“Did you really think you could get away with disrespecting me?” the rat sneers, strolling over to my side of the table.
His men spread out all around us, but they must be able to sense some danger from the way I’m sitting, poised and ready to take them out. My body is tense and I lean slightly forward, a coil ready to violently snap open, ready to leap across at them and whir into a mad dance of warfare, of violence.
“Stand up, champ,” Lennie says, a mocking hiss in his voice.
I rise slowly. It’s a stupid thing for him to ask me to do. A man needs to be standing if he’s going to defend himself. Maybe he thinks he’s making some sort of tough-guy point, but he’s failing badly.
“Now put your hands behind your back and turn around.”
I smirk and let out a gruff laugh. “That’s not going to happen.”
“It is going to happen,” he whines. “Or I’m going to take that young thing you’ve clearly got the hots for, and make that piggy squeal.”
He gestures with his blade to Kelly, to my woman, to the angel who has turned my life into heat and closeness and rightness.
And he thinks he can talk to her like she’s dirt and get away with it?
“Don’t you fucking dare talk about my woman like that,” I growl, thunder cracking in my voice. “You fucking rat. I’ll snap your damn neck right now. I’ll leave you battered and broken in the gutter if you ever think about talking about my woman like that again.”
“Dad,” Natalie gasps. “What do you mean, your woman?”
“Oh, fantastic.”
Lennie giggles like he’s no drugs. All of the men look swollen like they’ve cheated their way to their muscular bodies – they’re steroid-heads, every one of them – but Lennie seems like he’s on something more.
“So let me get this straight. You’re fucking this young thing and your daughter doesn’t even know? But, if I’m not mistaken, they’re best friends, aren’t they?”
I take a step forward. Behind him, his four goons shift and glare at me. I size them up one by one, focused entirely on them right now.
This is what I was talking to my woman about, the ability to focus entirely on the moment. She brings it to me with her primal beauty, with the love I feel blazing inside of me every second of every day…
And fighting brings it to me because I need to focus on the immediacy of the violence, of doing whatever’s necessary to protect my family.
“Kelly,” her mom says. “What’s going on here?”
“Careful, big man,” Lennie murmurs, taking a step back as I stalk toward him. His men are doing the same, taking his lead, looking to him for guidance when all the courage he can summon is sending him backward.
I pause when I’m standing between the women and the threat, spreading my hands. My heartbeat is slow. My blood runs cold, like a fucking assassin’s. I remember when I won the heavyweight championship, a round one knockout with a running knee. Nobody expected a big bastard like me to be able to move so quickly.
But I can, and I’ll explode like a force of nature to keep my woman safe.
“I’m the one with the knife.” Lennie gestures with it, waving at me. “Get back.”
“No.” I stare blankly at the men, five of them in total. All of them are swollen threats and nothing else. I can’t afford to think about them as more than things I need to deal with, coldly, brutally, like the beast I am.
“Usually there’s a referee to get me off you,” I snarl. “But you motherfuckers aren’t so lucky. That’s my woman, that’s my woman’s mother, and that’s my fucking daughter right there. So you turn around and walk away or things are going to get real bad for you.”
I speak calmly, the way I would if I was describing the weather. The man on the far left – a diamond tattoo under his eye, piss-yellow, the worst tattoo I ever saw – glances at the others. Two of the older ones exchange a glance, and the final one – with a beanie pulled low and a real junkie look about him – grimaces at me.
“Enough games,” Lennie says. “Unless you want me to go to work with this knife.”
I shrug. “That’s your choice. But you’re not getting your hands on these women.”
“I’m the one with the knife,” he whines.
Behind me, I hear Kelly and Natalie talking in low whispers. “Is it true?”
“I’m so sorry,” Kelly pleads.
“I don’t understand.”
I push their voices away and focus on the shapes of the men, my instincts pricking like they did when I was a kid when I had a chance to save my parents and I ran away in panic.
That same response tries to kick in. Five against one will end in death every single time.