Page 70 of Flawed Revenge

Lion didn't think.

Just acted.

No one put their hands on his daughter and kept their hands.

Sprinting down the hall, he flung open the door from which the voices had come, and found a man dressed in black trying to pull his daughter out of the closet. Ariella was fighting him, kicking and scratching, swinging a lampstand, making it difficult for the man to maintain a hold on her. Also making it so that the man’s attention was too focused on trying to keep the child in his grasp that he didn't realize he was no longer the only adult in the room.

By the time the man registered their presence, it was already too late.

Slamming the weapon he’d snagged from one of the guards they’d killed into the side of the man’s head, hard enough to make him cry out and stagger back, releasing Ariella, but not hard enough to knock him out, Lion then shoved him to the floor, pressing his knee into the man’s neck as he ripped his weapon away from him and tossed it to one of the guys.

“Nobody touches my kid and keeps their hands,” he told the squirming man, grinning when fear filled the eyes that stared back at him. “Blade, you grab a knife from any of the men we killed?”

“Course I did,” his friend replied.

“May I borrow it, please?” he asked, holding out his hand.

“Sure thing. Need any help?” Blade asked hopefully as he handed over the knife.

“I get this one since it’s my kid he thought he could hurt, but feel free to take your time with the next one we find,” he replied as he stomped his foot on the man’s arm as he tried to buck him off. “Shouldn’t have put your hands on my daughter,” he told the man as he used the sharp blade to slice through his wrist, severing it completely.

The howls of agony that filled the room were glorious, although they were going to alert anyone nearby that something was going on.

As always, his team had his back. Indigo and Maya had Ariella tucked between them, angled so she couldn’t see anything, and they must have told her to cover her ears because the little girl had her hands pressed to the sides of her head. Cassandra and Whitney standing in front of them, and Voodoo in front of them. Steel, Dragon, Blade, and Thunder had moved to the door, ready to shoot anyone who tried to get to them.

“The other one needs to go as well,” Lion said cheerfully as he adjusted his position so he could reach for the man’s other hand.

Blood loss was already making the guard woozy, and his screams of pain as he stared at the stump where his hand used to be meant he didn't fight back as Lion hacked off the other hand. Then he stood, wrapped his hand around the man’s neck, hauling him up as well, and shoved him up against the closest wall.

“Never touch what doesn’t belong to you,” he snarled, then in one clean sweep sliced through the man’s carotid artery and dropped him on the floor to bleed out, ready to turn his attention to what mattered most. “Come here, Ari-Bear. You dropped your bear,” he murmured, dropping the knife and the gun so he could scoop up the teddy, which had thankfully fallen and tumbled a little so it was just far enough away to have not been covered in blood, then reached for his daughter. Part of him worried that she’d be too scared to let him touch her after she’d just seen him maim and kill someone, especially since he was covered in the man’s blood, but he needn’t have worried.

Ariella threw herself at him, her small body colliding with his, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.

Safe.

His little girl was safe and appeared unharmed.

“Where’s your mom, sweetie?” he asked, hugging his daughter hard.

“We heard someone telling Mrs. Gardner that we were missing, and she told him to find us. He said it would take a long time because there weren't enough of them. Mom told me to stay where I was and not make a sound, so I did. I think Mom went to stop her,” Ariella explained.

The curses that wanted to leave his lips were not rated PG, so he kept them in. While he hated that Kate had gone after River on her own, and there wasn't a single doubt in his mind that’s what she’d done, he also knew that if she’d been there, the guard might have killed her when she tried to protect their daughter, which is what she would do. River Gardner might want to experiment on Ariella, but she didn't really have any use for Kate, making her expendable.

“We came from that way and didn't see them, so they had to have gone that way,” Steel said from the door, pointing down the hall in the opposite direction from the one they’d come from.

Picking his daughter up, Lion pushed the teddy into her arms, then carried her as they all made their way back out into the hall. Two men came running toward them. Tried to shoot at them. Thunder and Dragon shot them easily, and they went searching for his girl.

“Do you know how many guards Mrs. Gardner has?” he asked his daughter.

“Umm, the man said half, that’s fifty percent,” Ariella told him.

“Sure is, Ari-Bear.” Half meant there had been maybe a dozen men there since they’d estimated they’d killed a dozen in the forest. Since leaving the basement, they’d killed at least another ten, which meant there were only a couple left. Lion liked those odds a lot.

They turned corner after corner, quickly clearing rooms, until they heard sounds on the other side of a door.

Please be my girl.

Tucking his daughter’s face against his neck, just in case whatever they saw on the other side was something he didn't want his daughter to have to live with, Lion nodded at Steel, who swung the door open, and the guys all aimed their weapons at whoever was inside.