Chapter Thirty-One #3
I shot his other knee, and the laughing turned to an agonised whimper. “You have many painful joints,” I said. “I have an abundance of bullets. You do the math.”
His lips pursed together, and squeezed his eyes closed. “You have no idea who you are dealing with.” He blew out a shaky breath. “These people own us, they own everything we have, and they can take it all from us.”
A powerful growl sounded from the open hidden door at the side of the mantlepiece, a man crossed with a bear emerging from the hole. He stampeded toward me, his weight knocking me back as he impacted me. His arms encircled me like iron bars, squeezing all the oxygen from my body.
I bucked against his restraint, using my strength to try and loosen his grip.
My head connected with his chin, and I aimed my feet to his knees.
Taking a deep breath to expand my ribcage, I exhaled rapidly and dropped my weight toward the floor, holding onto his thumb and twisting until I felt the pop of it dislocating.
Pain screamed in my chest, and it hurt like hell to suck in breath. The fucker must have damaged my ribs.
I spun around to face my opponent. He had the appearance of someone who had fallen into a vat of steroids and drank his way out of it. Muscles that big tended to be easily injured, and I intended to use that fact to my advantage.
He stalked forward, launching an attack with the skill of a cage fighter.
I dodged him for a moment to catch my breath.
When he lunged forward, I jabbed him in the throat with as much force as I could muster, and then brought my attention to his nose.
He stumbled back a step as I broke it, and blood gushed down his face.
Noses were delicate, and the injury would affect his vision.
His fist connected with the side of my head, and the cartoons were right in their depiction. I could have sworn I saw stars circling me. Shaking myself, I dodged the blow from his other fist just in time, or I would probably have a concussion.
I kicked hard and fast between his legs to insert his balls into his body cavity, punching him in the face again.
Dad had insisted I was trained in combat from a young age, but Jake and I had honed our skills in the underground fighting circles.
I circled around, aiming for his kidneys as there wouldn’t be as many of those huge muscles there to protect them.
He tried to follow me, but I continued to move as his face began to swell making it difficult to focus on me. I learned a long time ago that if your opponent couldn’t see, they couldn’t follow or fight you. He flinched back when I struck his nose again, the bones moving dramatically under my fist.
He roared, lunged to where I had been a few seconds ago.
I grabbed his head, my thumbs sticking into the sides of his eyes to dig deep before I flicked them out.
Noses were bloody when broken, but eyes also had a delicate vascular system that leaked when damaged.
One of his eyeballs hit the floor, the other hanging by a thread.
I returned my attention to Brendan the human slug, every breath hurting whatever was damaged in my ribs.
“You know what?” I demanded. “I think you have no idea what the fuck is going on. Alexander loved power too much to share it with his heir.”
I lifted a gun from the floor, and shot Brendan in the right shoulder.
The monster who I’d been fighting aimed himself toward the sound of my voice.
I spun, aiming for his head since there was too many body muscles to penetrate through.
He froze for a moment, stopping before he collapsed as if someone had cut the strings of his puppet.
“You’re a fucking maniac!” Brendan gasped, still trying to escape.
I knelt beside him. “You touched my wife,” I said calmly. “You know the rules of this organisation.”
“Take what you want,” he pleaded. “I’ll pay the penalty!”
Weakness sickened me. Men like Brendan had to make others suffer just to make himself feel like a man.
“I don’t play by their rules,” I replied. “And I don’t need your money. I have more than I could spend in ten lifetimes. Do you know what I do care about?”
Brendan opened and closed his mouth. He pulled a gun from behind his back and aimed at me.
I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my lips at his desperate attempt to hold the gun in his left hand.
Not many men were able to use a gun in both hands like myself, and I doubted Brendan was one of them.
“Go ahead,” I taunted him. “I’ll give you one free shot.” I held my arms out as I stood up.
“Outbuildings clear,” Jake said in my ear. “Commencing to house through tunnels.”
We were on the countdown to this place being eradicated from the face of the Earth until Google maps wouldn’t be able to find it.
Gun shots rang out beside me and I saw what was left of Greg being executed. There was nothing left to identify him. Megan had looked bad, but his appearance was ten times worse following his interaction with Jordan.
The Englishman spun on his heel, and stalked away from Greg, returning to Megan since his temper had been vented.
Brendan had taken my moment of diversion to fire the gun, missing me by a wide mile. I slowly returned my attention to him as he frantically tried to pull the trigger over and over again.
“Only one bullet?” I asked. “What a shame.”
I turned to Olivia, holding my hand out to her. She wanted to see what my life was like, and she had experienced what I had wanted to shelter her from. Her steps were shaky, her face pale, but she made it to my side.
“What did he do to you?” I demanded.
Olivia stared at me, her eyes wide. She pursed her lips together for a moment. “He tied me to a table.” Her voice sounded raspy, and she held her hand to her throat. “He tried to strangle me, and touched me.” She tried to tug the remains of her ripped top across her black lace bra.
I touched the red mark at the side of her face, and she glanced away.
“He beat me with a—” Olivia stopped talking again, her throat moving as she tried to swallow. She shook her head and closed her eyes.
I’d heard enough, lifting her hand to kiss her fingers. “Get ready, we’re going home,” I said, before turning my attention to Brendan.
I slammed my heel into his right hand since he had dared to touch Olivia. He didn’t have any bullets left, but I certainly did.
“Ancient cultures preserved your body so you could live on in the afterlife,” I said. “Perverts like you should be castrated.” I pulled the trigger, ensuring all the female ghosts were safe from his pitiful dick.
His howl echoed around the room.
I set aside my humanity, and used my feet to allow him to experience what he had done to Olivia.
At the start, he tried to escape and defend himself with his left arm.
Ribs were fragile, and as I was currently experiencing myself, hurt like fuck.
When I was finished, I doubted there was an area of his body that wasn’t bruised, bleeding, or broken.
“Everyone out?” I asked Jake.
“My team are just loading the last of the girls the sick bastard has in torture chambers out now, and Flynn is getting this place ready to blow.”
Jordan had Megan resting in his arms and stood ready to leave.
She looked exhausted, her head leaning against his shoulder.
Caine wandered among the dead, cataloguing what had happened here since there would soon be no evidence.
A gunshot made me spin around. Roberto stood over Brendan’s body, a hole in his forehead that wasn’t there before.
“Best to ensure demons have no way of coming back from the dead,” Roberto said ominously before walking away.
Olivia crouched low against the wall with Helena Marino beside her. I walked over, holding my hand out. She looked up and my heart thudded harder in my chest.
“It’s time to go home,” I said, tugging her to her feet.
She was my queen, and had survived a battle to be at my side. The bruises appearing on her body were the evidence of that fight. I took my jacket off to cover her ripped clothes.
“I don’t think I can walk,” Olivia said in a low tone.
Without a word, I lifted her and she wrapped her legs around my waist, her arms snaking around my neck.
“Get all our people out,” I instructed Jake.
I noticed Helena standing against the wall as I was about to leave. “You need to come with us, this place is about to not exist anymore,” I told her.
It was hard to reconcile the confident women who walked into my office as this shy creature. She blinked, slowly looking around the room before she turned away.
This place would never be used for evil again, and the entire Marino family was about to be extinct.