Chapter 37 Hero
HERO
She left shortly after two to catch her flight. She wore those pajamas all the way to the airport on my bike, the smallest one I had, the quietest, the one that I had a sudden urgent need to customize so that it worked better for her.
Yes, I planted bugs in Jezebel’s house before she stuck me in the closet, and also afterwards, so I wasn’t unaware of her plan, and it aligned perfectly with my own, at least the defeating Philippe in business part of it.
The rest, the part where she gave me up after this adventure was over, was not happening.
She didn’t trust me because she’d been raised by pathological liars, but she would eventually.
I’d prove over and over again that she was lovable, and that I loved her more than anyone else, and therefore deserved her trust and love in return.
Being with her was better than anything, but first, there were things we needed to take care of.
“Horse. How are things?” I asked into my mic, standing on the deck of my monstrous mansion, hefting the weighty jet pack before pulling it on over my shoulders.
His response growled into my ear. “Jezebel found the bugs and burned them. That was unpleasant for my audio equipment.”
I pulled a helmet on over my barely-there receiver and then spoke into the better comms inside the helmet. “Ghost her in your chopper. You’ve got your stealth?”
“Are you seriously flying that jetpack to the club? Too bad you can’t put it in the Three-Hundred. That would get some views.”
“You sound like Nix, but we all know that you don’t care about views, other than a certain car you don’t mind keeping framed in your windshield. Keep Dani personally in your sights until she gets to the airport where Jones can take over.”
“Look at you, getting comfortable giving orders.”
“You have a problem with authority? She’s mine. My responsibility, my wife, my happiness. If I think for a second you’re putting her in danger…”
“It’s your game now, Dirk. I’m just happy to watch Philippe go down in flames. Watch that you don’t go down with him. It’s good to know that you have something to live for these days.”
I finished strapping the vest of death to my body and attached the helmet. There was a new uncertainty as I buckled it down. I had to live, not be reckless with my life because Daniela needed me. My purpose in life was to give her everything she needed. Forever.
After a dizzying flight, I came down on the roof of the MGM, and there was Nix, waiting for me, eying my equipment like a tiger while he helped me take it off, then wrapped my wrists, taking more time than usual while he studied me.
“This is the one who roughed up your princess.”
“He’s a psychopath. He deserves whatever pain I give him.”
He nodded, but his eyes narrowed. “The Three-Hundred is over, and every year I expect you to leave the team and do something more lucrative with your skills, but I still have feelings of concern about you. You know the team is my family, which is why I’d never have a member who is vulnerable, because I’d want to crush the vulnerability out of them so they’d be strong.
But you’ve always had that sensitive streak, the one you dulled with alcohol, the one that vengeance can’t help. ”
I raised a brow at him. “Daddy Nix, are you trying to give me personal advice? I’m touched.”
His lips twitched with the repressed instinct to smile or snarl, but I wasn’t sure which.
He kept his actual feelings more guarded than anyone else I’d ever met.
“The Three-Hundred was out of control. The way you look at your princess is out of control. Control is the only thing that keeps us human. If you go in there and beat this pretty piece of filth to death, you’ll go to jail.
This fight isn’t legally sanctioned, so I have to trust you to have control, whatever he’s done to your sweetheart. ”
I studied him for a long time. The anger that had kept me running for so long was still there, but it was tempered by other feelings, the desperate need I had to protect Daniela above all else.
That’s why I was fighting Philippe tonight, to keep his gaze here instead of on her.
She needed a head start if she was going to succeed in taking him down.
Not that I wouldn’t appreciate the opportunity to make Philippe bleed, but it was doubtful that he could really feel the pain I wanted to give him.
Some people weren’t right, and he was one of them.
I gripped his arm and smiled at him. “Thanks for wrapping my hands. You’re the best. I’m not going to kill him.”
“That’s what you say, but just wait until you’re in there and he has that unapologetic smirk on his face. I want to kill him, and I’m not personally invested.”
“Good thing I’m fighting him instead of you, then.”
He scowled at me. “Also, if he kills you, do you have any requests? I’ll protect Daniela, and I’ll use Jezebel, so he’d definitely die if he tried to touch her, but where do you want all your tech to go?”
I stared at him, startled more than usual. “I’m not going to die. I need to do more than protect her; I need to give her the love she deserves.”
He winced. “Don’t start talking about love or you’ll lose your focus. Control.” He shook his head and pushed me towards the elevator. “It’s hopeless. I guess we’ll leave it to fate. One thing, watch out for his left hook.”
“You’ve seen him fight?” I asked, turning to glance at him over my shoulder.
“I’ve seen him walk through a crowded room. Left hook.” He mimed it, his muscles bunching while he frowned, like he didn’t understand why he wasn’t the one going into the ring against the biggest threat.
The ring was fairly subdued, only a few gamblers from a certain class, including Horse, Nix, Trevor, and Roger, while the rest weren’t known to me personally, although I did recognize a few faces.
International playboys of Phillippe’s circle had come to witness this fight, to bet on it, to enjoy the flow of blood. Were they all psychopaths?
Philippe was already in the ring, his tan skin interrupted here and there by a scar.
He saw me looking at his shoulder and touched his finger to it. “The first time she stabbed me. We were seven. I made her show me her glass knives, tried to steal them, and got to taste them instead.” He crouched down, blue eyes glittering with anticipation.
I followed more slowly, trying not to lose it to the instincts and rage. He wouldn’t ever taste anything of Daniela’s again. “She’d rather do other things with me than stabbing.”
He flashed his teeth. “And that’s why you aren’t in bed with her.
If I had her in my bed, I would not let her leave, and I certainly wouldn’t find anything more interesting to do, but I suppose you must avenge your sister.
If you can’t make her your priority, you don’t deserve her.
” His accent made his soft voice even more disarming.
He’d used all of that charm on my sister.
My heart raced, and I clenched my fists and raised them.
“I will give my wife what she wants, what she needs, like she needed and wanted me to kiss her the first time we met. She gives me what you have to steal from her. But never again. You aren’t touching her.
You aren’t looking at her. You aren’t ever going to hurt her again. ”
He snarled, and the fight was on. He was so fast, so precise, so perfectly trained, all his reflexes working to take everything I knew and beat me with it.
It hurt, not going to lie, but this was the fight for my sister, for Daniela, and I was in it to win, and not die.
I tried to give as good as I got, but it was hard to tell until a bell rang somewhere and Nix was in the ring, shoving us apart hard enough to bruise my breastbone.
“Keep it cleaner for round two,” he snarled at both of us before he let us go.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. There was a definite buzzing in my ears, but it wouldn’t affect me in a fight, and that’s what was important.
Once the bell went off, I ran at him, meeting his own charge with an impact that sent us rolling on the mat.
It wasn’t clean, and by the time the next bell rang, my arm was hanging awkwardly from my shoulder, dislocated probably.
Nix pulled us apart again and took a minute to fix my shoulder in an agonizing moment of clarity before turning and doing the same for Philippe’s elbow.
He said something to me, but the words were garbled, and everything was fuzzy.
Not everything. Philippe’s red and smashed face was in focus, as was the smile.
He didn’t feel the pain, only the pleasure in destroying what his cousin cared about.
Was he destroying me? The parts of my body that I could feel hurt.
I crouched and waited for the bell. This time, when it went off, I stepped to the side, dodging his left uppercut and slamming his kidneys, a shot that would hurt him much more than it would hurt me.
We weren’t trading pain for pain. I was going to walk out of here.
That was what I needed to win, so I had to minimize the worst contact.
He whirled around, a feral smile on his not-so-pretty face before he realigned his sights. He leapt towards me, a kick aimed at my head, but I dodged under him, rolling out of reach and again hit his kidneys.
“Yes!” Nix roared.
Control. This fight was mine, and it wasn’t to the death. It was to the distraction. The next time he attacked, he spun around at the last minute to tag me, but I was already spinning away.
I felt like a matador toying with a bull that got more enraged every time it didn’t gore me. He fed off my pain, and without it, he struggled.
The next time he charged me, I took it when he was expecting deflection, but I rolled with him, using his momentum against him.
I had him down and used the opportunity to knee those kidneys while I choked him out.
I held onto him while he bucked and struggled, as wriggly as a fish on a line, desperate to get free and eat me, but I wasn’t going to let him go.
Finally, the last bell buzzed and Nix was there, although he didn’t need to be, because I rolled off Philippe like it wasn’t personal, like I didn’t care about him or his pain, because he couldn’t touch me or my heart ever again.
It felt like that, like the misery he’d given me, that he’d relished so much, wasn’t as important as protecting my wife.
Philippe sprang up and was at me, not nearly hurt badly enough to stop fighting. Horse was right there behind him, dragging him to a stop.
“Fight’s over,” Nix snapped.
“I want a rematch!” Phillipe said, struggling against Horse.
I delicately touched my face and smiled when I realized that my nose wasn’t broken.
I didn’t even lose a tooth in that brawl.
“Talk to Nix. He’s the team leader. I’ve got to get back to bed before my wife wakes up.
I don’t think either of us will leave it for a few days.
” I winked at him and for a second he reared back, getting out of Horse’s grasp, but there was Nix, and he knew how to look down a bull so it stopped before you gored it.
Nix was a bull-goring human if ever there was one.
“The season’s over,” Nix snapped, shoving Philippe back. “You want a senseless brawl? Find someone who isn’t a professional. Dirk is a professional.” He gave me a nod of approval.
I couldn’t help smiling as I turned away, climbed out of the ring and was surrounded by Roger and Trevor.
“I’m going to check you over before I send you home to your… wife?” Roger raised a perfectly shaped brow skeptically.
“Yes. She’s my wife, and I intend to keep her.”