Chapter 23
Gavril
I charged into the bedroom, horrified to see Naomi naked on the bed and Jon standing before her. Fuck, I was too late.
Jon spun around, and I knocked the gun out of his hand before he had a chance to pull the trigger, tackling him around the waist and sending us both to the ground. The ride from his apartment had been gut-wrenching, and I had steeled myself against what I might find when I arrived, half hoping that Jon had been at least delayed from entering the house.
I had been wrong. The bodies were piling up around this fucker, but my wife wasn’t going to be one of them. I was going to make sure of that.
Jon tried to push me off him, but my fist connected with his jaw, the force bruising my knuckles. “You fucker,” I growled, landing another punch to his nose. “You touched my fucking wife!”
He brought up his hands to deflect my hits, and one did a chop to my side, the breath leaving me only momentarily but still long enough to give him the upper hand. He dumped me off him and I scrambled to my feet, my breathing coming out in a wheeze.
A broken rib, probably, but it was going to take more than that to take me down. “Come on!” I shouted as he dodged my blows. “Fucking coward!”
His leg kicked out and collided with my knee, the leg nearly buckling underneath me. I struggled to stay upright, gripping the back of a chair to regain my balance. “You aren’t so tough,” he taunted, a sneer on his face. “Look at you. What sort of Pakhan are you?”
“The one that will feel your blood on my hands,” I growled, launching myself at him. We fell against the vanity, Naomi’s things clanging to the floor as Jon’s head collided with the mirror hard, cracking it. I wrapped my hands around his neck and squeezed, a hard smile on my face. “You took on the wrong fucking person,” I told him as I applied pressure that would cut off his air. His hands flailed, attempting to grab at my grip, but I didn’t break it.
Unfortunately, all my concentration was on my grip, and I didn’t see his hand finally breaking free, pain exploding in the side he had already attacked as he jabbed me in the ribs. My hands dislodged and he pushed me hard, sending me sprawling into the chair I had used earlier.
“Gavril!” I heard Naomi tearfully call out, fear radiating in that one singular word.
Jon was on me in a minute, his fists raining down on my face as I attempted to block them with moves of my own. I wanted to reach for the knives tucked into my pants, but every time I tried to do so, he got in a hit.
He couldn’t win. I had to get the upper hand now.
Taking a chance, I reached with one of my hands and found a lamp, smashing it over his head to get him to fall off me so I could get to my feet.
The lamp wasn’t that heavy and it barely fazed him, but it was enough for me to scramble to my feet, blood running down my face from the cuts he had opened. “Tired yet?”
Jon rolled his shoulders, spitting blood out onto the carpet. “Fuck, no.”
“I’ve been at your place,” I said, seeing the anger in his eyes. “You are going to go down, you asshole. Those fuckers in prison are going to have a hell of a time with you. Do you know what they do with pigs?”
His nostrils flared, but I kept my eyes on him and not on Naomi, who was still on the bed. I had to keep him thinking about me, about how he wanted to destroy me. She should have run a long time ago.
I was going to tear him limb from limb for even thinking that he could do whatever he had done to Naomi. Putting her in danger, putting our child in danger, was a death sentence. Hell, he wouldn’t make it to prison.
I was going to give him his punishment right here, right now. “Come on,” I beckoned with my hand, a taunting grin on my face. “Show me what you got.”
When he charged me this time, I was ready to take on the brunt of his weight. What I hadn’t anticipated was the knife he pulled out or how the white-hot pain filled my body as he plunged the knife into my gut.
Fuck me.
Jon pulled it out nearly immediately and I gasped as I fell to my knees, feeling the warm gush of blood spreading over my hands. “Too bad,” he murmured as he raised the bloody knife up to attack again. “Looks like I win.”
The gunshot rang in my ears as Jon’s entire body shuddered, and despite the fact that I was spilling my entire blood supply onto the carpet, I laughed as blood started to pour out the small hole in his chest.
Looked like he had underestimated one person in the room.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his eyes glancing back at the bed. A shaking Naomi was at the end of the bed, the gun barrel smoking, and her eyes—fuck, her eyes—were as hard as cut glass.
That was my fucking wife.
Jon made a weak move to reach for her, but his arm fell helplessly by his side and he fell forward, knocking us both to the ground.
I tried to brace for the impact, but the jarring motion only intensified the pain like a thousand hot pokers slicing through my body, and when he hit me, I groaned, tears coming to my eyes hard and fast.