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“No,” Kieran barks. “She watches this.”
Kieran grabs the man by the collar and disappears while Riordan gently steers me in the same direction. After Riordan hands over a wad of cash to a bouncer, I’m dragged down a back-of-house hallway.
We reach a door that’s already open to a dark alley. The air has cooled off like I expected, but I’m still warm. On fire, even, watching Kieran throw the jerk, who tried to molest me, up against the brick wall by the throat.
“How dare you lay a hand on my wife.” Without giving the man a chance to utter a word in his pitiful defense, Kieran smashes his fist into the guy’s face.
The sound of bones breaking should terrify me. What power in my husband’s hands. I’m incredibly turned on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Kieran
Angerfiresthroughme,and it’s the most irrational I’ve felt in years. I’m mostly mad at Isabella, but I would never strike her. Not in a million years. I have other ways to punish her. Which she’ll get a dose of when I get her home.
The worry that coursed through me on the drive to Solo, knowing Isabella was in danger, ate me alive. The emotions for her that I stifled these last few weeks attacked me, fueling the fire, ready to ignite at the first lit match.
The pounding rhythm of my cold heart was the first time it beat for a woman since Norah, and I don’t know what to do with that.
I take it out on this asshole, who more than deserves it.
This prick is just a typical scumbag who has no idea who I am. Manhattan isn’t my turf, and that works in my favor. I can pummel him with little repercussions. To him or anyone watching, I’m just a jealous, possessive husband. And he’s the idiot who touched what was mine.
I smash his face again and again until he’s a bloody pulp and I’ve ruined my tux. “Next time you see a rock that big on a woman, be warned that the man who bought her that ring is never far behind.”
He slumps to the ground, and I kick him until he’s not moving. I step back and push my bloodied hands through my hair, feeling something warm and wet smear across my forehead.
Riordan snickers from a few feet away, impressed that his tux-wearing, business-meeting boss still likes to get down and dirty with scum. In his arms, Isabella stares at me with wide eyes. I hadn’t noticed her tucked against him at first.
Jealously fires through me because I’m already so worked up, but my brother would never betray me.
Fear takes over Isabella’s features, getting a good look at me seething, fists and sleeves covered in blood. She should be afraid. Not of me, but of what I can do. What these stunts of hers will do to other people she drags into her games.
“Now you can put her in my car,” I ground out.
Riordan nods to me, but Isabella breaks away from him. “No!” she screeches.
I worry she’ll run, but she stomps up to me, her eyes brimming with anger. Me? She’s mad at me?
She stares down at the man on the ground. “I told you not to touch me, asshole!” she barks and then kicks the guy.
I stifle a laugh, but I’m still mad at her. Holding her with bloody hands, I say, “Good woman yourself, there, bella.” My grip is near bruising, and I breathe until I have control again. “That means well done,” I clarify when she looks at me likeIjust got kicked in the head and am talking nonsense.
“I—” she starts, but I stop her with a hand on her mouth. Her eyes drop to my chewed-up knuckles.
“Not here.” I tuck her under my arm and signal Riordan to get the hell into the car.
He smoothly slides into the front passenger seat of my Range Rover without a look back at the guy we left wheezing on the ground.
I put Isabella in the back with me and close my own door. I grab her hair with my blood-soaked hands and hover my mouth above hers.
“Do you see what you do to me?” I breathe in the scent of vanilla coming off her. “You’re mine, Isabella. I willkillthe next man who dares to touch my wife.”
Isabella grunts, dealing with the pain of her hair being pulled like a little fucking champ. She clawed at me for weeks to get under my skin. To tear me open. To shred my soul. She forced me to live again.
To feel again.
Now I want her to feel every fucking inch of me. I want to destroy my little virgin wife’s sanity. The Italian mafia princess giving this cunt only to me reinforces my coronation as king.
