“Who are you?” My determination to suppress my volatile emotions shattered as soon as my fists curled into his shirt. The next question in my brutal interrogation was little more than a snarl. “Why are you following Ashlyn?”
The man’s brown eyes narrowed on my face, the fear that clouded them darkening to contempt as he recognized me. His chapped lips curled in a sneer. “You’re worried about your slut? I thought you’d care more about your fuckboy, Russo. He’s almost as pretty as the whore you two fags share.”
Rage surged through my body in a searing riptide, and a red haze clouded my mind. Fury fogged reason, threatening to smother my control over my most violent impulses. My hand locked around his throat, and my palm pressed down on his windpipe with nearly enough force to crush the cartilage that protected his ability to speak and breathe.
Whore. The insult to my sweet girl was poison on his tongue, and for the first time in my life, I relished the prospect of a man’s blood on my hands. I wanted to slice it out of his foul mouth so he could never utter another filthy word about her.
Through my blinding rage, I registered the menace he directed at Joseph, too.
Mine. They were both mine. This bastard was threatening my family.
His hate-filled eyes bulged as my fingers squeezed hard enough to grind the fragile bones in his neck. No one would hear his screams for mercy. He would speak when I allowed it; when he was ready to answer my questions.
“Who are you?” I seethed, my muscles rippling with the almost overwhelming need to wring the response from his battered body. I had to know why he was doing this. He knew Joseph’s name, and he recognized me. He wasn’t simply a student who’d become obsessed with Ashlyn. This man was from our world, the dark past we’d tried to escape.
And if he’d come after us, there might be others out for our blood.
I eased my grip just enough to allow him a gasp of air, and his throat worked beneath my palm as he struggled to speak.
His rasping reply burned with pure, sadistic hatred. “Maybe I’ll take a turn with your pretty slut once we’ve buried you and Russo.”
A feral sound ripped up my throat, but a heartbeat before my control snapped, I heard the soft click of a switchblade. Muscle memory kicked in again, and I recoiled just in time to dodge the flashing knife. The wickedly sharp blade cut through my leather jacket, but the stab that could’ve gutted me didn’t so much as etch a scratch into my skin.
The steel glinted as the bastard swung again, and my body moved without thought. He was younger than me, lacking my years of experience in the dirtiest kinds of violence. My hand grabbed his wrist before he could slash at me. A swift, sharp twist snapped bone, and his agonized cry echoed off the brick walls. I caught the smooth metal hilt of the knife as it fell from his limp fingers, punching my other fist into his throat to silence his shout. Moving of its own accord, my hand flipped the knife, directing the blade at my enemy.
His scream strangled in his traumatized vocal cords as the blade sank into his abdomen, parting skin and flesh as easily as butter. Wet heat spilled over my fingers, and an animal snarl rumbled between my bared teeth. “You will not touch my family.”
The man’s tanned cheeks paled, and his eyes rolled with terror. His pleas for mercy remained locked in his spasming throat. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t say another foul word about my sweet girl.
He couldn’t answer my questions.
Fuck!
I shoved away from him, and his eyes rolled back in his head at the agony of the blade ripping free from his flesh.
Suddenly, the wet heat that coated my hand turned to toxic sludge, burning through my skin to mark me deep inside. Crimson gore glistened on my palm. Blood dripped from my fingertips like dark rubies, mesmerizing and horrific.
Iron bands closed around my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs.
This isn’t me. This isn’t who I am anymore. The desperate lie thundered through my head.
I’d wanted to be a better man. For Ashlyn. For Joseph.
Yes, I would do whatever it took to protect them, but I’d gone too far. I’d lost control.
I couldn’t protect them without answers, without knowing the extent of the threat. But the darkest parts of my soul that I’d buried deep had surged out at the first provocation. I was still a brute, a criminal who could never be good enough for Ashlyn.
I firmed my numb fingers around the knife before it could slip from my grip.
Destroy the evidence. Don’t get caught.
I crouched beside the enemy I’d dispatched and wiped the hilt on his hoodie to erase my fingerprints. My gaze scanned his body, a series of decisions clicking into place without conscious reasoning.