Chapter 35 #2
“I’m going to make you suffer, Priest, like no man has ever suffered before.
I’m going to make her watch, so her suffering adds spice to yours.
Together, you will both keep me entertained for a very, very long time.
” Roark turned his head a bit, his lips close to Priest’s ear, but his eyes fixed on me, as he murmured something so low I couldn’t make it out from my position across the mat.
Whatever it was, was enough to cause the blood to drain out of Priest’s face.
Roark chuckled darkly and slapped Priest on the back.
“Some sins are more gratifying than others, eh, Priest?”
I blocked out the desperate pleading and agonized cursing from Priest as Roark folded his knife and tucked it into his back pocket.
He stalked over to where I was now huddled on my knees, clutching myself around the middle and quivering.
Perverse pleasure filled Roark’s face as he stopped right in front of me.
The harsh sound of the zipper on his slacks being pulled down threatened to send what little remained in my stomach back up my throat, but I held myself together.
My ghosts supported me, encouraged me, reminded me of what I was fighting for, and whispered what would happen again should I fail into my ear.
As if I needed the reminder. This was make-or-break time for all of us.
Roark grabbed my arm and yanked me toward him.
He squeezed my jaw roughly and wrenched my face up, and I let him.
“That’s what I fucking thought,” he said smugly.
“Open. You’re going to take every inch I have.
” I finally allowed my “Girl” mask to slip, showing Roark who I really was. Who I’d grown into.
“You first,” I said, lips twisting in a vicious smirk as I drove my handy-dandy butterfly knife into Roark’s shoe and down into the mat, pinning his foot in place.
I’d hidden my favorite blade in my boot and had been concealing it against my abdomen ever since Roark had thrown me away in favor of tormenting Priest just a little bit more.
It never occurred to him, not for one single moment, that I’d ever raise my hand to him.
Roark believed I could never be more than what he made me to be.
Like most narcissistic, sadistic assholes, he couldn’t comprehend the idea of me being a complete and whole human being independent of him.
Roark might have molded me, but I broke that fucking mold.
I couldn’t erase my past, but I could build something on its foundation that was uniquely me.
Roark’s shock, while gratifying, was short-lived.
His fist slammed into my cheek, and I saw stars before I could focus enough to see Roark draw his knife from his pocket.
His wrist flicked, and the blade gleamed in the harsh fluorescent lights.
His arm drew back, preparing to cut me for my defiance, and I instinctively braced for impact.
Instead of the bite of steel, I heard the sharp crack of gunfire.
A single shot, expertly aimed through the window I’d cleared upstairs, ripped through the shoulder of Roark’s dominant arm.
The knife tumbled from his grasp. A second crack had Roark down on one knee, his right thigh sporting a brand-new hole.
Springing into action, I launched myself forward and knocked the knife away.
Roark swiped at me with his left arm, but I anticipated and blocked his blow.
Still pinned in place by my blade in his foot, Roark was unable to escape my fist. It slammed into Roark’s cheek, over and over, splitting the skin on my knuckles.
With an inhuman snarl, I straddled his waist, taking him to the mats and raining down blow after blow on the monster who had terrorized me my entire life.
I was saying things, things my ears couldn’t process at the moment, when I felt the crunch of cartilage beneath my knuckles.
Blood spurted from Roark’s ruined nose and crimson-filled mouth, but I was helpless to stop.
Twenty years of powerlessness, rage, and pain seeped through my cracks and fractured pieces.
I rained the damage down on the man who’d been at the root of it all.
Eventually, sounds began to make sense again, the haze of survival instinct drawing back and allowing rational thought to return to the room with me.
Roark was unconscious and losing blood but still breathing below me.
The pop of gunfire rang from outside Savage Delights, and the doors burst open behind Priest. Crows and Petrovs streamed through the entrance of Savage Delights, while even more filled the lot.
Riordan, kitted out in a bulletproof vest and carrying a handgun in a two-handed grip as his eyes swept the space, hustled up to my position in the ring. Duke and Mikhail weren’t far behind.
Duke rushed straight to his son with a bratva doctor, who immediately began to triage Priest’s wounds.
“Secure him,” I demanded, shoving off Roark and wiping my bloody hands on my pants.
I didn’t want to get any of Roark’s blood on Priest, who’d already been exposed to too much of my nightmares for tonight.
I didn’t want any other part of my past to touch him, but I couldn’t stop myself from rushing to his side as Duke cut the ropes holding Priest to the chair.
The doctor checked Priest’s pupils as Duke began to apply pressure to his stab wound.
My hand clutched at his as Bones rushed up with another of Mikhail’s men, a stretcher braced between them.
The question of whether I would stay with my family to transport Roark to a holding cell below The Goldfinch or ride with Priest to a makeshift hospital wasn’t even up for debate.
I’d given Roark Callahan all the time he was going to get from me tonight.
He didn’t deserve any more than that, and I had more important things to worry about now, like the thready breathing and wan face of the man I’d fallen for.
And I mean fallen hard. I had tumbled ass over elbow into love with Lochlan Abbott, and he was stuck with me now.
As I jogged out, hand clutching Priest’s as his stretcher was carried to a waiting truck, my eyes met Mikhail’s where he stood over the prone form of his brother-in-law.
His chin dipped once, understanding in his eyes.
Any softness, however, vanished the moment he looked at the man at his feet.
Riordan stood shoulder to shoulder with his pakhan, giving me a smirk as he barked orders in Russian to their men, who began to prepare Roark for transport.
As shitty as my day had been, I had a feeling Roark’s was about to get much, much worse.