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I felt this low-level hum fill me as everything else blurred. I slammed the granite ball against the side of the fucker’s head, and when he stumbled back, blood making a trail down his temple from the crack to his skull, I grabbed his wrist, slammed it against the wall, and twisted his arm so his palm was flush with the golden-threaded damask wallpaper. I brought the stone down on the center of his hand so hard I could hear the crack of bone splintering under the force and pushing through the buzz in my head. I slammed it on his hand again and again until all I saw was blood and broken bone, until all I tasted was the coppery tang coating my tongue, until I felt the warmth on my neck and covering my hands.
His mouth was wide, and I could imagine he was screaming right now, but I only heard the rush in my ears. I felt people closing in, but no one touched me, no one stopped me.
I let go of his hand, and he went to grab it with his uninjured one, maybe to cradle the gnarled appendage to his chest. I stopped him by grabbing his thick wrist and proceeded to do the same to that one, using so much force the bone became nothing but splinters and powder.
I let go of him and took a step back, letting the granite ball fall from my grasp. I felt the vibrations travel from my feet up my legs from the impact of it hitting the floor. The bastard fell to his knees and kept his arms close to his chest, his hands unrecognizable for how badly I’d destroyed them.
Now the fucker couldn’t touch any female.
He can’t touch what’s mine.
I found myself looking at Lina, that powerful, heady buzz moving through my body, a high I always felt when the violence took over. She stood beside me with shock reflected on her face.Eyes huge, more white than blue and black. Pink lips parted. Skin so pale she looked like a porcelain doll.
I reached out and smoothed my thumb along her cheek, wiping away the splatter of blood that marred her perfect skin after I broke the fucker’s hands. For her. That blood smeared along her cheek, like a beautifully violent stroke of a brush.
I hadn’t admitted it before, hadn’t let it really grow inside me until this very moment, but as I stared into Lina’s horrified eyes, I knew without a doubt I’d burn Desolation—the entire fucking world—if it meant having her as mine.
Because I’d never let her go, and the look in her eyes told me she realized it too.
11
Galina
“Dasvidaniya.”
That one word replayed over and over again in my head, the word Leonid had said low and mockingly in that thick Russian accent. And he’d watched me the whole time as Arlo led me out of the bar.
I now sat in the passenger seat of a Mercedes that had been parked at the side of the building. My heart was racing so fast and hard that my pulse was a constantthump-thumpin my ears. I stared down at my backpack, not knowing how it was sitting on my lap, not knowing who had gotten it. I’d had it with me when I entered, my clothes stuffed inside when I changed, and as I curled my fingers around the old, stained nylon, all I saw was blood and gore and violence.
“You’ve put Dima out of commission,”Leonid had said with controlled amusement.“You’ll owe me, Arlo. I’ll call, and you’ll come. Remember, I now know your weakness.”He’d said that last part while his gaze locked on me.
“What did he mean?” My voice was surprisingly strong given the fact that I felt as if I was having an out-of-body experience. I wasn’t a stranger to violence. It was all brutal. But what I’d witnessed from Arlo, the way he used that decorative stone ball… it had been unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
He looked completely in his element, calm as he brought it down on that man’s hands over and over again with bone-crushing force and precision. And his face… God, his face had been so void ofanything.
My breath caught in my throat as I kept replaying those images over and over again. And he’d done it because that man had touched me. I knew that as well as I knew I was sitting in his car, letting him take me somewhere unknown.
I hadn’t even put up a fight as he pulled me out of the bar, as he opened the door and all but set me on the leather seat of this car. I let him buckle the seat belt around me, his scent spicy and masculine with dark undertones that filled my nose, washing away the coppery scent of blood that had consumed my senses up until that point.
He didn’t speak, but he didn’t have to, to tell me the answers I needed. I could look at him and know exactly the type of man he was, who he was down to his very soul.
A killer.
Aside from the subtle tightening of his fingers on the steering wheel, his expression was closed off.
I stared at his hands, covered with now-dried blood. I wanted to ask him again what Leonid had meant, even though I could put two and two together. I would have had to be blind to not see that Leonid and Arlo were one and the same. Even worse than the men I’d grown up around in Vegas.
Then why am I not afraid of Arlo? Why do I feel like he’d kill a man to protect me… that he almost did?
“Where are you taking me?”
He stayed silent for so long that I assumed he wouldn’t answer.
“My apartment,” he finally said, and my heart jackknifed in my chest.
Something deep and dark in my body came alive. He cut me a quick glance before focusing on the street again, his fingers tightening once more on the steering wheel.
“If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have to take you to my apartment to do it.” He stated those words so matter-of-factly it was like he’d read my mind. “You’re safe.” A long moment passed before he said so low I almost didn’t hear, “Even from me.”
