20. Rage
Chapter 20
Rage
When I was five years old, I saw my father kill a man. There was no finesse about it. The guy walked up to my father with a baseball bat slung over his shoulder, and despite the busy street and dozen witnesses, my father tore the bat from his hands and beat him with it. Brutally. There was brain matter on the pavement, blood spray on my clothes, and a feral gleam in my father’s eye. I used to wonder what was going through my father’s mind, but now that I’m an adult, sometimes I can feel it. That same pulse of frenetic energy courses through my veins whenever I beat information out of someone or remind them what happens when you miss paying your dues two months in a row. The world tilts. My heart sings. For that brief moment, nothing else matters but the feel of flesh beneath my knuckles.
But the difference between me and my father is that he would lash out at us, too. His children. His wife. Anyone who dared give him a funny look. He wasn’t in control of it—the impulse took him over in a frenzy until he was too exhausted to continue.
When Celia first wraps her hands around my throat, I can feel the buzz of it in my fingertips. That wild energy sparking, seeking an outlet. I know that it’s some kind of fight or flight response, something about the body’s need to preserve itself and keep on fighting, to make sure we don’t keel over just because we’re too weak to fend off an attacker.
Celia isn’t attacking me, though. It might look like it to anyone else, but she’s not happy about it. Her hands shake. There’s a tremor in her voice. Yeah, she’s furious at me for being involved in the Baranova wedding bullshit, but that doesn’t make her a killer. Even when I forced her to her knees in front of a hundred people at the club, she might have hated me for it, but she wouldn’t kill me. The difference involves two things:
Control.
Preservation.
I understand both. I’m in control of when I release my pent up energy in a fight. I know when to pull back before snapping someone’s collarbone or breaking their ribs. It’s a gut instinct, sure, but there are indicators for when it’s time. Signs that the other person’s body gives off to let me know this is it, they’re too close to the edge, and I need to pull back.
Preservation is part of survival. We all have the ability to stay alive—it’s why adrenaline is such a bitch when it hits. Your body is fighting to stay alive, giving you one final push of energy so that you can either fight for your life or get the fuck out of Dodge.
When Celia wraps those beautiful, talented hands around my neck, she still has control. Strangling me isn’t about letting out her anger—it’s about preserving her own life, saving herself from a perceived threat.
Me.
I’ve known that I’m a threat to others.
But to Celia? I guess I’m her Public Enemy Number One. Maybe it’s because I told her that I wanted to hurt her. Or the thought of being tied to me, literally, legally, or otherwise, is too fucking astounding for her to accept— no, for her to admit that she might not hate it as much as she thinks she should.
I saw the look in her eyes when I promised her a baby. That’s not the look someone makes out of hate. There was a bright fucking star of hope shining in her gorgeous eyes, and I know that she believed me.
She has no reason not to.
So she strangles me not because she hates me, or because she wants to kill me, but because she’s scared that I might actually give her what she wants—and her mind hasn’t caught up to the fact that being with me is a good thing.
Preservation first.
Then control.
Because she could have killed me. Easily. With her hands. With the gun tucked into my waistband. With the half dozen weapons I keep stored around my car—hell, there’s an even smaller pistol stuck under the front fender that’d fit in the palm of her hand like a glove. She had options.
And she chose to spare me.
Just like I chose to spare her.
Falling unconscious feels a lot like drowning. No one talks about it, but being unable to breathe can make the world go fuzzy. Your lungs burn. Your heart races. That bitch, Adrenaline, kicks into high gear. It would have been easy to break Celia’s hold over me, toss her ass into the car, and tie her up for being a brat.
She promised that she was mine.
We don’t break our fucking promises.
I need to get her a goddamn collar so that every time she swallows my fat load down her throat, she remembers who she belongs to.
This shit won’t happen again.
A growl rumbles in my chest as I check, again , for the spare key to my handcuffs. She must have found them and took ‘em with her. Clever girl. The gun I took from Thanatos is missing, so she snagged that, too, before cuffing me to the rail I had custom-fitted beneath my sedan. I normally use it to drag people a few hundred feet down the road. She used it to keep me here while she ran away from me.
I wish I could have glimpsed those skimpy red panties while she high-tailed it out of here.
The need to take roars in my ears. It’s only a matter of time before I find her. Before we find her. Ruin will bust a nut at the mere mention of chasing her down, and Thanatos, despite his goddamn issues with her history, can track her anywhere. Rebel will have a fucking field day simply because we’re doing something out of the ordinary.
I don’t have to worry about my brothers.
I don’t even have to worry that they’ll want to kill her for hurting me. Resistance to change is normal. It’s part of the process. Denial. Resistance. Then acceptance, or what-the-fuck-ever the steps are. Point is, she’ll come around.
Especially after we fuck a baby into her. Then preservation won’t just be for herself, it’ll be for our child.
And what loving mother wants their child to grow up fatherless? Surely not our girl. I can tell she was a daddy’s girl up until he died, and I can be the same for our child. Loving. Supportive. Present.
Celia hit the fucking jackpot with me and my brothers, because we won’t fuck around with affairs, or secret lives, or boring nine-to-five jobs that keep us stressed and impotent. When one of us is busy, the other can slide right into place to pick up where the first left off. She won’t have just one husband, but several. Not one partner, but three.
Point being, she doesn’t realize what she’s running from, so we’ll have to remind her. As many times as it takes.