“Kennedy, baby, just get it all out.” He thought I was getting sicker, but it was him. It was his touch. His smell. Everything about Royal made me sick, and him touching me made it even worse.
By the time I’d thrown up everything in my stomach, there was nothing left but bile. And even that didn’t take long to dry up.
I was left heaving into the toilet, wanting to climb inside and die. Because there was no running from what came next.
He rubbed my back once and then again before he grabbed my neck almost painfully.
“You’re done now, aren’t you?”
There wasn’t time to answer before he was ripping me away from the toilet and dragging me into the bedroom.
“Where’s your ring, Kennedy?” His fist connected with my lower back, but he was still holding my hair so I couldn’t drop to the ground when the pain was too much for me to stand. “Where the fuck is the ring I gave you? It’s not on your hand.” Another punch, but this time a little higher.
I cried out, unable to stop it, even though I knew he got off on my tears. On the pain.
“One more chance, Kennedy. And then I’ll make you pay.”
“It’s in the kitchen.” I gasped, barely managing to breathe, let alone speak.
“Where in the kitchen, Kennedy? Use your words.” Royal lifted me by the hair until I was standing and not slumped.
“Freezer.” I tried to keep the tears back. To keep him from seeing me at my weakest.
Royal let go of my hair and grabbed me by the neck, purposefully digging into my skin with the chain that always hung there, with Linc’s dog tag. “I’m going to check. If it’s not there, I’m going to come back and I’m going to kill you. Your father. Your brother. Not even your precious Linc will be able to stop me. And when you die, I’m going to move on to your only little sister. I’ll tear Casper away from her husband, and I’ll kill her too.”
When he came back upstairs, he used that ring to cut his name into the skin on my wrist, right next to the scar from when I tried to kill myself as a teenager. My last thought before fading into oblivion was that I should have tried harder.
“Kennedy.” Parker was crouched down next to me, her arms wrapped around my body as I rocked back and forth.
“What’s wrong with her?” Royal stood over us, and his voice made me sick.
I almost threw up on his feet, but I managed to keep it in. Barely.
“Get the fuck away from her.”
Linc.
17
Linc
When the man standing over Kennedy didn’t budge, I almost lost my shit. “I said to get the fuck away from her, Royal.”
He looked up, completely oblivious to the fact that not only was he going to get his ass beat, but that every single person currently standing in Lucy’s would stand by and watch it happen. When our eyes locked, the man had the audacity to smile at me like we were friends and he was waiting for us. He genuinely thought I’d keep from making a scene, and I almost laughed.
We were standing in a bar that was owned by a first responder, served first responders, and half the staff were related to first responders or were first responders. There were a lot of fuckin’ cops in the bar and restaurant. There were even a few paramedics that I could see out of the corner of my eye. And while I liked my odds of surviving an encounter with the asshole across the room, I didn’t like the idea of anyone around me suffering because of him.
“He’s going to die.” Remy’s voice took on a lethal tone when he saw the smile Royal still wore, but he didn’t move in that direction. Not yet. “I don’t think he realizes that he’s about to die in a room full of cops.” For everything he said, Remy seemed to be keeping his calm for the most part.
Meanwhile, my heart raced and my eyesight narrowed until the only thing I could concentrate on was Kennedy on the floor. I kept flashing back to the blood on Mallory’s face, and the bruises that started to form almost immediately. I stood there and all I could think of was the fact that Kennedy had been hurt by him once before, and now I wasn’t stopping it from happening again.
One quiet whimper escaped her lips, and it shot straight through my heart. She destroyed me, without even trying. When she looked up, her eyes locking on mine, the noise around us vanished.
Everyone vanished.
I didn’t see Remy. Or Parker. Or anyone else in the building. I saw Kennedy, on her fucking knees, at the feet of the man responsible for her pain. The one who beat the hell out of Mallory, even if I couldn’t prove it. The man responsible for the tears I could see from all the way across the restaurant.
Everything exploded. Everything. Every bit of anger and rage and everything I wanted to say and do just came rushing out all at once. I was there, next to Remy, watching it happen in one moment, and in the next I had Royal by the collar of his shirt and shoved him away from Kennedy. I didn’t even know how I got there, or if I’d pushed Kennedy out of the way. I wasn’t even thinking when I practically lifted him off his feet. Dragging him along with me wasn’t difficult at all. In fact, he didn’t weigh more than a feather as far as I was concerned. His complaints and outrage didn’t faze me in the slightest.
As his skin turned red with embarrassment, I felt rather than knew that I laughed, and then I took it a step further and hauled him through the doors that led to the kitchen, completely ignoring all reason at that point.
Royal must have noticed, because he grunted and seemed to slump in my hold until we made it into the kitchen. “She’s just a stupid whore. She doesn’t mean anything.”
Those words sealed his fate, and the flash in his eyes gave his plan away. He wanted me to hit him. He wanted me to hurt him. He wanted me to do something that would take Kennedy out of my arms for good. The bitter smile that broke out over his face betrayed every single plan that he had for me. The ruin he expected to rain down on my head.
Like a bucket of ice water had just been dumped on my head, I dropped him to the ground and crouched next to his scrambling form.
“Not so fast.” I grabbed his arm, squeezing painfully, and more than aware that we were being watched. But I didn’t take my focus off him. “I’m not a cop right now, Royal. No uniform.” I waved a hand over my chest. “No gun.” I nodded toward my hip. “No badge.”
His eyes darted over my body, like he was trying to confirm what I said.
“Now, maybe you should tell me what the fuck you were doing standing over my woman like you were ready to hit her again.”
When I called Kennedy mine, his eyes flashed with malicious intent. For the first time since I’d grabbed him, Royal looked like he wanted to fight. Like he wanted to put his fist through my face, but he didn’t move. I could see the twitch in his cheek and the vein pop out in his forehead, but he didn’t make a move. It was a shame honestly, because if he threw the first punch, I wouldn’t be breaking any laws by shattering his jaw.
Instead, I speared him with contempt. “I know what you did.”
Royal swallowed audibly, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what Kennedy saw in him in the first place. With his hair, covered in more product than a man should wear, plastered to the side of his sweat-dotted forehead, his pallid skin, and the shifty way his eyes kept darting around like he was looking for an escape, Royal was a weasel. Not only that, but he couldn’t even stand up for himself.