“What do you want?!” he yells again, voice ragged, broken between blows.
And then, like a ghost, I hear her voice in my head. “I love you… don’t push me away.” Serena’s brown eyes, red, tear-streaked, flash in my memory. The way she begged me at the club. My chest tightens, rage flooding in hotter than before.
I see red.
I grab him by the collar, slam my knee into his gut again, harder this time. He crumples to the floor with a groan. I kick him in the ribs, his body jerking.
“Fucking do something,” he groans, spitting blood. Pathetic.
He’s nothing. Just the shadow standing between me and her. The solution to everything that’s tearing me apart is lying right here in front of me, bleeding on my basement floor.
I haul him upright and slam him into the chair. His head lolls, but he forces himself to look at me.
“What do you want?” His voice is weaker now, but there’s still that smirk buried underneath the blood and swelling.
I lean in close, my words venom. “You’re gonna call your daddy. And you’re going to tell him you won’t marry Serena anymore.”
I hiss her name like a threat, like a promise.
And then he smirks, smirks through the blood dripping from his mouth.
“So that’s what this is about,” he rasps. “Serena.” His split lip curls into a grin. “I wonder how she’ll feel when she finds out her fiancé was kidnapped and beaten by a brute like you.”
My vision tunnels. My pulse slams in my ears so loud it’s deafening. He thinks he has a say in this. He thinks he matters.
I throw his phone onto his lap. “Make the call.”
My voice is deadly calm. There’s no bluff here. No second chances.
“Why would I do that?” Ian smirks through the blood, his voice taunting, grating. “We’re in love.”
My hand twitches. My vision narrows.
“And after this rough day…” He leans back, deliberately slow, eyes burning with defiance. “…I can’t wait to go home to my fiancée.” He sneers, his lip curling, the word fiancée slicing through me like a blade. “Ask her to ease the tension in my body. Maybe she’ll even moan my na—”
My vision snaps to black.
The ringing in my ears drowns everything out. The last time I felt this way was when my father died. When I lost control in Kirill’s underground ring and beat a man until there was nothing left but a broken, lifeless body at my feet. Lev cheering. Andres silent, his face unreadable. Kirill smiling like a devil who’d just found his new favorite monster.
That monster is back.
Before I even register it, the gun is in my hand.
Bang!
The shot tears through his knee. Blood splatters across the concrete, his scream ripping through the air, raw and desperate. He topples sideways, clutching at the mangled mess of his leg, writhing like a worm on a hook.
The smell of iron fills the room.
The door bursts open and Andres storms in, scanning the scene, his gaze landing on Ian’s crumpled, screaming body. His jaw tightens. His eyes flick to me. Disapproval. Judgment. A silent, you lost control again.
I don’t care.
“I can’t do fucking anything!” Ian screams, his voice high-pitched from pain. “I don’t even want to marry her!” He glares up at me, his face red, wet with sweat and blood.
“Of course you can.” My voice is calm. Deadly calm. “Just call off the wedding.”
“I fucking can’t!” he roars back, clutching his bleeding leg. “Thomas is obsessed with having Serena marry me! My father wanted to cancel it wanted to call the whole thing off when he saw she was always with you, didn’t want to tie me to a slu—”
