Chapter 24
Donavan
“I don’t mind taking care of it,” I tell Nash. “But if you want to do it, that’s fine, too.”
He shakes his head, his eyes staring off into the sunrise, the sky barely pink and orange.
“He’s not one of the ones from before.”
“They’re all pieces of shit. Just because he didn’t hurt you or Ayla doesn’t mean he didn’t hurt someone.”
His jaw flexes, irritation clear on his face. “I know.”
I shrug. “Consider it handled.”
I’m not close to any of these guys. We aren’t exactly the type of men to have planned jobs. More often than not, we don’t work well with others. I know calling him and offering this opportunity has more to do with Alani than it does anything else.
My skin is still too tight, the fucking gall that man had to touch her making my rage barely containable. I knew she was in danger, and as much as I warned her that her behavior was going to land her in some fucked-up situation, it didn’t happen until she made the decision to get her shit together.
“Ayla’s going to have questions.”
“I couldn’t get much out of him. I think he’s either new or extremely low on the fucking hierarchy.”
“Not about him,” he counters. “About her sister.”
I pull my eyes from his face, shifting some on my feet and angling my body further away. I don’t want to talk about Alani with anyone. I have a million questions, too, and I have zero answers for any of them.
“I’m not responsible for her.”
“Aren’t you though?” he asks, turning to look at me.
I keep my eyes locked on the street. If he tries to pull the older sister’s boyfriend and I’m just here to protect them both kind of shit on me, this morning is going to take one hell of a turn.
“She had a smile on her face when she cut that man.”
Just the reminder manages to turn me on.
“How long has she been doing this shit with you?”
I scoff. “Alani hasn’t seen me in months until last night.”
“She hasn’t seen you? But you’ve seen her?”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you, Nash. I called you over here for this guy because I didn’t know if it would help you with some form of fucking closure. I know a little about traumatic histories, but it wasn’t an open invitation for you to stick your nose in my business.”
“You need to ask her to leave.”
I clamp my lips closed. I dropped her off on his fucking porch several months ago, and all she did was turn right back around and get in the truck.
“No one tells her what to do. I’m sure you’ve figured that out already. She won’t listen to me. The best I can tell you is that I won’t ask her to stay.”
“She’ll read your silence as an invitation to stay.”
“And she’s still in fucking danger. She needs to be protected.”
“Like you protected her the first time you were asked?”
My fingers crack as I fist them at my sides. The night I met her was one of the most frustrating yet also rewarding nights of my life. It kicked off my obsession with her, and nothing else that I’ve tried has managed to calm that voice inside of me the way being around her does.
“I won’t ask her to stay,” I repeat before turning around and heading back into the house.
“I’ll be fine,” Alani says to her sister when I step into the living room.
Ayla looks at me, silent begging in her eyes. She wants me to tell her sister to leave, and I know Nash is right. If I don’t force her out of here, she’s not going to go.
My silence works in my favor, and Alani’s footsteps fall into line with mine when I head back down the hallway.
I expect Nash and Ayla to leave, but as I enter the blood-coated room, I hear them chatting quietly in the living room.
“Will you kill him?” Alani asks.
“Do you want him to live?”
Her eyes search mine, and I want to tell her that her answer shouldn’t depend on what I think.
“Would it make any difference?”
I give her a light smile and shake my head.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Do you want to kill him?”
Her eyes dart from me to the man. He’s silent now, his head hung low between his shoulders.
He isn’t quite dead yet. His chest is still inflating some, but he doesn’t have long.
He’s slowly bleeding to death. If we were to just walk out and leave him here, I imagine he’d be dead in an hour, but I have no intention of leaving him to die that way.
“He hurt me,” she whispers, her eyes locked on him. “I should want to, right?”
“I can’t tell you how to feel.”
She takes a step closer to him but doesn’t reach for any of the tools that would get the job done. I swear I’ll nut in my jeans if she wraps her hands around his throat and looks him the eyes as he struggles to breathe.
“I don’t think I want to kill him.”
“You don’t want to kill him or you don’t want him dead?” Just like she predicted, her answer won’t matter, but I’d like to know where her head is at.
“He has to die, but I don’t want to be the one to do it.”
“Do you want to watch it happen?”
She looks back in my direction, the slightest nod of her head moving me into action.
I step past her, grabbing the sharpest knife from the table, and step in behind the man.
She shifts, a little nervous gesture as I grip the man’s hair and hold his head up. He doesn’t whimper or beg, and if I had to guess, he’s already past the point of being able to respond.
“Keep your eyes open,” I tell her as I run the knife from one side of his neck to the other.
It’s honestly a lackluster death, his heart already beating so slowly that it doesn’t have the dramatic spurt one would expect.
She keeps her eyes locked on him, watching every second until the blood stops flowing from his newest wound.
“Alani?”
I could strangle Nash for interrupting this moment.
“Ayla wants to speak with you.”
Alani lifts her eyes to me, holding my gaze for a long moment before turning and leaving the room.
“I thought you were leaving,” I say, wiping the dirty knife on the guy’s jeans before dropping it back to the table.
“I wanted to discuss the two of them,” Nash says, making the regret in calling him in the first place even bigger.
“It’s simple. You need to protect them.”
He nods, as if that was always his plan.
“That’s easier said than done. It’s easy for Ayla, but I don’t think threatening Alani with an ass whipping is going to have the same affect it does on her sister.”
I barely manage to hold back the growl at him even implying putting his hands on Alani.
He chuckles, telling me I’m not as good at controlling my face as I am at controlling the sounds leaving my body. When the corners of his mouth pull up in a smirk, it feels like it was a test.
I fucking despise people who do that shit. It’s reminiscent of the Severino brothers. Everything was a fucking test with those two.
“Alani is mine to worry about,” I say, the warning in my voice that says him trying to say anything different will be met with a resistance he won’t like.
I’ve fought this fucking territorial sense I’ve felt from the first time I met her, and I’m fucking done.
It only causes undue stress. I know it has everything to do with witnessing her being hurt, knowing from the look in the man’s eyes that he would deliver Alani to Raul as ordered but she wouldn’t be in the same condition she left work in last night.
I regret not cutting his dick off before he passed out. It seems like a wasted opportunity now.
“For how long?”
“For how long what?” I snap.
“How long is she your responsibility? I need to know if I’m going to need to step back in tomorrow or the next day when she gets on your nerves.”
I want to say never, but I know myself too well for that. I’ve lived a solitary life for years, and I’m not exactly known for having patience. Although I can’t see it now, there may come a time when the shiny new toy is no longer fun to play with.
Instead of answering him, I walk past him, heading out of the room.
Both women are sitting quietly, an air of annoyance heavy around them. Neither seem happy, and it’s my experience that’s always the best compromise.
Nash heads to the kitchen sink and washes his hands even though he never touched the man. He looks to Ayla when he’s done.
“Ready to go?”
Ayla looks at her sister, but Alani is watching me.
“You should go with them,” I say, my tone flat.
“Probably,” Alani says, but instead of standing, she leans back and crosses one leg over the other, getting comfortable on the sofa.
Ayla doesn’t say a word as she walks across the room, following Nash out of the house.
“You really need to go.”
Alani doesn’t look impressed with my tone at all, but there’s no way to control the thickness in my voice, much like the thickening of my cock.
“If you stay…” I warn.
“I know,” she says, her eyes drifting lower on my body, a mischievous glint in them.