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They hurt them.
In ways my mind didn't even want to consider.
"I don't know what you're talking about, man," the guy said as I heard two sets of footsteps moving around, going out toward the front of the house, the other moving around back where we were, going into the garage, down into the basement. "There's no fucking girl here," he added.
"There's no signs of her," Che told me a moment later, as I stood there trying to convince myself not to press my hand over this fucker's windpipe, watch him squirm before his life left his body.
I'd never gloried in torture. That wasn't my thing. But I would enjoy watching the man who took Harmon suffer for a while before I put a bullet in his forehead.
"Let me have a conversation with him," Remy suggested, knuckles cracking as he moved in at my side. "You know how much I like people who pick on anything weaker than them," he added.
He wasn't wrong about that. It wasn't long ago that I'd seen him nearly beat a man to death over a bait kitten meant to be used in a dog fighting ring. Right there in the back of a packed nightclub. Remy, unlike me, had a darkness that he didn't wear on his sleeve. But when he had a reason to wear it, it was an evil fucking look on him.
"Yeah, fine, have fun," I snapped, shoving the guy toward him, listening to him scream for a moment as Remy and McCoy dragged him down the stairs.
"If nothing else, Remy can get the names of his friends out of him," Che reasoned. "And we can hit each of their places to find her."
"She should have been fucking safe with us," I snapped, curling my arm back, and punching forward, my fist going through the soft Sheetrock.
"Yeah," he agreed. "She should have been. But we can't fix that now," he reasoned. "All we can do is find her, get her out of there, and make sure she's safe in the future. Even if that means she shouldn't be with us anymore," he added.
"She's not going any-fucking-where," I snapped, flexing my hand. "She's going to stay right where I can keep an eye on her. I'm not letting her out of my sight again."
"Is that the way of it?" Che asked, head dipping to the side a bit, looking me over as I paced the small kitchen, hands opening and closing, jaw tight enough for a muscle to tick there.
"What are you asking me, Che?" I asked, pausing when I heard a muffled scream from the basement, feeling my lips curl up in response. Remy was wasting no time.
"I'm asking if she is just an innocent woman caught up in our wars. Or if she is your woman being used against us," he clarified, not mincing words.
The question stopped me in my tracks.
Because it was the right one to ask.
It was the one I needed to have the correct answer to.
Because it changed shit.
An innocent woman caught in our problems, that required getting her free, getting her safe, taking care of the threat.
It was dispassionate.
Cut and dry.
But touching a woman who belonged to one of us, that was a different thing entirely. We didn't just need to take care of those who hurt her; we needed to make an example of them. We needed to put the fear of God into the hearts of anyone who would even think about touching a woman who was ours.
That said, you had to be sure, didn't you? She had to be yours in a more permanent way. The whole criminal underbelly needed to see her on the street, and know who she belonged to, know she was off-limits, unless they wanted to have their cocks cut off and shoved down their own throats to choke on.
"She's mine," I decided, the words popping out before I even thought them through.
She was mine?
She was in my bed, sure. In my house. In my kitchen. On my arm in public.
That didn't make her mine, though, did it?
No.
But the burning rage inside? The choking sensation in my throat that felt a fuckuva lot like panic? The way my mind kept wandering, racing to conclusions about what could be happening to her right then, how scared she must have been, if she was calling out for me?
Yeah, that shit felt a lot like she was mine.
As did the way I wanted to charge in, grab her, wrap her up, get her home safe, take her to bed, and never let anything ever fucking touch her again.
I wasn't a possessive man.
I didn't ever feel like I wanted to hold onto and protect a woman, or shelter her away from the world.
So the fact that I wanted to do that with Harmon said something, didn't it?
