“Annalise?” Ava’s eyes were wide, her lower lip trembling.
For a moment, Jakob’s resolve wavered. She looked so frightened and helpless. The cuff dangling from one wrist, securing her to the chair, seemed suddenly obscene.
“The woman you killed in Dublin, her friend is here,” Annalise said.
Ava’s shoulders pulled back. “I gave her a gift because if I—”
The door slammed open, hitting the wall so hard, concrete cracked. Eric’s face was a mask of rage. He’d lost the camo jacket, and now his already ripped T-shirt was stippled with blood. More blood trailed from the corner of his mouth. Out in the hall, Vadisk and several others were struggling to rise from the floor.
Eric’s lips pulled back from his teeth, a savage, feral expression.
Ava stepped back, eyes wide. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but no words came out.
Annalise stepped out from behind Jakob. He grabbed her arm, halting her when it seemed she would put herself between the fleet admiral and Ava. Maybe she didn’t know the stories about Eric Ericsson. About how, after the death of his wives, the loss of his trinity, he’d become a mercenary. How he’d taken on jobs where death was all but certain, only to come out alive because he, like the Vikings he was nicknamed for, suffered from berserker rages. The kind of rages that allowed him to quite literally rip a man’s head off with his bare hands.
“Fleet Admiral.” Annalise’s voice cracked with authority. It was a tone Jakob had never heard her use before.
It caught Eric’s attention, and though he didn’t look away from Ava, he cocked his head.
“This woman is responsible not just for Josephine’s death, but the deaths of others. Potentially many others. We need her alive so she can tell us about them. Help us find and locate their bodies, their loved ones.”
Eric shuddered, an actual physical shudder working its way down his body from his shoulders to his feet. He rolled his head on his shoulders and finally released a slow breath. He was calming himself down, hopefully either coming out of, or preventing himself from fully entering, a berserker rage.
They were so close to getting out of this without any dead bodies.
But then Ava decided to seal her own fate.
She turned with a predatory grace, sneering at Annalise. “Is that what you thought you were doing? That you were going to manipulate me and make me do things? Tell you things?” Ava shook her head, almost sadly. “You would never understand, and quite frankly, you don’t deserve to know who those I deemed worthy were.”
There was a beat of silence, and then Eric took two long strides, grabbed Ava by the neck, and shoved her body back against the wall.
“You deserve to suffer.” He yanked her forward, lifted her by the neck with one hand, and slammed her back against the wall once more, this time with her toes a few centimeters off the ground.
People rushed into the room, but Eric snarled, “Out.”
Reluctantly, a battered Vadisk and Maxim obeyed and backed out. Jakob started edging Annalise toward the door.
“No,” Annalise whispered furiously. “We have to stop him because I can get her to talk. Eventually she will, it will just take time…”
There was no time. Jakob very much doubted the British woman would leave this room alive.
Ava’s nails scratched Eric’s hand and wrist as she gasped and struggled to breathe. But she was still breathing. Jakob could hear the air wheezing in and out of her lungs. Eric wasn’t killing her…not yet.
“Josephine died in pain and alone because of you.” Eric’s accent had thickened, his tone guttural and dark. “She died thinking I would come for her, find her.”
Eric’s fingers tightened, and Ava’s struggles became frantic, her heels scraping the wall as she tried and failed to find any purchase that would allow her to leverage out of his hold.
“I promised them I would protect them. Josephine is dead and Colum is drinking himself to death. He’s locked himself away, given up his job, disappeared from the world.”
Eric’s rage and grief were almost palpable. Even Jakob could tell that it was deep, pain-filled grief that threaded through the fleet admiral’s voice. He’d mistakenly believed perhaps Josephine had been a lover, but hearing him talk about her and a man he didn’t know, it sounded more like a father speaking about his children. But the fleet admiral had no children.
No one spoke. No one moved to stop him, not daring to get too close lest they be consumed by the inferno that raged so hot inside the fleet admiral, it could turn them all to ash.
Ava’s choked, desperate sounds were terrible to hear.
“The only reason I don’t take you, and do to you everything you did to her, and more, is because Josephine wouldn’t want it this way,” he snarled.
“No, she would not.” Nyx stepped into the room. If in this moment Eric was fire, Nyx was ice, cold and merciless as she stared at Ava. “But I’ll salt the earth of her shallow grave so nothing grows where her unshriven body lays.”
Holy. Fuck.
Jakob felt his eyes get big before he got himself under control. So Nyx was…nuts. He needed to remember to tell his vice admiral to avoid pissing off Hungary’s vice admiral at all costs. Then he considered Nikolett and figured they should just avoid the entire territory if possible.
Eric eased his hold, lowered her so her toes touched the floor. Ava took two shallow, rasping breaths before he once more cut off her air supply.
Jakob nudged Annalise toward the door, but before they could exit, someone else pushed Vadisk—who had been using his big body as a door—out of the way.
Nikolett walked into the safe room, heels clicking, raised the gun she held, and pointed it at Eric.
Holy. Fuck.
Everything was about to get royally fucked up and Jakob had zero idea what the hell he was supposed to do in a situation like this. Protect the
