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A beat. Then he digs his heels into the dirt-caked floor, scraping his chair backward and out of my reach. “Please, let this be some sort of sick joke.”
“I wish it was, Mak.”
Bracing myself, I lift my gaze to his. His bloodied lip is curled back in a snarl. In all the years we’ve known each other, I’ve never seen him so angry. He spits a mouthful of blood and venom onto the floor next to me, then pins me with the coldest stare I’ve ever been subjected to. “How. Could. You?”
Donnacha emerges from the shadows, making me flinch. He makes a beeline for Mak, and I leap back on my feet to try to block whatever blow the Devil is about to deal to my best friend.
It doesn’t come. Instead, he comes to a stop a few feet away and slips his hands into his pockets. “It sounds like you hate Belsky more than I do.”
Without tearing his glare from me, Mak jerks his chin up. “Look at my fucking scar, man. Nobody hates Belsky as much as I do.” His anger seeps from every pore, flowing faster and hotter the more he looks at me. “I have this scar because of you, Romy. Because I protected you. And when the pustosh’ closed down, he made sure that not a single Vulture in the entire city would take me on as a six.” He yanks at his cuffs, making the chains scrape against the metal of the chair. “Tell me—why did I risk my life and any chance of a career to protect you, when you let him get to you anyway?” His jaw hardens, and he takes a deep breath. When he speaks again, his voice is losing its fight against his fury. “Did he get what he wanted from you? What he came for that night?”
I grit my teeth, tears splattering on the concrete floor from shaking my head so violently. “Stop, please—”
He interrupts me with a bitter laugh. “He did. I know because you’ve never been able to lie to me. Or so I thought.” Dragging his rage from me, he glares up at Donnacha, who’s been so quiet that for a moment, I forgot he was even in the room. “Kill me, I don’t care. I’m tired of living this shit life, anyway.” Tugging his forearms against his cuffs, he adds, “All I ask is that you let me kill Belsky first.”
Mak’s heavy breathing and my labored sobs are the only sounds in the thick, dusty silence between us. Eventually, Donnacha cuts through it.
“Enough. Boys, take him upstairs.”
With all that I have left, I race after them. I might not have my pocketknife or a gun or even anything remotely sharp, but nothing will stop me from fighting for my best friend. But before I reach them, Donnacha steps in my path, wrapping his arms around me. Not in the way that he used to—hell, that seems so long ago now—but to restrain me.
“Please,” I sob, beating on his chest. Despite everything he’s taking from me, I have to fight the urge to melt into his shirt and beg him to wind his fingers into my hair like he usually does. I hate what he’s doing, but I hate what I’ve done to him more.
When he looks down at me, the hurt is smeared over his handsome face like a haunting oil painting. He lets me go. His fingers twitch toward my face like he’s going to graze his thumb pad over my bottom lip or trace his knuckles along my jaw.
Instead, the lines in his brow deepen, and he mutters, “Wanna know the most fucked-up part about all of this? You were in the position to take down the entire Quinn empire. Kill me, drive my family out of town. Yet I still don’t know whether I want to kill you or kiss you.”
He steals a glance at my lips, shakes his head, and plunges me back into the darkness.
Where I belong.
