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“You talk too much.” Brax spat out a mouthful of dark red liquid.
Brax Miller. Ex-con with a mile-long rap sheet, balls of steel, and a brain the size of a walnut.
I smiled, then hit him again.
His head snapped back, and a pained groan filled the air.
My bruised knuckles stung. The room jokingly dubbed the Holding Cell in my private security headquarters smelled like copper, sweat, and the thick, cloying scent of fear.
It was two days after the attempted robbery at Lohman & Sons, longer than we’d ever held someone. My police contacts turned a blind eye to my activities because I saved them time and manpower, and I knew when to draw the line. I’d never killed someone.
Yet.
But I was really fucking tempted right now.
“The first hour was for trying to rob one of my stores. The second…” I held out my hand. Giulio placed something cold and heavy in my palm, his face impassive. “Is for threatening my wife.”
My fist closed around the weapon.
I normally let my team handle these unpleasantries. Robbery, vandalism,disrespect.They were unacceptable but impersonal. Nothing more than crimes to be punished and examples to be set in the most brutal and, therefore, effective manner possible. They didn’t require my personal attention.
But this? What Brax did to Vivian?
This was fucking personal.
A fresh tsunami of rage rolled through me when I pictured the piece of shit in front of me pointing a gun at her.
She wasn’t my wife yet, but she was mine.
No onethreatened what was mine.
“So she’s your wife.” Brax coughed, his bravado dented but intact. “I understand why you’re upset. She’s beautiful, though she would’ve been much more beautiful with blood painting that pretty skin of hers.”
His grin was made of mockery and crimson, too stupid to realize his mistake.
Like I said, a brain the size of a walnut.
I put on my brass knuckles, walked over, and yanked his pathetic head back. “I’m not the one who talks too much.”
A second later, a howl of agony ripped through the air.
It did nothing to ease the wrath inside me, and I didn’t stop until the howls stopped altogether.
I left my men to clean up the mess in the Holding Cell.
I’d come close to killing Brax, but the bastard lived, barely. Tomorrow, he and his accomplices would turn themselves in to the police. It was a much more appealing alternative than staying with my team.
The apartment smelled like soup and roasted chicken when I returned home. Greta had been fussing over Vivian since the robbery, which in her world meant plying Vivian with enough food to feed all of midtown Manhattan during lunch hour.
I barely noticed the stinging hot water as I showered off the blood and sweat.
Vivian insisted she was fine, but few people recovered from having a gun pressed to their head that quickly. According to Greta, she was currently taking a nap, and she never napped this late in the day. Or ever, now that I thought about it.
I turned off the water, my thoughts as clouded as the steamed-up mirror.
I’d done my part. I’d punished the perpetrators, personally attended to Brax, and checked on Luca during my ride home from security HQ. He’d bounced back as quickly as I’d expected; the man sailed through life like a Teflon ship.
But he wasn’t the one who’d had a gun in his face.
