Chapter 37
Bastian
Haven whimpers when the man presses the knife to her throat hard enough to leave a mark on her skin. She’s shaking, clinging to the arm around her throat, but her eyes are glassy.
She’s checked out.
Good.
No one should witness what comes next.
“Bit chilly for a mugging,” I tell the man, giving him a languid smile as I reach for my suit pocket. Our little tryst began so quickly that I never even shed my jacket. Thank fuck, because my wallet’s in here.
When the mugger stiffens, his eyes tracking my hand like I’m reaching for a fucking assault rifle, I pause and broaden my smile.
“Easy. Just getting my wallet.” I keep my movements slow, deliberate. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Money?”
The man’s lip curls. He’s younger than I expected—late-twenties, maybe—with the hollowed cheeks and the twitchy energy of an addict. Booze or drugs—possibly both. There’s a scar running down the side of his face, and when he pulls Haven back a step, out of reach, it’s with a pronounced limp.
Surprisingly, he sneers at the notes I fan out. “This bitch owes me more than that.”
“You take Venmo?” I ask, utterly nonchalant.
He snort-laughs, then sniffs hard, dragging his hand under his nose, jostling Haven like a rag doll in the process and nearly slicing her cheek.
She doesn’t seem to notice.
Christ, she’s disassociating hard.
“Will five grand do?”
He stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. I’m wondering the same.
Why is this waste of skin still breathing?
Oh, right.
The knife at my sweet girl’s throat.
“Alright.” I lift my hand. “I’ll make it ten. Think of how far you could get with ten thousand dollars. Definitely ditch this shithole of a town, right? Take a road trip? I hear California’s nice this time of—“
“You retarded or something, you fucking cunt?” the man yells, showing me his teeth. He shakes Haven. Hard. So hard, I hear her teeth clack. Then he puts his stinking mouth by her ear and rasps, “Tell your boyfriend what you did.”
Haven’s lips move, but no sound comes out.
“Tell him!”
“She can’t speak. She’s in shock,” I say calmly.
The mugger seems to come to the same conclusion. He glares at her, then at me, slashing the knife wildly in the air before pricking the tip beneath Haven’s jaw.
“This fucking bitch tried to kill me!”
My mind scrambles to put the pieces together.
I can come to only one conclusion.
“Lenny?” I query hesitantly. He’s obviously too young…then again, Bobby never told me how old his brother-in-law was.
“Lenny? Lenny?” the man shrieks. “Fuck Lenny!”
Haven mumbles, “No, no, no,” under her breath.
I suppress a laugh.
Seems my sweet girl has secrets.
Haven’s neck bends as the man grabs her hair and yanks her head to the side, stretching her neck for his knife.
My chest feels like it’s going to implode.
The urge stirs, panting in my ear.
“Make him beg,” says Bad Wolf.
“Then spill his guts for touching her,” Good Wolf says.
I hold out a hand, forcing a hard swallow so my words will be calm and not fraught with panic.
“Listen, whatever she did to you, there’s nothing money can’t fix. So just name your price—“
“Yeah?” He turns his face to show me the scar down his cheek. “Can money fix this?”
I take a careful step forward, squinting like I can’t make out anything in the dark. “It’s hard to see—“
“This, motherfucker!” The man drags Haven aside, using the wrist holding the knife to swipe over his scar.
“Oh, that.” I take another step closer, examining the mark. “Well, I’m not a plastic surgeon, but—“
“This psycho bitch hit me with her fucking car!”
Kai comes out of nowhere.
I’m not even sure how the fuck he sneaked up on me and the mugger, but he materializes from the dark behind the man like a specter.
There’s a flurry of movement.
Kai putting the mugger in a chokehold.
Me grabbing Haven away from the man’s flailing arm a second before I twist the knife out of his grip.
Haven collapsing against the side of the Land Rover and sliding to the ground like her bones have given out.
Maybe they have.
I don’t check—not because I don’t care, but because I’m not in control anymore.
Bad Wolf has taken the reins.
And I’ve been letting him starve lately, so he’s ravenous.
I twirl the knife until it’s pointing at the mugger, and ram it hilt-deep into his shoulder, right beneath the collarbone. It’s not a fatal wound by any means, but from his shriek, it hurts like hell.
With that pain surfaces the animal instinct to survive at all costs, honed through millions of years of evolution.
He tears free of Kai, but I’m still gripping his wrist. His free hand claws at my face, but I’ve been doing this longer than he’s been alive.
I twist. Feel the bones in his wrist grind together, then snap.
He screams again, then again when I tear the knife out of him.
I look at Haven.
She’s struggling to her feet, staring at me and Kai as we try to keep the mugger from breaking free and running.
If it were just me out here, he’d be dead already. But I catch sight of Haven—the horror on her face as she presses back against the car.
She’s caught a glimpse of the real monster.
I loosen my grip.
The mugger tears his wrist free and yanks himself away from Kai. We both let him run, both of us focused on Haven.
She blinks like she’s coming out of a dream…or a nightmare. Then she glances to the man disappearing into the dark. When she looks back at us, there’s a vicious glare in her eyes that does nefarious things to my cock.
“Stop him.”
I take off after the mugger at a sprint.
A second later, I hear footsteps drumming behind me.
We catch him seconds later as he tries to scale a droopy chain-link fence cordoning off the side of the embankment from the railway tracks to stop people trespassing. I grab the back of his jacket, Kai grabs his legs, and we pull him off the fence.
As soon as his back hits the ground, I plunge the knife into his stomach.
Again, not a fatal blow. Not by itself.
But the knife keeps rising and falling. In seconds, the mugger’s clothing is wet with blood. It clings to my hand and starts pooling in the ruins of his torso. Eventually, more than blood is glistening. Exposed skin, muscle, and fat shine obscenely even in the dark out here.
He stops yelling, but I’m not sure if that happens before or after the muscles in my arm are burning from exertion.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, tugging at me, but I shake it off and keep stabbing.
Haven’s voice finally brings me around. “Bastian, stop.”
I sit back on my heels, still gripping the knife in a white-knuckled hand.
Kai’s voice is strained. “What the fuck? What the fuck, Rooke? Are you—did you just—” He can’t seem to finish his sentence.
I turn to look at him.
He’s standing a foot away, chest heaving, staring at me like he’s never seen me before.
He hasn’t. Not really. Not before now.
Neither of them have.
Kai is pale and trembling, hair slicked to his forehead with sweat.
Haven looks…serene. She stares down at the motionless body with unfocused eyes, lips parted, her hands gently pressed to her stomach.
I expect her to throw up, or scream, or run. Kai clearly expects the same, because when she just stands there staring down at the body, he grabs her wrist.
“Hey, are you—”
“I’m fine.” Her voice is hollow, but steady.
“You’re not fine! None of this is fine!” I can see his panic cresting. “How do you know this guy? What did he mean about—”
“Kai.” Haven’s voice cuts through his panic, but he rallies a moment later.
“We have to call someone. We have to—”
“We’re not calling anyone.” I slip the switchblade into my suit jacket and crouch beside the body, checking the pockets. Wallet, phone, several baggies of drugs. I take it all. “We’re going to dispose of him, and then we’re going to forget this ever happened.”
“Forget? How the fuck am I supposed to forget—”
“Help me move him,” I say.
Kai chokes out a protest until Haven turns to him and cups his face. “You got this,” she murmurs.
Kai stares at her. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Later.” She meets his eyes, then mine, her hands dropping away from Kai’s face. “I’ll explain everything. I promise.”
“Come on,” I say to Kai. “Help me get him in the trunk.”
He moves robotically, trying not to look as we carry the body back to the Land Rover. As soon as we’ve dumped him inside, Haven arrives.
“I’m going to drop you two off at the nearest gas station. You call an Uber from there and get back home. I’ll take care of—“
“No. This is…this is my mess.” She wraps her arms around herself, shivering in the cold.
I don’t argue. There’s iron determination in her voice, and arguing is just going to put us at the scene of the crime that much longer. “Fine. Kai, you take an Uber—”
“Like hell,” he mutters, sounding a hell of a lot less sure than Haven. But I was idiotic for even suggesting it, because he will not leave her side. Not tonight.
“Fine. Then buckle in, because we’re going to be driving for a while to find a spot for—“
“I know a place.”
We both turn to look at Haven, but only Kai manages a weak, “How—”
She tightens her arms, shrugging nonchalantly. To a casual observer, it might seem that she’s still in shock.
But when her eyes lock with mine and a wry smile touches her mouth, I know she’s fully present. A hundred percent cognizant.
And completely sincere when she says, “Trust me on this.”