“He won’t touch you.” I would kill him with my bare hands. “That’s enough now. You need to get some rest.”
“Stay.” She nuzzled against me. “Please?”
I had a man to kill in the basement, but I supposed it could wait. Giving David some extra quality time with the Russian prick was no skin off my back.
I glanced around at the cartoon cat that stared down at me from the wallpaper and the curtains. “I’m not sure if hanging around in the Hello Kitty palace is really my style.”
She laughed against me, the sound soothing my frayed nerves. “Don’t lie. I know you love it.”
A smile twitched along my lips. “You got me.”
“Believe it.” She sighed and snuggled closer, her breaths becoming slow and steady.
I should have told her that I wasn’t the sort of man you could stake a claim on, but I kept silent as she drifted off into a drug-induced sleep. Spending time with her like this made me feel more human than I had in a long time. Maybe she was right about me changing. I’d hardened in the years we’d been apart, but she managed to bypass the tough outer layers and lodge in my heart. The need to protect her overcame all else.
When David had called and told me there was trouble and Sabrina was involved, I couldn’t get to her fast enough. All those years at school, she’d been safe. But now I’d fucked up by letting her stay at the house. She’d have a target on her back until the shit with the Russians was cleared up. And by “cleared up” I meant, “all the pieces of shit who dared touch her were bleeding out under my goddamn feet.” She was mine to protect from the first moment I saw her, and I wasn’t going to let her down.
The only problem with this plan? She wasn’t a kid anymore. No matter how many times I tried to think of her as the scrawny girl from five years ago, the boner perilously close to her ass said differently. She wasn’t a child; she was a grown woman who would test my severely limited ability to control myself.
My first parole officer had always told me I failed to do the “proper cost/benefit analysis” before committing crimes. I figured what he meant to say was, “you’re an impulsive bastard with outrageous good looks.” Either way, I didn’t have much in the way of self-control when it came to things I wanted. And, at that moment, what I wanted most was sleeping peacefully against my chest. But she was the one thing in my life I hadn’t cocked up. She needed to stay that way. Literally and figuratively.
Only one solution presented itself. I had to end the Russians sooner rather than later. I promised to protect Sabrina, and I would stick to it, even if it meant protecting her from myself. But the sooner she was out of my house, the better. That was something me and my neon blue balls could agree on, for once.
A muffled scream met my ears as I descended the wooden stairs. The cool basement greeted me, the walls made of the same pale stone that rose two stories overhead. With over a century of use, the dirt floors were tightly packed, hard as cement. Long fluorescent lighting cast a dim, sickly glow on the scene as the metallic tang of blood infiltrated my nostrils.
The thud of knuckles on skin woke my senses and took me from the warm bed filled with Sabrina’s soft floral scent to the stark torture scenario laid out before me.
“He say anything?” I strode up behind David, whose undershirt was splotched with sweat and blood. He lived for this, for enforcing the blood-coated rules of our syndicate whenever it was necessary.
“Just some screams and a few Russian curses.” David spat and backed up, crossing his arms over his chest as he leveled a hellish glare at the quivering captive. A year younger than me, David made up for the age difference with heft. I worked out. I kept my body in top condition, but I was a novice compared to the Butcher. Built like a fucking tank, there was a reason no one saw the light of day again after he went to work on them.
I slowly, methodically rolled up my shirt sleeves as the Russian’s breath whistled in through his broken nose. His eyes barely shown through the puffy flesh around them, and the rest of him looked like it had been through a fucking grinder. I didn’t flinch. This was the fate he’d chosen when he stole Sabrina, when he decided to take what was mine.
Lowering to my haunches in front of him, I stared up into his dull eyes. “I already know you’re Dmitri’s man.”