Tears flooded down my cheeks and my heart fell to dust. The only thing that existed inside me was pain. I couldn’t fight, I was done, shattered, destroyed. I’d lost the dearest, most precious person to me in all the world. The man who’d held me in his arms a thousand times, who’d loved me with every inch of his heart, who had kissed my wounds better, carried me on his shoulders, taken my hand whenever we’d crossed the road.
Death hung so heavily in the air it made me want to wretch and scream and cry all at once. But all I could do was stare at Dad’s lifeless eyes, his parted lips and the stillness of his body which had once seemed invincible to me. All the preciousness of my childhood was wrapped in that man, the heat of a thousand burning suns had blazed through his love for me, for Jess. And now he was hollow, the man he’d been carved out from his skin and taken so brutally, irreversibly away from me.
Gone, he’s gone.
Monroe snapped the neck of the guy he was fighting with a bellow of rage and the man fell dead at his feet before his eyes sought me out. He was shaking, blood peppering his flesh and he looked like a beast who’d crawled out of hell, ready to rip apart the world to get me back. But I was already lost.
My right hand tingled from the repetitive recoil of the pistol in my grip while the knife in my left hand steadily dripped blood on the ground by my feet as I looked around us at the men we’d slaughtered.
If there had ever been any doubt about the monsters which lay beneath our flesh then this act alone was enough to cast that to ruin. Right here and now we wore no masks, only our raw and brutal souls on show for the whole world to see. And there was something beautifully powerful in that.
Blood was splattered over my clothes, my skin, my shoes, the scent of it so thick I could taste it on the air.
Blake was similarly painted in splotches of red as he spat a curse at the asshole he’d just put down, swiping an arm over his face as he smeared the blood and sweat staining his skin.
Kyan was kneeling over the last fucker, beating him with a desperate kind of savagery which could only end in death.
“That’s all of them,” I barked, my gaze turning to the cabin where our girl still hadn’t emerged.
Kyan’s head whipped up at my words and he stood, bloody as a butcher in a slaughterhouse as he snatched his baseball bat from the ground beside him.
A motherfucking growl escaped his throat and he stalked to the front of our group as we all headed for the door with a single goal in mind.
But before we could reach it, the door opened and Monroe stepped out, shirtless and bloody, furious, fearful eyes slipping to us as he held up a hand to halt us.
“Back up,” he commanded and something about the raw tone of his voice made us fall still.
“What is it?” I demanded, stepping to Kyan’s side as Blake raised his gun again on my left.
Monroe descended the front steps quickly, stopping beside Kyan and looking back up at the cabin just as a voice called out to us.
“If I’d known the little lady kept a pack of wild dogs this close, I woulda brought more men,” he said with a dark laugh. “But lucky for me, I still managed to get the upper hand. Lower your weapons unless you wanna find out what the inside of her skull looks like up close.”
I cut a look at Monroe and the tension in his muscles confirmed my fears even before the smug asshole stepped out with Tatum clutched to his chest and a gun pressed firmly to her temple.
Her big eyes were wet with tears and mascara tracks marked her cheeks alongside the blood.
I barely spared a glance for the thug holding her, his hand around her neck. Just a single, cursory look to memorise every detail about his face so that I’d know it in a crowd of a thousand if he managed to walk away from this alive. Because his hands were on my girl. His fingers digging into her throat, a gun pressed to her head. Which meant he’d already given me his life. I’d kill him in a hundred different ways for any one of those crimes, but that hollow, terrified look in her beautiful eyes was enough for me to vow that it would be an agonising demise.
“This is a bit awkward. Did y’all realise she had so many boyfriends or is this the revelation of her promiscuity I’m witnessing?” he asked, his mouth brushing Tatum’s ear as he spoke and his grip on her throat tightening as she tried to recoil. “Though I will admit, a hot piece of ass like this might be worth fighting for if she fucks as hot as she looks.”
“I’m going to cut you open and strangle you with your own intestines,” Kyan snarled, every inch of his furious attention riveted on the man before us. “And while you’re choking and convulsing beneath me, I’ll cut your fucking dick off and ram it down your throat for good measure.”
There was something fucking terrifying in the way he promised that and the thug hesitated for a single moment like he knew it too. Because it wasn’t some empty threat, it was a promise from
