The second we step out of the shadows and into the illumination of the clearing, hell erupts. The two men on my side scramble, their weapons tracking toward my chest, but they don’t have the same reason to fight that I do. Before the first guy can even level his sight, my blade sails through the air in a silver blur. It hits him dead in the shoulder of his shooting arm with a sickening thunk, severing muscle and forcing him to instantlydrop his weapon as he screams. He’ll survive long enough for questioning, I’m sure.
The other one? Well, he looks like someone I can have a whole lot of dark fun with.
“Where the fuck is she?” I growl, slowly approaching him with the ball-peen hammer held loose in my right hand.
The bastard tries to mask his terror, a smug, ugly sneer twisting his mouth as his finger caresses the trigger of his handgun. “Where she belongs.”
I purse my lips, tilting my head to the side as I track his stance. “That so?” I casually twirl the hammer in my grip, lifting a brow when his eyes frantically bounce between the weapon and my face. “Seems like someone has seriously misinformed you about how this shit works. And well, unlucky for you, now you’re gonna have to pay for that.”
“With that little thing?” he nods toward the hammer, attempting a brave front as he shifts his weight to seek out his partner for backup.
The remaining color instantly drains from his skin when his perimeter sweep reveals that the only people left standing in this clearing are my men. My officers. My motherfucking family. Basilisk has already neutralized his targets, and the rest of my men are closing the circle.
I let out a dark, mocking laugh, taking another step closer. “Sure. Because I guarantee you, motherfucker, I will personally break your goddamn kneecaps before you can take me out with a bullet.”
When you grow up in a childhood always expecting trouble and then transition right into an outlaw lifestyle with the exact same, you learn how to observe people on a microscopic level. You learn their tells. You notice the tiny, involuntary movements that ordinary people would completely miss. The specific way a shoulder twitches right before a man swings a fist. The way ashooter lifts his finger off the guard just a hair before squeezing the trigger. It’s all right there, laying out their next move like a blueprint, if you’re actually paying attention. While this idiot is busy watching the hammer in my hand, I’m reading his entire body.
There it is.
His tongue flicks nervously along his bottom lip, and then that fucking trigger finger lifts a millimeter.
The heavy steel head of my hammer connects violently with his kneecap at the exact same fraction of a second I feel a sudden, sharp lick of fire plow across the meat of my left arm. He lets out a horrific, curdling howl, his body dropping instantly to the dirt. His gun slips from his useless fingers, forgotten as he throws up onto the leaves from the sheer, blinding agony of a shattered joint. I don’t give him a second to breathe before I swing again, the hammer fracturing the bones in his forearm with a loud snap.
I purposefully stay away from his face and head for the moment, needing to draw this out just enough to appease the feral beast writhing under my skin.
Thick tears stream down his pale, pain-filled face as he begins to openly sob, begging me to stop.
“Where is my ol’ lady?” I ask him again, my voice terrifyingly calm.
I don’t really need a coherent answer from this piece of shit. The guy with the knife in his shoulder will give my brothers every shred of information we need to locate them, but no one can ever say I’m not generous with second chances.
“He’s... he’s got her!” he cries, pressing his uninjured hand against his ruined knee.
“Well, no shit, Einstein. Where the hell does he have her at?” I let out a heavy sigh, shaking my head in disgust. “You’re wasting my fucking time.”
This time, I lean into the swing, cracking the blunt end of the hammer directly against his jawbone, then following through into his orbital socket. “That’s for our fallen brother.”
But none of this is enough. It feels too detached. I need to feel his skin break apart under my bare hands to vent the poison in my veins. I shove the bloody hammer into the back waistband of my jeans and swing with my bare fist on the very next hit.
I inhale deeply, the metallic scent of iron filling the air as my knuckles repeatedly find any part of his frame I can reach. When the force of my blows knocks him flat onto his back in the dirt, I follow him down, mounting his chest and never letting up for a single second.
With every single bloody impact, I expel the anger that wants to drown me, beat back the agonizing terror that tries to smother my sanity.
“Enough, brother,” Gavel’s deep, steady voice cuts through the red mist, his heavy fingers wrapping firmly around my shoulder. “Step back. There’s nothing left of him.”
I freeze, my chest heaving as I look down. A dark, vicious satisfaction roots deep around inside my gut at the sight of the pulverized face beneath me. There is absolutely nothing identifying left about the glob of blood, caved-in facial bones, and torn flesh.
For a brief, fleeting second, I can almost hear Marigold whispering in the back of my mind, telling me that I did a good job. Telling me I'm protecting her.
My body suddenly feels strangely heavy, the massive adrenaline crash finally hitting my limbs as I try to climb off the dead man. Gavel maintains a solid grip on the shirt under my kutte, bracing his weight against mine to help me stand upright.
“Need to let Patch check you over,” Gavel says, nodding toward the new group of men who’ve just stepped into the clearing to join us.
“I’m good,” I mutter, shaking my head to clear the remaining red mist. “Need to get Goldie. Now.”
“You’re not going to be much use to her if you bleed out on the asphalt before we even get there. Get patched up.”
“Fine.” I glance down at the unrecognizable dead man at my boots, then wipe a smear of his blood off my knuckle. “Gonna need a cleanup crew out here. The gators just got some new food.”
