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My blood freezes, my pulse thunders in my ears. Arm straight, elbow locked, grip firm, and not caring anymore about collateral damage, I pull the trigger.
The bullet shoots clean through his head, in one side and out the other. He crumples into a heap. Layla coughs, touching her neck and the red marks in the shape of fingers there. Her gaze shoots to me, and a single arch of my brow is like waving a red flag in front of her.
Still choking, she straightens and throws herself at Jade.
The woman doesn’t even have time to grab for her gun. She uses her bare hands on the club owner, from an uppercut to a right hook to a scratch of her nails across Jade’s eyes. One of them is roaring, the sound a furious meld of rage and inevitability.
Layla lifts her knee and slams it into Jade’s hip. Jade isn’t going to go down without a fight, though. Layla swings a punch and slams her knuckles into Jade’s nose. The older woman’s head snaps back before she retaliates and swipes at the detective’s ribs, right where I’d punched her. Layla yelps, clutching the area.
Her injuries are too great for this fight to last, and while she claws at Jade’s face, leaving marks, nothing she does is going to be good enough in the end.
And despite all sense, a wave of pride wells up and crashes over me.
Because damn it, Layla is nothing if not a fucking badass and there is not a thing I won’t do to save her. Even if she hates me for it later. She’ll kill herself to take Jade down. I’ve got a better plan.
I grab Jade and wrench her arms behind her back.
“My knight in shining armor?” Her voice slurs and blood drips from her broken nose. Her eyes spit poison at me. “Or are you one of the good guys now,Thor?”
“You’ll figure it out when you go straight to hell where you belong. Enjoy the trip.”
Jade laughs. “I suppose you’ll send me there.”
I shake my head. “Not me.”
The barest glance at Layla, and this time she’s coherent enough to get it. Her wicked smile is a thing of beauty and her eyes light with fire. Well, the one good eye that’s still open, at any rate. The other one has already started to swell shut.
She slams her first into Jade’s gut, pivoting her hip to send the full weight of her body into the hit.
I let her get a few good hits in, but as Layla reaches for her gun, I knock Jade out, catching her before she crashes into the desk.
Much to my surprise…Layla levels the gun at me, completely sober.
“Step back and let me kill her,” she demands.
“No. You’ll never forgive yourself if you do,” I tell her.
“She killed my father. She’s behind everything. Didn’t you hear?” Her lower lip trembles and she bites down viciously on it. Rather than give in to the meaning behind the tremble, she grins at me. An unnerving grin like the first glimmer of moonlight on the business end of my knife.
“I heard enough,” I admit. My heart aches for Sinclair and everything she’s been through. For the family she never had and the shit circumstances she endured. Just like me.
She’s too much like me and maybe that’s the crux of the matter. If anyone should make it out of this, I’m bound and determined it shall be her.
“I can’t let you kill her,” I say firmly.
Layla bares her teeth at me. “She killed Taney. She’s a murderer. All those women, my father… I want her topay.”
“Do you trust me?”
I’m breathing heavily, waiting for her to answer, surprised when she doesn’t slam me with an automatic negative.
“I want to.”
Jade’s body drops between us, a physical barrier that we would have to step over to get to each other. Neither of us moves.
“She deserves worse than a bullet and we both know it,” I say. “I can’t tell you what will come, but let me handle her and I’ll make sure she get what she deserves.”
“You just had to come through. After everything.” She’s at her breaking point and trying not to let me see it, but I know her.
