“What a fuckin’ shitshow,” he grunted as he knelt beside me, his eyes running over Bea. “Fucking, fuck.”
“I’m going to kill them all,” I vowed as I moved a clump of bloody hair out of Bea’s face and then shucked my leather jacket to put it under her head. “Every last Walsh and every single one of their associates.”
“Priest, man…” Wrath tried to reason with me, but I couldn’t hear him.
I was singularly focused on one thing.
Revenge.
Which is why I heard the cough and responded to it before Wrath could do anything to stop me.
Brett Walsh.
Somehow the cockroach had crawled from the wreck, or been thrown far enough to escape the flames that now leapt from the metal, as orange as the charred paint peeling off the exterior. His skin was all blood and abrasion. Even from a distance, I could tell there was something impaled in his belly, that soft place that meant a long, painful death if it wasn’t treated.
He deserved that, but I wasn’t willing to give it to him.
Unthinking, unfeeling, cold and programmed by violence, I was up and stalking toward him. My Karambit blade slid from the sleeve of my hoodie into my palm. It felt good to wrap my fingers around it as I approached the sick fuck who’d put Bea in danger.
Who’d put her in the path of me.
I knelt casually over his broken, dying body and stared into his face.
One eye was swollen shut, but the other was clear, black with panic.
“Help me,” he gurgled.
There was a large piece of metal, probably cast off from the door, in his left side, and his ribs were crushed from the impact against the steering wheel.
He was dying.
I ignored his squeal of pain as I stood, taking his foot with me as I went.
Then I ignored his howl of outrage as I dragged him over to where Wrath was tending to Bea. My brother watched me without judgment as I dropped the piece of shit to the ground at her feet. I squeezed his face in my hands and forced him to look at her.
“You see this?” I demanded coldly, my knife at his throat, already deep but keeping the blood at bay by sheer pressure. “You see what you’ve done. Women like this are untouchable, you motherfucking swine. Women like this are not for the likes of you or me.”
“Don’t fucking kill me for this, she’s just a girl,” Brett pleaded. “I have money. Lots of money! I’ll pay you whatever you want. Fuck! Just let me go.”
I barked out a cold, hard laugh that hurt my chest and sliced an inch across his butter soft neck, spilling blood down his front.
“You crossed The Fallen MC,” I hissed into his ear, twisting my knife just to hear him groan. “And now, you’ve personally crossed me. I’m going to end you here, and then I’m going to end your family and everyone you loved because this girl is worth more than you and your scum family combined.”
The sharp odor of urine perfumed the air as Brett Walsh whimpered and shook against me, tears falling from his one good eye.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I’m not,” I said, levering him higher into the air by his hair, ready to end him.
I wanted to feel his blood flow hot over my hands. Maybe then I could rid myself of the vision of Bea, angelic as heavenly death caught up in all this ugliness.
“Priest.” The soft, silken voice of my broken angel cut through my laser focus.
I looked down at Bea, her head in Wrath’s lap, her big blue eyes gone black with terror and pain. She studied the careless way I held her date and the deadly intent in my gaze as I stared back at her. I let her see the depths of my black soul, the absolute resolve I had to kill this motherfucker in front of her, for her.
Wordlessly, she inclined her head.
A second later, before Brett could draw another breath, my knife was across his throat and his blood splashed to the ground, anointing the earth at Bea’s feet like a sacrifice made for the gods and goddesses of old.
And through it all, we watched each other, Bea and me, locked together in this death in a way I felt echo into the future of our lives, linking us in a way I’d never be able to forget.
I knew then, as I’d only been curious about it before, that Beatrice Lafayette was going to be mine.
Bea
The sharp, antiseptic scent in my nostrils when I finally swam sluggishly from unconsciousness into a painful wakefulness meant I knew immediately where I was. The Garros visited St. Katherine’s Hospital so frequently, I joked with Loulou that we should start a loyalty program.
She hadn’t laughed. In fact, when I woke up in scratchy white hospital sheets with a residual ringing in my ears and pain throbbing like strobe lights under my skin, Loulou was yelling.