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This isn’t either.
McKenna, that piece of shit, straight-up tortured him.
I slap his face a few times and get nothing, then quickly cut through his bindings, catching him when his body lists to the side.
He’s completely out, and I drop the trench knife so I can lower him to the floor… then grit my teeth to hold in my rage when my arms come back covered in his blood.
But I’ve seen worse. Dante’s breathing. That’s enough.
And if I’m lucky, the chaos upstairs will have masked the sound of me taking out the guards here, because Dante’s no fucking lightweight. It’s gonna take some work to get him out of here if he can’t do it under his own steam.
I’m not that fucking lucky.
I whirl around when I hear someone burst into the room behind me, reaching for my weapon a second too late. It’s McKenna, a gun already leveled at my head and pure fury distorting his face.
“The fuck? Maddoc Gray… you’re supposed to be fucking dead.Hesaid you were.”
He’s practically spitting with rage, and when his attention veers to Dante for a second, the rage intensifying as if he actually thought my brother would break under torture, I move.
McKenna moves faster, jerking the gun back up and freezing me in my tracks when he clicks the safety off. “No,” he says, a manic gleam appearing in his eyes. “I am fuckingsickof this shit. I’m going to rule Halston. You fucking Reapers have been standing in my way, but once you’re totally stamped out, the city is mine.”
“It’s never gonna happen,” I growl, adrenaline surging through me as I balance on the balls of my feet, ready for an opening. All my senses are focused on the bastard, alert to every twitch, every breath, as I watch for it.
“It’s already happening,” he sneers. “And it starts right here.”
He starts to curl his trigger finger, and I bum rush him, ducking low to avoid the bullet and catching him off guard enough that I’m able to knock the gun away. He twists like a fucking eel, cursing up a storm as we grapple.
“I took your woman,” he spits as he drives his elbow into my gut. “I’ll take fucking everything.”
“You didn’t… take… the woman who matters,” I grunt, head butting him hard enough to get the upper hand for a moment.
McKenna fights just as dirty as his men do, but I grew up sucking at the teat of Halston’s criminal underground. Pain and violence are in my blood, and I don’t just fight dirty. I fight to fucking win.
I put McKenna in a headlock, my muscles straining as I try for an angle that will let me snap his neck.
“It’s fucking over,” I growl as he jerks against me, thrashing to get free. Grabbing for my arms like he thinks he has a fucking chance in hell of breaking loose after what he’s done to my family.
I forget about my fucking finger, though.
McKenna doesn’t. Instead of trying to yank my arms away, he goes right for my hand, driving his thumb into the partially healed stump, then using the shock of pain to twist around and gain the upper hand.
“You sacrificed this for nothing,” he hisses, digging his blunt nails into the stump as he pins me down. “I’m still going to win. I’m going to take you apart, piece by fucking piece. Your finger was just the first. And once I’m done with you, I’ll do the same thing to the Reapers.”
“The fuck you will,” I grit out.
His knee is in the center of my back, my arm twisted behind me as he rants.
“You’re already dead,” he says, lunging for his gun.
I buck hard, managing to keep him away from it even though it means he slams me back against the concrete, sticky and rank with mingled Reaper and West Point blood.
I grunt, reaching deep to block out the pain, and try to throw him off me again.
I fail, but when McKenna grinds my cheek into the rough concrete, I realize that my brother is awake.
Dante lies where I left him, his face swollen from the beating but his eyes cracked open now as he groggily tracks the fight. I hold his gaze, willing him to push through the disorientation a beating like that will have left him with. He blinks slowly, his breath quickening when he finally manages to focus on me.
I flick my eyes toward the trench knife I dropped near him, and the twitch I see as he readies himself is all the confirmation I need.
