All I could picture was Marco treating Amara that way, putting his hands on her brutally, making her obey his rules, his law.
The blood was rushing through my veins, my nails digging into my palms hard enough I knew I broke the skin. My chest was pumping up and down, the need to draw blood, to make someone hurt filling me like a violent beast ready to tear out of me, skin me alive just to escape.
For the little sanity I had left, I needed to get this rage out of me. Because if I didn’t, it would continue to grow and mutate inside of me. I'd be too dangerous to be around Amara, too volatile. I already wanted her desperately, craved her, hungered and was so fucking thirsty for her.
I was a ticking time bomb and I needed to push the detonation.
She didn’t need to see that side of me, the one that got excited and anticipated giving pain and delivering death, violence and blood. But as much as I wanted to give her gentle and sweet like she deserved, I knew that was also false hope. Who did I think I was to be able to offer that to anyone?
I rounded the edge of the dumpster and saw two forms, the shadows concealing most of their features, but I could make out his body, much larger than hers.
I had a gun strapped to me, but that’s not how tonight would go. That’s not how this fight would end. I’d use my hands, and make it really painful.
I curled my hand in his hair before he knew I was standing behind him, and then with all the force I had, slammed his face into the side of the dumpster.
His skull cracked against the metal and made an echoing sound. The woman cried out and stumbled back. All I could picture was Amara, someone hurting her, someone thinking they could take from her what she wasn’t offering.
I started breathing harder, couldn’t see straight, couldn’t hear anything but the rush of blood in my veins.
He let out a deafening roar when I let go of his hair. I took a step back and watched the woman run off, her clothes haphazard, her hair wild around her head.
I focused back on the piece of shit, his upper body curled forward, his hands covering his face. I was pretty sure I’d broken his nose, could smell the blood that was no doubt pouring from his nostrils
“What the fuck,” he slurred and went to stand, bracing a blood covered hand on the metal as he looked at me. I kept to the shadows, and as he blinked at me, not recognizing who I was, I knew he was about to come at me.
Good.
The fucker smelled like a brewery, probably had all sorts of toxic shit shut up in his veins too. His movements would be slow and sloppy.
I let the smile spread across my mouth, slow, thorough. I could see when his vision adjusted to the darkness, when he could see me a little more clearly. He swallowed roughly and took a small step back, but the dumpster was in his way, stopping him from retreating.
There was no escape for him, not with what I planned to do. He’d be a broken, ruined mess at my feet, bloody and destroyed just like he was going to do to that woman. I'd never been a man who cared about other people's business. If it didn’t concern me and I kept moving.
But this was different and I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t stop myself as I took a step forward, grinning bigger as he took a step back. He held up his hands, blood dripping down his palms and along the underside of his forearms.
“Please, please I didn’t know it was you. I wasn’t going to do anything.”
I didn’t say anything. Words didn’t need to be spoken. That time had passed. In fact, that time had never come. He wanted pain and distraction right now. And so I’d give it to him tenfold
I slammed my fist into the side of his head, his skull slamming against the dumpster once more. He groaned but didn’t fight back. I wanted him to. I needed him to. And it pissed me off that he was being submissive because he knew who I was.
I growled low and held his thick, sweaty neck in my grip, squeezing tightly, doing to him what I wanted to do to Kirill back at the club. I used force to walk him backwards so his body slammed against the chain-link, felt his hands claw at the back of mine, his nails digging at flesh, and all I did was stare into his eyes.
I crushed his trachea in my grasp, listening to the garbled sounds of him trying to breathe. I watched as the blood vessels burst in the whites of his eyes, the muted glow from the streetlight giving me a front row seat to his death.
And how I fucking reveled in it, like flames with accelerant, an addict with his next hit, a lungful of oxygen after not being able to breathe.
I’d never claimed to be a good guy. I was the villain in every story, the boogeyman under beds. I was the grim reaper greedily coming to take that next life.
And I’d never apologize for it. Because I’d never stop. This was me. A monster who wore that title like a fucking crown.
Chapter
Eleven
Amara
The wedding
I didn’t know how long we stood there, seconds, minutes… God it felt like an eternity, but then the double doors were being pulled open, a man on each side holding them, their tuxedos pressed and sharp. Their expressions were stoic as they glanced our way.
My father had his hand curled around mine, which rested on his forearm. But I wasn’t foolish enough to think it was because he was trying to reassure me. No, he was doing it so I didn’t run. Not that I would get very far in these stilettos or with all the security.
I closed my eyes and breathed slowly.
The day had finally come. I was about to wed Nikolai, heir to the Desolation Russian mafia. A man who was by all accounts… bad.
And he was to be my husband, for better or worse.
My father’s body was tense beside me, almost forbidding. I chanced a glance at him out of the corner of my eye, my veil making his visage cloudy, hazy in appearance.
He looked over at me for just a second. I could see the softening on his face, or maybe it was wishful thinking, a little girl looking up at her father, hoping and praying that he would tell her everything would be okay.
But that wasn’t who Marco Bianchi was. He was cold and hard like a block of ice, and when I saw his jaw tense, a muscle under the freshly shaved olive toned skin flex, I felt… nothing. No disappointment, no sorrow, only let the absolute hopelessness that nothing would get better fill me until it’s all that consumed me. I accepted it, dare I even say embraced that this was who and what I was and nothing could change that.
I faced forward again, stared at the large oak double doors. Bodies lined the pews, each one standing up as the traditional wedding song started playing.
My heart was racing overtime when I saw Nikolai’s dark and imposing form at the end of the aisle. He waited for me, waited to take ownership of me.
For better or worse. For better or worse. For better or worse.
It was my father tugging me forward that had me blinking back into the present, breathing out slowly, thankful for the veil, in fact, because it hid how nervous I no doubt looked.
If I hadn’t been holding onto my bouquet with one hand, and gripping my father’s forearm with the other, I knew my fingers would be shaking.
The walk down the aisle seemed to take an eternity. I felt everyone's gazes on me, their stares like a heavy presence, a weight that kept pushing me further down, down, down. And then it was as if someone pressed fast forward.
Everything was a blur as I was handed off by my father to my soon-to-be new husband, as Nikolai led me up the two steps to the altar, as words spoken by the priest. I was aware of the heavyweight of my hand in Nikolai’s, and the only thing I could hear was the heavy rush of my breathing moving through my ears.