Don’t you dare call her a whore! Everybody knows you’re the one who destroyed her life. Ever since you had her lover killed, Sade’s father, and forced her to marry you. Nothing she did was ever her choice, except the booze and the pills that helped her put up with her life.” I’m heaving when I’m done talking, a heavy pain in my chest, but Romano only chuckles.
“Oh, Professor, how disappointing of you to put the actions of an adult woman on someone else. You should know better than anyone that we are all responsible for our own actions.”
“Exactly,” Micah says, his voice measured and treacherous like the ocean at night. “You twisted her arm into marriage. You forced her to have sex with the men you brought to her. You locked her up in a place where no one could find her. Today is payday for all of that.”
“Careful, Micah,” Romano warns. “If I go, so does every chance of anyone ever finding your mother again.”
Fire surges in my chest, my palms sweating. Should I do it? Should I just blurt out the truth? But I have no doubt that Romano will pull the Joker out of his sleeve and kill us all here and now somehow, using some secret weapon, making it impossible for Sade to ever find her—if he even survives this night.
“Mother has been in that place for decades,” Micah says, dangerously calm. “You managed to keep her hidden all this time, so I’m starting to see we won’t find her while you’re alive either. So, whether you live or you die, it still won’t make a difference.” He slowly picks up a piece of splintered wood off the floor, and holds it close to Romano’s neck. “So I might as well kill you right now.”
“You make a good argument.” Romano’s voice is steady, uncertainty barely audible in his tone. “But then, what’s to stop me from blowing us up right here, right now?” Slowly, he brings his hand up between him and Micah and, between his fingers, I recognize the explosive device.
While Micah pummeled him, he retrieved the thing from his discarded suit jacket that’s lying on the floor between them and Rufus’ corpse.
