My heart beats faster and more brutal each time I think of Dirk pulling that trigger, of splattering my love’s brains out over the lecture hall floor.
I love you, Tess.
Why the fuck did I wait so long to say it?
I should’ve roared it at her the second I caught her spying on me in this very room.
“You hear me?” Dirk snarls. “I said apologize or I’ll blow this bitch to smithereens.”
I have to get him to point the gun at me.
I stalk forward subtly, watching the tension in Dirk’s arm, watching his body language, acutely primed to even the tiniest change in his thug like expression. The men behind him wear the bored, passive expressions of men who are used to violence, paid to inflict it.
“I’m sorry, Dirk,” I say. “I’m sorry that you’re such a piece of shit. I’m sorry that you’re a pervert—”
“Are you a fucking idiot?” Dirk snarls, spinning and pointing the barrel of the gun at me.
Something lightens in my chest as I stare down death, because at least now – in the short term – Tess isn’t in danger. That’s all that matters.
“Yeah, exactly,” Dirk smirks, perhaps taking my stillness for fear, where in reality I’m telling every single muscle and sinew and instinct I have to get ready.
I remember that night, creeping down the stairs to find the two killers in my living room. I remember the blood and the stink of it. I remember the moment I decided to shut off my emotions and become a frenetic whirl of death.
I will never let anyone hurt my family again.
And that’s what Tess is, what she became the moment I laid eyes upon her.
The mother of my children.
The only family I’ll ever need.
“Not so easy to forget who’s in charge with a gun pointed at you, is it?” Dirk grins, licking his lips like a moron. His eyes have the frantic, unhinged look of a man on stimulants. “I wanted to hear you grovel before I put a bullet in you, Tanner. I really fucking did. But if you’re going to try and play the tough guy, I guess we’re going to have to do this nice’n nasty.”
“Are we?” I say, knowing that my calm tone is driving him toward more and more white hot rage.
That’ll work against him, make him sloppy.
I glance at the men behind him, the war like drum beating inside me getting heavier and deeper and more compelling. I feel my consciousness drifting off someplace and a savage autopilot taking control, pushing aside my modern sensibilities and replacing them with the primal beast I was that night.
“Yes,” he whines, sounding like a spoilt little child. “How about I put a bullet in this fat bitch and then we see how—”
I snap, which isn’t part of the goddamned plan.
But to call her fat?
To label her gorgeous curves and the her healthy appetite and the way her clothes fall lovingly over her childbearing hips that drive me to feral excitement—to label them anything other than perfect deserves the strictest possible punishment.
I snap and I move quicker than this worm ever could’ve guessed.
He yelps and lets go of his daughter, Kait falling aside. Tess rushes to her and – my clever fucking queen – she quickly escorts her to the edge of the room, to get out of the way of the violence.
I notice this only peripherally, though.
Mostly I am a beast slamming the firearm from Dirk’s hand, my knuckles hitting the metal and sending it flying across the room.
He squeaks and I bring an elbow up to his nose, a bony contact that causes it to explode a second time and a shower of blood to spurt in crimson droplets into the air, almost in slow motion, each individual droplet glimmering like solid flames.
Men leap at me, all of them.
They come with fists and knives and roars, they come stinking of sweat and tobacco and the intent to end my life.
One man slams me across the jaw when I’m dodging another’s fist, and I spin away, pulling just shy of the hiss of a blade.
“Argh,” I roar, spinning back, feeling the fabric of my suit tear as I throw everything I have into a savage knee.
I’ve been stabbed, an inner voice notes calmly.
The man on the other end of my knee grunts and doubles over, and then I spin again, narrowly missing another knife, so close I’m sure I can feel the air whispering against my nose.
I back toward the direction of the gun, fists raised, sending a devastating jab into the jaw of the next man who tries to close the distance on me. It connects in a thunder of flesh and his jaw makes a snap noise as it dislocates, the man falling backward and taking out some of his fellow goons like bowling pins.