I took one last look at the scene before me and then made a mad dash for the stairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
He’d beat me upstairs by taking another staircase.
The fucker was always ten steps ahead of me.
I crept down the hall towards their voices, snagging a heavy bronze chalice off a decorative podium.
“You were always my favorite, Romeo.”
What the fuck? I froze just a few doors away from where they were.
“Look at you,” Jonah wheezed. “Your father is so proud of you, my boy.”
Confusion clouded my brain but I didn’t get much time to dwell on his words. The telltale click of a gun had my legs moving on their own accord.
I peeked through a slit in the door and saw Jonah aiming a tiny black gun at Romero. My heart stumbled and sped up. This fraudulent fuck had the balls to point a gun atmybeloved devil.
Before I even realized what I was doing, I had the door flying the rest of the way open. Jonah’s head whipped around and he gaped in what looked like confusion. It gave Romero the small distraction I knew he needed.
He grabbed hold of Jonah’s arm and wrenched in a full circle, bringing the man to his knees. There was a loud crunch, followed by a gunshot.
I moved up behind Jonah and swung the chalice like it was a bat, crashing it into the side of his head. An audible gong sounded from the heavy cup and he fell to the side.
Romero looked at me for a split second before taking over. He flipped an unconscious Jonah onto his stomach and jumped up.
He seemed to be searching the room for something, seeing as it was a study of some sort; I was lost as to what.
His eyes were impossibly dark. I could feel the anger rolling off him in suffocating waves. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the first part of Jonah’s words. There was only one reason why a man like him would have called a younger Romero his favorite.
Sick fucking asshole.
I didn’t say anything. I moved to the corner where a desk was and lowered myself onto it. There were no words I could say to make this okay for him.
“I’m sorry they hurt you too,” just seemed so meaningless, and an apology would never fix us. Whoever said violence isn’t the answer was full of shit.
Violence soothed our demons and gave them a semblance of peace. I sat and watched the man I loved unleash his. There was no doubting that anymore. I didn’t need to know the definition of a word to feel its meaning.
I think I loved him before we met. We’d been together only a moment, but it felt like a thousand lifetimes. Even then, as my brain slid pieces of a puzzle together that made my chest hurt, I still loved him.
Romero was irrefutably deranged and diabolically astute. He was a lethal fucking cocktail that came with a hazardous warning label, and I would die being blissfully inebriated by him.
I watched him strip Jonah of his robes and throw them in the fireplace. He grabbed a lit candle from the candelabra sitting on the mantle and shoved it straight up Jonah’s ass, flame side up.
The act had Jonah screaming himself awake. He never got the chance to move. Romero’s steel toed boot met his side, and something else cracked. Giving the man no time to reciprocate, he grabbed hold of his hair to lift him up. He dragged his heavy body like it weighed nothing to the other side of the room where he grabbed a cross off the wall.
Grimm flew into the room, quickly assessing the scene, falling right into a role he must have played a hundred times. He approached Romero cautiously, like one would a raging bull, taking hold of Jonah by the back of the neck.
Romero relinquished his grip as they shared a look. In one second flat, Jonah was on his back, the movement wedging the candle deeper, tearing the sensitive tissue in his rectum. A trickle of blood ran from between his legs.
Grimm grabbed hold of his upper and lower jaw in a familiar move. His muscles flexed and he pulled as hard as he could.
He kept hold of it as Romero slammed his boot down on Jonah’s chest and the metal cross he’d snatched off the wall in his mouth, forcing it to fit.
They proceeded to tag team him. Jonah’s wide hazel eyes met mine only once.
“You don’t get to look at her, you piece of shit,” Romero growled, sounding like a possessed beast. I thought he’d forgotten I was even in the room.
