Page 233 of Red Marked

“Let’s talk this through.” My hands stay up. He’s got that edge so tight against her that the knife is cutting into her. “No one has to find out anything. Nobody needs to know.”

“You want to talk.” He laughs, and it’s an ugly sound. “There’s nothing to say.” He shakes his head. “I have to kill the love of my life.”

Then he starts to cry. Tears run down his face and drip off his chin onto her shoulder, and the knife doesn’t move.

Holy shit!

I can’t!

He’s fucking pathetic.

“If you kill her, I’ll kill you,” I say slowly. “You need to understand that, Jett. Star is a shifter. She might survive a cut. You won’t survive me. Is that what you want?”

“I’d have a chance, though.” He sniffs hard. “If you walk out of here, I’m done. I can’t let you leave. I won’t. The only chance I have is if I kill⁠—”

“Don’t. Don’t say it.” Careful now. “You don’t have to kill Star. I’m not going anywhere. But if you hurt her, I will kill you, and you need to hear me on that. It isn’t an idle threat. I’m trained in hand-to-hand combat. It’s what I do. I’ve killed before, and I’ll do it again, and I won’t lose a minute’s sleep over you.”

He cries harder. Snot drips from his nose.

“Here’s what we can do,” I say.

“I’m listening.” He wipes his nose on his shoulder. “It had better be good.”

“You think you’ve got two choices. One, I walk out and expose you. You run, and you get caught.”

“If you leave here, I will kill her.”

“Noted. Hear me out. Two, you kill Star, then you try to kill me, and you die on this floor. Both of those options have shit outcomes for you. You lose either way.” I keep my eyes on his. “There’s a third option. I take a knife, and I kill myself.”

Star whimpers. Her eyes go wide.

“You get a clean-up team. It’ll be like I was never here.”

“You wouldn’t kill yourself.” He narrows his eyes.

“No!” Star whispers.

“Quiet!” The knife digs in.

“To save Star? I would.” I nod at the block on the counter. “I’ll walk over there. I’ll take a knife out and I’ll⁠—”

I turn as I say it. I point.

And Jett breathes out. His shoulders drop an inch. The blade comes off Star’s throat by half an inch.

Star shifts, and her head hits the ceiling. She doesn’t finish her shift. Plaster rains down in a sheet. Jett is shoved away. He hits the side of the island and drops. The knife spins across the floor and stops against the leg of a stool.

I’m on him before he’s finished falling.

I don’t shift. I don’t want scales for this. I want my hands.

The first punch breaks his nose with a satisfying crunch.

He starts yelling.

The second opens his lip, the third puts the back of his head into the floor, and after that I stop counting. He stops screaming because he’s dazed.

I’ve got a fistful of his hair, and I’m using it to hold his face where I can hit it. Blood on my knuckles. Blood on the floor. His hands come up, and I knock them down, and I hit him again. One eye is already closing. His cheek is the wrong shape.