32. Wolf
Tyres screeching, I careen around the street corner like a rally car driver, drifting the vehicle right up onto the front lawn, stopping directly in front of the steps.
Vito gets out at the same time as I do, barking orders at his men who pull up in hordes at our backs. Hunter and Thorne are running across the front lawn, meeting me at the front door.
“Let my men clear you a path,” Vito says on a sharp exhale, “don’t waste your time on the foot soldiers, when there’s a grander prize for you just past them.”
It makes sense.
Hunter scowls, but he doesn’t object, and Thorne nods as Vito’s men rush past us, breaking through both the front and back doors at the same time and storming in.
Despite their guns having silencers, the bellows, barks and cries of men is not going to go unnoticed in a lazy, little street like this.
We won’t have much time.
I give the men an entire sixty-seconds to clean house, counting it down too fast in my head, and then I’m barrelling inside, grabbing the first guy I see.
My fingers close around his neck, slamming him back into the wall as his hands claw at my wrists. I knock him into it again and again, until blood is splattering over the cream wallpaper and the crunch of bone fills my ears.
“LUNA!” I roar, wondering if she’ll hear me, be able to respond, give me an indication of where she is, but there’s nothing in response, too much noise surrounding me, making it impossible to hear.
I’m heading for the stairs, because despite not knowing where Luna is, it’s as though I can feel her, sense her. Somewhere, deep inside this house my heart beats and I just need to find it.
My knuckles crunch and pound and pummel, I fire off shots and stab my way through bodies.
Until I reach the upstairs corridor.
It’s long and dark and dingy, wall sconces lit few and far between. It’s like an underground tunnel, only it’s upstairs, heavy velvet drapes are pulled across every window, shutting out the world to create a new one.
A hell.
He’s big, I’ll give him that much, the guard that steps out in front of me and blocks the door at the very end of the hall.
The one I’m heading straight for.
To his credit, he looks like a mean motherfucker. Shorn dark hair, hard eyes, broad shoulders and thick arms. He’s only a little shorter than me, a couple inches at most, but we’re evenly matched weight wise, his frame holding hard packed planes of muscle just as solid as mine.
“You’re not getting in that room,” he informs me, like I’ve come here to make small talk, but all he’s done is confirm that’s where my girl is.
“You touched her?” I ask him instead, because I’m almost certain, from the shit Luna’s told me, every one of these fucker’s have held her down to be tortured.
He lifts a dark brow, shrugs, and then the fucker smirks.
He’s aiming a gun at me, but we know now, bullets don’t fucking kill me, they bring me back to life.
I run, smashing into him, and throwing the bar of my arm up and into his outstretched one, knocking the gun from his fist as an errant shot goes off, hitting the ceiling and sending a flurry of dust down onto us. He grunts as my shoulder connects with his sternum, bending him in half and knocking him stumbling back a couple paces.
But he doesn’t go down.
The guy brings up his knee, smashing it into my groin and making me see stars as pain explodes in my pelvis.
We go down together.
Rolling across the hardwood, my spine smashes into the wall, my heart thundering in my chest as I try to catch my breath, but there’s no time, the guy’s fist finding my face and crashing into my cheekbone as my own fist comes up, connecting with his kidney, once, twice, three times, before he’s tumbling away, trying to put space between us. But I can’t allow that. There’s not enough time for space.
I reach down into my boot, gripping the handle of my knife and throw myself forward. The two of us tumbling directly into the double doors he was so adamant about guarding, and stab my blade into his upper spine, directly between his shoulder blades.
His eyes go wide, the heel of my other hand jabbing him in the throat, and then his lips part as I tear out my knife, stab it back in, again and again in quick succession. Pushing it as deep as it’ll go until my hand is slippery and wet with warmth, and a breath coughs up his throat, blood spraying my face as he splutters. I shove him away from me, rolling his body off of mine with a thud.
Throwing myself into standing, I bend down to retrieve the discarded gun, yanking out the magazine and counting the seven bullets. I’m only gunna need one. Shoving it into the back of my jeans, I turn, facing the doors, taking one solid breath, my shoulders heaving, I grab hold of the handles, shove them down and thrust open the doors into the room.
My entire body is heaving up and down with my breaths as her name bellows out of my throat. Blood is dripping down my face, my hair wet with blood, my white t-shirt stained red, but nothing could ever distract from the fact that the man before me, squeezing my beautiful Luna’s pretty face, a nasty split in her lip, holding a gun to her temple, is going to die.
“I might not have killed her properly the first time, but I can tell you one thing,” Nolan snarls, “I won’t miss a second.”
Even though my every hackle is raised, every instinct demands that I shoot him now, end all of this, save her, take her into my arms and kiss her better, I laugh.
It’s a wild, throaty, psychotic sound that tears its way up my tonsils, barking free of my tongue. I shake my head, my body juddery and full of energy, a wolf pacing before an attack.
“You could shoot her,” I shrug, “or you could shoot me and keep her.”
It’s all I say, holding my arms out at my sides, watching as he checks my hands for a weapon. This man’s not a fighter, he’s an overconfident moron. I can work with that.
“She’s already mine,” he spits at me, flicking his gaze up from my drenched boots to my crimson painted t-shirt, claw marks bleeding down his cheeks, his eye, it makes me want to smile.
“Not anymore, you threw her away.”
“I thought she was dead!” he screams at me, his entire body shaking. “Those morons!” he shouts. “Can’t do anything right, they were supposed to get rid of her body so even you and your filthy crew of mutts couldn’t get your bloody hands on her.”
He’s a good looking guy, dressed well, neat beard, styled hair, money, that’s what that is, a disguise paid for with blood.
“You think I fuck corpses?” I snort casually, wanting to glance at Luna, because even like this, that sentence I use mockingly to taunt, makes me think of treating her exactly like that, before taking her virginity on the fucking morgue slab.
Blood rushes to my cock, even in a situation like this, and I lick my lips.
Fuck, I love you, Little Moon.
“I think you would,” he spits, snarling his upper lip, “she had to know who she belonged to.”
“So you killed her?” I ask, genuinely trying to understand the logic here. “Why not just lock her up?”
“She wasn’t meant to die, but seeing her on your lap in that hospital,” he huffs out a sharp breath. “Disgusting.”
“So you just… what? Got carried away?” I cock my head, staring at him, his chest heaving, his eyes bulging, his finger not on the trigger.
“It’s none of your fucking business.” He spits then, really spits, bloody saliva onto the floor between us. “Get the fuck out of my house!” he bellows, letting out his rage, and aiming the gun at me.
“Now, Luna!”
That’s when I look at her, pretty and perfect in her summer dress, cropped cardigan, and ballet flats. She blinks, reaching up and over her head, plucking the long sharp needle out from her big, white hair bow and holding my gaze, those big, ice-blue eyes boring into my soul, she stabs it into his neck. The sharpened tip making it slide through his throat like a hot knife through butter.
Nolan chokes, not even managing to fire his weapon at me as Luna yanks out the long pin before driving it right back in again, his hand dropping from her face. When she pulls it out a third time, his body slumping to his knees, blood spurts out in an arc, decorating the wall and spraying her in splatter.
We both run to each other at the same time as the heavy thud of his face colliding with the hardwood echoes around the room.
“Luna,” I breathe.
At the same time, she gasps, “Wolf.”
Our lips mash together, my hands cupping her face, her fists tangling in my t-shirt. Tongues licking, our kiss tasting of blood and victory, I haul her up into my arms, her long legs wrapping around my waist. It’s desperate and raw and violent.
She bites my lip and I suck on her tongue, and we cover each other in blood.
There’s horror and violence, life and death, but above all else, when her lips press to mine, these gentle, urgent kisses, there’s love.