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“Then he…” I swallow. “He said we had to consummate the marriage, and he—”
I wrap my arms around myself, and I notice distantly that my breathing is turning sharp and shallow again. My teeth chatter, and I can’t force any more words out.
“It’s okay,” Vic tells me, his voice soft even though his expression is anything but. “You don’t have to say it.”
They can put the pieces together, clearly. They did burst in on Troy on top of me, and he’s made enough threats that they can understand what went on here. At least most of it.
I lower my eyes, suddenly feeling… I don’t know. Still overwhelmed and angry and hurt more than anything else.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Fingers slide under my chin, and when I look up, it’s Malice tipping my face up. His nostrils flare with each breath, and there’s so much rage in his eyes, but I know it’s not directed at me. He’s angryforme instead.
“You don’t have a fucking thing to be sorry for,” he says, his voice a low rasp. Then he steps closer and wraps his arms around me, enveloping me in a tight embrace as he presses his lips to my tangled hair.
I melt against him, because it’s what I’ve wanted to do the whole time I was apart from these men. I wanted to sink into them, to let them make me feel safe. To have them remind me what it feels like to be loved.
We stay like that for a long moment, and Malice doesn’t let go until I do, as if he would’ve held me like that until the end of time if I needed it. But as we separate, his whole expression shifts. Whatever tenderness was there for me is blotted out by the anger and hatred that fills his face as he turns back to Troy.
My onetime captor is sagging against the wall, his head lolling to one side. I didn’t notice before that he’d passed out, but with both of his hands stabbed through, his injured shoulder torqued, and the beating that the three brothers gave him, it’s no wonder.
Malice strides over to him and grabs a fistful of his hair, yanking his head up. Troy moans something incoherent, and Malice smacks him hard across the face.
“Wake the fuck up,” he snarls. “I want you conscious for this.”
Troy blinks a few times as he comes back to himself, pain and fear filling his expression. He finally gets his bleary eyes to focus on Malice, and there’s no trace of that smug superiority from before. Now he just looks terrified, every bit the shitty little coward he’s always been deep down.
“You hurt someone I love,” Malice says, getting in his face. “And now you’re gonna find out what happens to people who do that. It doesn’t end well.”
He pulls his gun from his waistband and shoves it between Troy’s lips. Troy tries to fight against it, gagging and choking and trying to spit the metal barrel out, but it’s no use. His struggle only makes his hands pull harder against the knives stabbed through them, and with each yank, he blubbers with pain.
His eyes are wild with fear, one of them nearly swollen shut, and there are tears at the corners of them, threatening to fall.
Malice’s finger tightens on the trigger, and my pulse skyrockets. Before I can think about what I’m doing, I throw myself forward, stepping between Ransom and Vic.
“Wait!” I stammer out.
Malice hesitates, but I can still see his finger curling around the trigger. I swallow hard, forcing the panicky, shaky feeling aside for a moment. I need my head clear for this.
“Wait,” I say again, my voice stronger this time. “You can’t kill him.”
8
MALICE
Distantly,I know Willow is saying something, but her words barely even register through the haze of red that fills my mind. I’m like a beast in this moment, a demon made of pure fury. A fucking grim reaper with only one purpose on this earth.
To end the man in front of me.
After what he did to Willow, he deserves it. He deserves to die in the most painful way I can fucking think of, to feel every ounce of pain he probably caused her.
My finger wants to keep curling against the trigger. To pull it and splatter this fucker’s brains all over the wall of the prison he kept Willow in.
But I hear her say I can’t kill him, and when she repeats it, her voice taking on a more urgent tone, I jerk my head to the side to look at her, breathing hard. The gun doesn’t move from Troy’s mouth.
I shake my head, practically vibrating with fury. When I speak, my voice is a strained rasp, and the words come out more growled than spoken.
“You can’t stop me from killing him,” I tell her. “You can’t ask me to do that.”
