I snap my head toward every sound I hear, waiting for someone to jump out of the shadows or step into the house while I’m outside.
“You owe us money,” a deep voice growls from behind me.
I whirl around, gun raised. The monstrosity in front of me has his weapon raised, too, except his is one of those flashy gold and marble pistols. He doesn’t look like the usual city gangster, more like the cowboy rendition of one with his hat and a pair of boots.
“No, the fuck I don’t.”
I could. I have no idea. Usually, when someone tries to rig a game, I don’t do as they say. Then they get pissy about it and claim that I owe them money when I never agreed to their terms.
Who is he and what money does he think I owe them? And most importantly, how the fuck does he know where I live, and who else knows?
He turns his safety off. “Don’t play dumb with me, boy.”
This is only going to end with him in the dirt. Bella’s inside, and there’s no way he’s coming out of this alive. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you better get off my property.”
“You lost some friends of mine a great deal of money. I’m here to collect.”
“I don’t owe you or your friend shit,” I spit. “I’m going to give you three more seconds to fuck off.”
“You seem to think you’re the one in power—”
They always seem to doubt my seriousness. Older guys like him always think they’re smarter and better, but the fact that he’s twice my size only makes me more trigger-happy.
“One.”
“If I were you, I’d shut up and listen before your girl—”
The trick is never to get to ‘two.’
A loud bang echoes through the forest, shaking the trees and making my ears ring from the sound—kind of like screaming. I’ve fired before, and it’s never sounded like this.
“Mickey!” I whip toward the sound of Bella’s shrill cry, and I see red.
Another guy—one I didn’t fucking see—has his hands around Bella’s neck and a gun aimed at her head. Tears stream down her ghastly pale cheeks, and her bottom lip quivers violently.
“You stupid motherfucker!” he snarls, throwing Bella to the side and aiming straight at me.
I drop to my haunches and lunge. A shot fires, missing me completely. Half a second later, my shoulder collides with his gut. He brings his knee up at the same time, kneeing me in the stomach, but his lack of balance has us both on the ground, grappling for the upper hand. A-fucking-gain.
First, the fucker who followed my Bella, now him?
The guy’s bigger than me, so he has me under him before I can do shit. My head swings to the side as pain splits through my jaw from the force of his punch. But he made a big mistake. He brought a fist to a knife fight.
I grab the switchblade from my pocket and bury it into his side just as he lands another punch. The bigger ones are always slower to react.
He rears back, grunting in pain, but he doesn’t stop trying to hit me. Removing my knife, I jam it into his side again.
Crimson warmth pools on my stomach, but I don’t get the chance to stab him a third time before he’s whipped to the side. Standing beneath the fading light of the sun is my very own saving grace, holding a spare wooden plank in her hands.
He reaches back to grab her, but she swings again, this time making us both grunt as a splinter lodges itself into my arm. She screams when he attempts to grab her in his disorientated state. Then I’m on him, ignoring the pain in my arm as I sink my blade into him over and over again.
I lost count at six stabs. I can still picture the gun pressed to Bella’s head—my Bella—and the fear in her eyes that she might be the next one to have a bullet in her.
The asshole falls onto me, limp, but I’m not done.
“He’s dead,” Bella cries.
I shove him over and keep stabbing and slicing. Chunks of flesh peel away from this pathetic man’s body. All there is—all I see—is red. Blood. Rage. It isn’t enough.
He put his hands on her. He was going to kill her. He was going to take my Bella away from me.
“Mickey, stop,” Bella sobs, dragging my attention away from the carnage.
Her big brown eyes dart around, from the blood all over me, to the knife, to the two men and the fallen gun. Over and over and over. Each time she does the rotation, the air grows thicker with her terror. She steps back when I step forward.
No. Not this shit again.
She keeps stepping back, though I don’t let her get far. There’s no way I’d let her out of sight after what we did today. She accepted me. She chose me. I’m not going to let her forget that.
I can’t lose her. I won’t.
The knife clatters to the ground as I grab her hand and root her to the spot before she can go any further.
“Bella.” I grip her chin and force her to turn away. “Look at me, okay? Not at him. You did such a good job hitting him.”
“You—” she gasps for breath, glancing down at the blood covering me with wide, frantic eyes. “You—you slaughtered him. Just…” Her eyes dart around like she’s trying to figure out what to say. “Just like you did to Greg and Marcus.”
I sink to my knees before her, feeling the wet earth seep into my pants as I tug her hands to my chest, ignoring the way the splinter digs deeper into my skin. “Do you see what I’d do for you? You drive me crazy—I’m fucking crazy. For you. Only you. Tell me you get that. Tell me you get that?”
She shakes her head slowly.
No, no, no, no. She can’t look away from me. She has to see me, see that there isn’t a line I wouldn’t cross for her.
“I did this for us, Bella. For you.” I try to pull her down with me, but she refuses to move. Refuses to pull her attention away from the corpses. “Look at me.”
“How many?” she shudders out. “When will people stop dying around us?”
“No one else was meant to die.” That you needed to know about. “I don’t know how they got here or why they were here. You have to believe me. This wasn’t part of the plan. I didn’t tell anyone about this place.”
She tries to snatch her hands away, but I don’t let her. “What is the plan then, Mickey?”
“To stay here.” Just until we figure out what we want to do. The place needs a lot of work, and I didn’t have time to fix everything before I got here.
“And then what?” she snaps.
“We’ll figure it out.” Leave, go somewhere new, get a fresh start.
She looks at me blankly, fear gone from her eyes. “We’ll figure it out,” she echoes. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath. “So you’re telling me that you planned to do up a house, break into my house, torture and kill Marcus and Greg, then tie me up and kidnap me, but not what to do afterward?”
I can’t help it, I grin. Those were all greatly executed things she listed. “Well, I didn’t plan on tying you up. That was just an added bonus.”
Wrong thing to say.
That was definitely the wrong thing to say.
I’m pretty sure there’s steam coming out of her ears. She’s so cute when she’s angry. Her face goes red, and she does this little scrunch with her nose, always cocking her hips, all sassy. The best part? Her attention is completely on me. Score.