Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
AKIO
I repeatedly flashed my high beams at Joe Santos from behind him in the darkness.
Joe Santos had been driving around Redwood for two hours, talking on his phone, probably to his buddies about fucking a barely legal academy student and the police chief’s daughter. And I had been following him for that long at a distance, waiting for him to pull over.
But I was fucking done trying to be subtle.
The longer I stared at this scumbag through my windshield, the more I fucking loathed him, the harder I dug my fingers into the steering wheel, and the heavier my foot pressed on the accelerator.
After glancing in the rearview mirror and spotting my car behind him, he turned onto a more discreet road that led to the Overlook. I followed behind him, turning on my high beams for good and hoping that it blinded that asshole.
A few moments later, he parked on the side of the Overlook. I slammed on my brakes behind him, threw the car into park, and stormed out of it just as he was opening his car door. My hands shook with rage, and I … I … I couldn’t help myself.
“Akio, if I had known that it was you?—”
Before he could say another word, I ripped him out of the driver’s seat and hurled him toward the rocks so hard that he fell backward down the first few of them, knocking his head on his way down and landing on one near the water.
There was nothing between Nicole and me. Absolutely nothing.
She had made it clear that I wasn’t her type, that she didn’t like me, and that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. But I didn’t care. Because when she’d slipped into my car, it wasn’t anger etched into her face.
It was fear.
Fear of something I couldn’t quite decipher then, but I could now.
After Nicole had whispered that they all hurt her, that he hurt her, it was clear that she hadn’t really wanted it. Or maybe she did, but he had taken it too far. And I wasn’t going to let any of Mom’s scummy men hurt the one girl I had liked since elementary school.
“Akio, what are you?—”
I slammed my foot into his side.
He reached for his gun, but I pulled out the one that Mom forced me to carry around with me and shot off his hand before the gun could make it out of his waistband.
Screaming out in pain, he grasped his wound with his empty hand. “What the fuck are you doing?!”
“You hurt her.”
“Yui is fine!” he shouted. “I didn’t touch?—”
“Not my mother.” I smashed my foot into the side of his head. “Nicole.”
“Who?”
A low growl escaped my throat, and I dropped to my knees in front of him and hurled my fist at his face. Rage seized hold of me, the way I had seen it take hold of my mother since I had been a kid. And yet, I still couldn’t control myself.
Nor did I want to.
Not after I saw him inside Nicole.
Not after she admitted that he hurt her.
Desperate to shove me off him, he reached for the gun again, this time with his unwounded hand. I kicked it with my boot so the waves washed it away, and I climbed onto him to keep him still.
I had never been a physically strong guy like Mom wanted me to be, but she had taught me how to fight. And I was going to use that to kill one of her men because he fucking deserved it for everything he had done.
Once I grabbed his collar, I slammed his skull into the rocks repeatedly.
Not stopping until blood gushed out of an open wound on his head.
Screaming and shouting and shrieking, he attempted to push me away, to hit me back, to stab me with whatever type of sharp rock the waves had washed up into his grimy hands. But there was no stopping me.
Crimson gore stained my hands. My knuckles had split open. Salty water soaked the bottoms of my pants. But seeing this man struggle underneath me, tasting his blood spraying back up at me from his worthless body, feeling the life leave his corpse …
Made it all worth it.
When he didn’t even twitch after one last punch, I released his collar and stood over him on the rocks. Then, I spit on him like I believed he had probably done to Nicole. He’d just seemed like that kind of asshole.
My chest rose and fell harshly at the sudden burst of energy and adrenaline. And I could barely see straight. But I wasn’t worried about what I had just done. I would do it over and over again if I had to.
So, after slipping his phone into my pocket, I used the heel of my shoe to shove him into the Atlantic Ocean. With waves this rough, his body would be shredded by morning. And if anyone did find him, nobody would care. He was just another pawn in my mother’s game, just someone expendable. Like anyone else would be if they hurt my girl.