Page 83 of Queen of Ruin

That's the best use of my time I could have ever wished for.

Nothing is worth giving her up.

I have nothing worth going back to.

With a sluggish tongue, I gather the blood in my mouth and use the last of my strength to spit it into the man's face with a weak grin.

"Kill me," I croak. "Because my dying breath is the only chance you have of me ever giving her up."

32

VALENTINA

My fist slams into the side of his head so hard that pain lances up my forearm and settles in my elbow. His head snaps back, eyes wide and jaw slack from shock that he’s been sucker punched while enjoying the fruits of his victory at the bar. As he tips back on his stool, he reaches out and grabs the arm of the man beside him. While it stops him from falling, it does cause the other man to stumble and spill his drink.

Alcohol splashes over the arm of a woman who screeches in alarm, which triggers a furious yell from the man next to her. He surges up and punches the man with the spilled drink, sending him back into the bar and then onto the arm of another man who reacts just as violently. Only, when he throws a drunken punch, it misses his target and collides with yet another innocent person.

From there, the entire bar descends into chaos, with yells and screams, glass smashing and alcohol raining down from the ceiling.

I ignore all of it.

Grabbing the collar of the bounty hunter, I drag him off his stool while he’s attempting to steady himself and I punch him again. His nose squishes under my fist and blood spurts down against my wrist while he cries and twists. In his anger, he raises his glass and attempts to smash it against the side of my head, but I duck, grab his shoulder with my other hand, and slam my knee hard into his crotch.

“Valentina!” Bradley’s voice drifts through the chaos, but he’s somewhere behind me and no longer my current concern.

“What the fuck!” The bounty hunter squeaks in pain, torn between blocking my neck punch and clutching his crown jewels that likely ended up in his throat after my blow. “Fucking crazy bitch!”

“Crazy?” I snarl, twisting my torso and slamming my elbow into his jaw. “I’m so sick of people acting like I’m crazy when they’re the ones who have pulled some shit!”

He reels back against the bar, gasping for air through a bloodied nose and a split lip. “It’s ‘cause you are fucking crazy!”

“Where is he?!” I yell, surging forward against him and fisting my hold into his shirt. “You took him and I need to know where the hell you took him!”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

“Yes, you do! You’re a bounty hunter and you just took a massive fucking payday by handing over Diego, so you tell me where the fuck you took him!”

In an instant, his face changes. Gone is the man surprised that he’s getting beaten up in a bar while trying to enjoy a quiet drink. The face of the bounty hunter, the one who likely faced down Diego while carting him off to God knows where, appears with a sneer.

“So that’s what this is about.” He wipes his lip on the back of his hand. “I ain’t tellin’ you shit. The amount they paid me? That’s hush money, bitch. Unless you wanna pay me more?”

I would. I’d give him everything I have to get Diego back, but I’ve no idea how much money I have to my name, if any at all. Bradley never really spoke about whether we get paid or not, and it’s too late to think about it now.

The bounty hunter surges forward suddenly and his fist glances off my jaw. The blow forces my head to the side, but I follow the momentum and turn, throwing my elbow back into the soft part of his gut. He grunts and doubles over while I keep turning and slam my other fist into the side of his head.

The furious crowd surges around us as drunken men and women pour their misplaced anger into strangers with no clear reason as to why they’re even fighting. The surge forces me against the bounty hunter and he gets one hand around my neck while the other sinks into my hair.

I lift my hand to grab his wrist, intent on twisting to break free, but he suddenly sidesteps and uses all his strength to slam my head down onto the bar. My ears ring and my teeth shudder in my gums. He drags me up by the hair and slams his meaty fist into my gut, then suddenly, I’m in the air and his fist vanishes from my hair along with several painful strands.

Someone else has grabbed me and, in an attempt to use me, has lifted me into the air with a grunt, but the drunken idiot doesn’t have the balance to maintain the lift. He stumbles backward, then falls completely when the bounty hunter yells and slams his foot into his knee.

He falls and I’m launched across the bar, past the beer pumps and over the ducking barmaid. My body crashes into all the shelves behind the bar with my head snapping back and cracking so hard against a shelf that my entire vision bursts white.

I fall, hitting the ground hard enough to drag all the air out of my lungs. There’s enough sense left in me to cover my head as all the bottles above are knocked free from impact and rain down on me like gigantic glass hailstones. Bottles smash over me and around me, shards of glass ping and fly in all directions, with some embedding in my arms as I protect my head, and alcohol of all kinds soaks into my clothes and coats the floor around me.

It’s hell, not that many others in the bar have even noticed. They’re all still locked in a brawl trying to kill one another for no real reason.

I tighten my arms around my head, but the cold slices of glass cutting into my skin and the chill splash of liquid around me suddenly fade to the background as the pain at the back of my skull swells.