Vengeance (Master's Protege 1)

I press the knife harder, drawing more blood.

“Jesus! Go!” he says in a strangled voice, stepping aside and handing me a set of keys. “Her key’s the purple one, 208.”

I toss him to Joe. “You escort him out of here and make sure he doesn’t cause trouble.”

Joe’s grin is chilling, even to me. “My pleasure.”

I take the stairs two at a time, listening. Something crashes inside her apartment. I double-time it.

She’s got a deadbolt on the door, and I can’t open it. It’s reinforced steel, no goddamn way I can knock it down. I grab the key and shove it in the lock, then unfasten the deadbolt. The door falls open. I enter, Ruger in hand, and kick the door shut behind me.

My gaze slashes across her kitchen. Nothing.

Living room. Nothing.

Goddamn it, if I find her asleep in bed after all this—

I hear a scream and a growl, and I take off at a run down the hall. I try the door to her bedroom and find that locked, too. Too many keys on this goddamn key ring to find the right one, but this door’s a basic wooden one.

I come at it full force, my shoulder slamming into it. Once. Twice. On the third hit, I knock it down, and it splinters like kindling. Violet turns to look at me, a pink handprint across her cheek and blood streaming down the side of her face. The hand holding her knife shakes. A curtain on her window flutters in the breeze.

“He got away!”

No.

I’ll kill him.

Her voice quakes, her hand’s trembling. I fight the need to hold her, to make sure she’s okay, that she isn’t hurt worse than it looks, but I can’t let the fucker get away. I move past her and crane my neck out the window, just in time to see red brake lights on a small Mazda as it peels around the corner.

“Motherfucker. Did you see him?”

She nods, her eyes filling with tears, and she swipes them angrily away. “I did. It’s the guy I found tonight in my search, the same goddamn guy they suspect for all those crimes but haven’t been able to prove.”

Okay, alright. She’ll come back to my place, and we’ll clean her up and find out what she knows. Who he is. We’ll make sure she’s okay.

“You’re not safe here.”

She winces. When she blinks, a tear rolls down her cheek, mingling with the blood. Fuck. “I had him. I fucking had him,” she says.

“Are you hurt?”

“No,” she says, vibrating with anger. “I’m furious.”

It’s anger, then, that makes her cry.

She could be in shock. She could be injured. We’ve got more evidence now so we can track him down and find him, but first I have to make sure she’s okay.

“Sit down.”

She looks from me to the window, then back again. With effort, I gentle my voice. “Sit. Please.”

It kills me to see those eyes of hers filled with tears. She cries, letting the tears go unchecked, and finally sits down. I don’t realize until I kneel in front of her that I’m shaking.

“Oh God, you’ve got… you came in with a knife and a gun?”

I look down to see my Ruger in one hand and my MK3 in the other. I lay them down.

“Yeah, I have a tendency to overdo shit,” I say, just to calm her down. If the motherfucker was in front of me now, I would wish I had more than this on me. “You alright? Do you need immediate medical attention?”

She stretches for a tissue from her bedside table but doesn’t quite reach it. I hand her one silently.

“No, I’m okay.” She continues to swipe angrily at the tears.

I want to kiss her, blood and sweat and tears and all. I want to haul her up into my arms and carry her away from this shitty apartment, bring her to my place, and treat her to the lap of luxury. I want her body to soften underneath me, to yield to everything and anything I want to do to her. But I can’t do that to her. I can’t do that for her. She’s the type of woman who’d feel belittled if I treated her that way.

We’ll get there.

I need to make her feel safe. I need her to trust me.

“Alright, woman.” I reach for the box of tissues and place it beside her. “Tell me everything.”

Chapter 10

Violet

* * *

I’m so angry with myself I could cry. Hell, I realize when I swipe my hand across my eyes and find my fingers covered in blood and tears… I am crying.

Arrggh. I do not cry.

The only time I do cry is when my anger doesn’t have an outlet. I ball up the tissues he hands me, desperate for some sort of release.

He’s gone off to the bathroom to fetch a first aid kit and returns with a frown and the tiny plastic generic kit I got at a discount store. “You call this a first aid kit?”