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I finish my coffee, trying to work this out in my head. Not only will I need to make sure West heads up the investigation, but I also need to pay off a coroner to say the body is actually hers. Tor will need to dye her hair and cut it. Then I have to figure out how to get her out of this damn state. Like I need any extra bullshit to deal with these days.
I go into the kitchen, dump more coffee grounds into the filter, and then hit the brew button. While I’m waiting, the buzzer to the back door sounds through the intercom. I go to the closed door at the back of the kitchen and look through the peephole. One of my guys stands on the other side with a sick grin on his face. I undo the latch and the balmy morning heat wraps around me just before the anger does. “Found him over at the quarry.” The guy kicks at Bob, who lies beside his boots on the deck, hands and feet bound together and duct-tape over his mouth.
Tor’s words from the other night echo through my head: He was going to rape me… I yank Bob up by his shirt, wanting nothing more than to bust his skull wide open. I dismiss my guy and drag Bob inside the kitchen. He twists and jerks in my hold, mumbling something underneath the tape. I don’t care for his excuses. There are none I’ll accept. He took Tor, cut her, God knows where and how he touched her naked body… My anger billows into a blazing fire.
“Thought you’d get away, you piece of shit?” I throw him to the floor, then press my boot over his throat, wanting his eyes to bulge out of his damn skull.
The lines of his face pull and tug against the tape as he attempts to plead like the pathetic bastard he is.
He touched her. He hurt her. And now I have the son of a bitch right here… It’s that thought that calms the unbridled rage flowing through my veins. Vengeance is a baptism of peace, like the silence of the woods during a first snowfall, and I can’t decide whether making him suffer or just blowing his brains clean out is the better option.
I place more weight on my heel, sending Bob’s bound legs jerking. “You fucked with something that is mine, Bob. That never ends well.”
And the fact that I just called her mine is not going to end well for me...
14
Victoria
I lie awake in Jude’s empty bed, listening to the morning song of the birds outside the window. Every time I closed my eyes last night, I found myself fantasizing about Jude’s possessive hold. I kept replaying the scrape of his teeth at my throat, the way his hot breath danced over my skin. Although my rational mind knows he’s the worst of bad ideas, I’ve never felt so alive as I did with the sweet threat of his breath on my neck.
Yep. I’m losing it.
The aroma of fresh coffee wafts under the door, and I get up, attempting to wash the lack of sleep from my face before I go downstairs. Walking down these stairs in one of Jude’s T-shirts shouldn’t feel so normal. I shouldn’t find myself hoping he’ll still be at the table, drinking coffee. I shouldn’t want to be around him or like it when he touches me. Everything about the shift in our relationship is wrong, but there’s nothing I can do to change it. It feels too unstoppable, like a hurricane far out at sea. I can see the warnings, but there’s nothing I can do to keep from getting swept up in its winds.
Muffled voices drift down the hall from the kitchen, and the moment I step through the doorway, I stop. A dirtied man with bound legs and hands lies on the kitchen floor, Jude’s boot over his throat. It takes me a moment to recognize him, but as soon as I do, a heady mixture of anger and disgust crawls over me like a swarm of insects.
Jude glances over his shoulder and removes his foot from the man’s neck when his gaze lands on me. He opens the drawer behind him and takes out a butcher knife, then offers it to me. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” I ask.
“Will you ever forget what he did to you?” Jude grabs my hand, pries my fist open, and wraps my fingers around the handle of the knife. “An eye for an eye is the simplest form of retribution for a goddamn reason.”
Yes, the man did vile, awful things to me, and yes, I hate him with every fiber of my being, but even with that, I can’t kill someone in cold blood. “I’m not a monster, Jude.”
