Page 391 of Coal Hearts

Was Henri a master in warfare like Victor suspected?

The way he’d attacked those creeps. The typhoon of fists and hurricane of violence.

I could see why Victor was interested.

He’d seemed...inhuman.

“Never.” Henri shrugged. “However, now that you mention it, I used to watch quite a few matches on YouTube when I wasn’t working at the bar. MMA has always interested me. Brutal sport. Maybe I picked up a few tricks that way?”

“Perhaps,” Victor muttered, all while looking highly doubtful. “From the accounts of my battlement guards, it sounds as if you turned into a death machine.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.” Victor smiled thinly. “It’s got me thinking...”

Henri finally stopped touching me and placed his hands on his lap. “Thinking about what exactly?”

Victor just tapped his nose.

“Am I in trouble, then?” Henri raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you’ve been MIA for three days?”

“Trouble?” Victor blinked away his thoughts. “Frankly, you’re always in trouble, Mercer. And no, I had other urgent business come up.” He sighed. “To be honest, if your last name wasn’t Mercer and I didn’t get such a kick out of befriending my enemy’s brother, I think I would’ve tossed you in the sea by now.”

Henri chuckled.

Chuckled!

As if Victor—one of the most unpredictable, menacing men I’d ever met—just made a joke.

“Ah, come now, Vic.” He smirked, the bruise on his freshly shaved jaw from someone’s punch slightly green in the sun. “You’d miss me far too much.”

Victor’s mouth twitched. “And there is the crux of my little problem.”

“Your problem being that you like me?”

Victor huffed. “Strong word.”

“So...did I kill them?” Henri asked warily. “You said if I killed them, we’d be having another conversation. Is this another conversation?”

Biting into a strawberry puff pastry, Victor pouted as if he honestly didn’t know if he enjoyed Henri’s company or wanted to choke him with his danish. “A friend of mine at the local hospital called yesterday. Daxton passed away, but Roger is stable. However, he’ll never walk again, seeing as you snapped his neck.”

Henri leaned back with a scowl. “Isn’t a broken neck usually a death sentence?”

“Not if the spinal cord isn’t damaged. You were close.” His face darkened. “Lucky for you, you didn’t succeed.”

“But Daxton—the one who hurt Ily...he’s dead. That’s a bonus.”

Victor shot me a black look. “Pronounced deceased at five a.m. that morning.” He pinned Henri with a judgy glower. “Died of a ruptured penis, if you must know. Apparently, whatever trauma you delivered created a hematoma that burst. He bled out before they could operate.”

“Serves him right.” Henri toasted Victor with his coffee. “He shouldn’t have touched her.”

The sun slithered behind a cloud, drenching all of us in shadow.

My skin prickled with goosebumps at the callous way Henri spoke of killing someone. He didn’t exactly rejoice, but he didn’t show any remorse for stealing a life, either.

Did that make him crazy or sane?

Safe or dangerous?