Now one word clanged through my ears like a fire alarm, blocking out the sound of Gardner’s frantic wheezing.
“‘Again’?” My voice shook from the effort it took not to crush the man’s windpipe. “Nina, what the fuck did he mean by ‘again’?”
“What do you think?” Gardner’s glossy eyes bugged as he spoke hoarsely between his teeth. “She was my wife. She still is. Not just some dirty wop’s whore.”
“Was I fuckin’ talking to you?” I slammed him into the wall again with a satisfying thwack.
“Matthew!” Nina cried out from where she was still crumpled on the floor, her dress torn up one thigh, makeup smeared across her beautiful face.
I had at least six inches on Gardner, and even if I didn’t outweigh him, I was definitely packing a bit more heat, muscle for muscle, pound for pound. But adrenaline does funny things. In Gardner’s case, it allowed him to stomp on my foot when Nina called my name, pushing me off guard long enough to wriggle out of my grasp. But not for long.
I whipped around and wrangled him just as quickly into a half-nelson, smashing him face-first into another one of the massive marble columns in the hall, just before I whipped out the switchblade I had in my breast pocket and pressed the steel edge into his wobbling jowls.
“There ain’t a DA in New York City who doesn’t walk around with some kind of protection, you slimy sack of shit,” I growled. “Now, you say one more word about her, and I will slit your turkey neck from ear to fuckin’ ear. You got that?”
“Matthew.”
I looked up and found Nina watching me with a curious expression. Some horror, yes, which was morphing quickly into shock. Some disgust. And maybe a little desire.
“Maybe I should give the knife to you, baby,” I told her. “You can stick him like the dirty fuckin’ pig he is, huh?” I pressed the blade deeper into Gardner’s neck, and the loose skin oozed over it.
“P-please,” Gardner wheezed. “Please, she’s—a—”
“She’s what, you rotting can of shit-eating worms?”
Gardner swallowed heavily, but mumbled low enough that I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
I shoved him against the column again. Hard. “What was that?”
“I said,” he croaked between harsh, labored gasps, “that she’s a whore. And this…just…proves it.”
I couldn’t help it. I dropped the knife, whipped Gardner around, and delivered a harsh right hook straight to hit jaw that had him dropping to the ground like a heavy sack of wheat.
His head echoed down the corridor as it smacked the marble floor. I squatted down and checked his pulse, wondering if I should feel guilty that I was even wondering if the man was dead. I did not. I felt nothing but rage.
Slow, but steady, Calvin Gardner’s heartbeat thumped under my fingers. But he was out. For now.
I retrieved my knife, then joined Nina on the ground. “Nina. What was he talking about?”
She was crumpled to the floor in her finery, shoulders shaking like we were in the middle of the damn arctic.
“Come here,” I said. God, I wanted to fuckin’ kill him for touching her like that. Instead, I pulled out my phone to call Derek.
“No, don’t,” Nina said, stopping me with a gentle hand on mine. “It will r-ruin the event.”
“Who cares if it ruins the event? This asshole just stalked you here and assaulted you. And I’m pretty fucking sure at this point it isn’t the first time, is it? He’s not going to stop, baby. He needs to be locked the fuck up!”
She bit her lip hard enough that it turned white around her tooth. “Please, Matthew. It’s Jane’s big night. I—I don’t want to be—”
“Be what?” I demanded, wanting to shake it out of her myself. “You don’t want to be what?”
“A burden!” she burst out, practically a scream that echoed down the hall and through my damn chest.
Three syllables, but it was enough to make her look like she’d run a marathon, red-cheeked, wild-eyed, and exhausted.
“That’s all I’ve ever been,” she said fiercely. “And what he did. What he’s done. I refuse to be defined by it, Matthew. I refuse!”
I swallowed, wanting to fight back. I wanted to protest, to tell her that she was being ridiculous. But her words struck a chord I understood better than I wanted to admit.
I knew what it was like to be treated like I was nothing by the people who were supposed to love me. For the first fourteen years of my life, I had two parents who chose the bottle over me and their five young daughters. I had a father who was more willing to punch his son in the face than admit when he was wrong, and a mother who would have rather hidden from her kids than face her shortcomings and be the mother they needed. If it hadn’t been for my grandparents, I would have been even more angry and bitter than I was as an adolescent, with a safe home, yes, but always with the knowledge that in a perfect world, I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. That my sisters and I, while still loved, were burdens as well.
You live your live long enough that way…you come to believe it. You come to hate yourself for it.
But my girl had never even had a Nonno or a Nonna to give her the encouragement when she needed it. She had a heartless grandmother and a flighty mother. And then traded them for an unavailable professor, followed by an abusive husband. You could grow up with all the money in the world, but it couldn’t do shit to replace the core needs that every human deserves. Love. Pure. Unconditional. From at least one damn person.
Well. That could be me, couldn’t
