CHAPTER 6 #2
"Maybe she just likes the sight of blood," Cole laughed. "Isn't that right, sweetmeat?"
Margarita set her knife down. She slowly raised her head and looked Cole dead in the eye. Her face was completely blank.
"His lungs filled with blood," Margarita said.
Her voice was a flat, clinical drone, devoid of any human emotion.
"It was a slow asphyxiation. The alveoli get overwhelmed by the fluid, preventing gas exchange.
He tried to scream, but the blood bubbled up his trachea.
It sounded like a wet sponge being squeezed.
He thrashed for about four minutes before his brain was completely starved of oxygen and his heart gave out. "
She picked her knife back up. She wiped a small drop of red juice from her bottom lip with the back of her hand, never breaking eye contact with Cole.
"Is that the answer you wanted?" she asked. Then she cut another piece of steak and put it in her mouth.
The room went dead silent. The hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen behind us was suddenly deafening. Even Cole looked momentarily thrown by the sheer, dead-eyed sociopathy of her response.
Christ. I wanted to drag her across the table and ruin her.
"She’s got a spine," Cole said, recovering quickly and forcing a laugh. "I’ll give her that."
"She’s got more than that, Cole," I said, taking a sip of the bitter red wine.
Cole scoffed, a sharp, ugly sound. He took a long drink from his glass, slammed it on the table, and looked at me. He was tired of the game. He forgot who the alpha in the room was. He forgot who built this fucking empire on top of bodies.
"A woman like that..." Cole said, grinning like a shark. "She’s wasted in a cell. If you’re done with her, Boss, pass her down. I could use a bitch who knows how to handle a knife."
The room stopped.
The guards standing against the walls stopped breathing. The air turned to concrete.
Cole reached his hand out, extending it across the table toward Margarita. He was reaching for the sleeve of my black shirt. He was going to touch her.
My left hand moved before my brain even fully registered the decision.
I squeezed the stem of the wine glass until it shattered.
Shards of crystal exploded in my palm, slicing deep into the meat of my hand.
The dark red wine splashed across the white tablecloth like a gunshot wound.
I didn't feel it. I didn't blink. Blood began to drip from my clenched fist onto the concrete floor.
"She’s a prize, Damon," Cole was saying, his fingers inches from her arm. "Don't be greedy—"
"What did you just call her?" I asked.
"You heard me," Cole scoffed, rolling his eyes. "She's just a—"
I exploded.
I didn't flip the table. That was clumsy.
I planted my hand on the concrete surface and vaulted across the corner in a blur of practiced, lethal violence.
I caught Cole before he could even process the movement.
My massive, blood-slicked right hand clamped completely around his throat.
I dug my fingers into the soft cartilage of his windpipe and lifted him entirely out of his fucking chair.
The heavy wooden chair skidded backward and slammed into the wall. Margarita flinched, her own chair screeching as she recoiled.
I slammed Cole into the brutalist concrete wall behind him. The impact was sickeningly loud. A wet thud that shook the plaster.
"You're done talking," I snarled, my face inches from his. I kept my left hand clamped around his throat, keeping his feet dangling off the floor as he choked and clawed at my wrist. "Look at her again. I dare you."
I drew my right fist back and drove it straight into his jaw.
The crack of breaking bone echoed through the hollow room.
It sounded like a dry branch snapping under a heavy boot.
Cole’s eyes rolled back in his skull. Blood sprayed out of his mouth, splashing across the cuffs of my white undershirt.
I hit him again. A short, punishing blow to the exact same spot. The bone completely shattered.
"This is my table," I breathed, slamming his head against the concrete to punctuate the sentence.
"This is my house," I slammed him again.
"And she is mine."
I opened my hand and let him drop. He hit the floor like a sack of wet refuse, crumbling into a heap at the base of the wall. He wasn't moving, save for the pathetic, gurgling breaths bubbling up through the blood filling his mouth.
I stood over him, my chest heaving. The sharp, metallic scent of spilled wine, copper blood, and raw adrenaline hung thick in the room.
I calmly wiped the blood from my knuckles onto my trousers.
I lifted my left hand, the one I used to shatter the glass, and methodically adjusted my cufflinks with my blood-slicked fingers.
I turned my head and looked at the guards lining the walls. My eyes were black pits.
"If anyone else has an opinion on my property, speak now," I said.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
"I didn't think so."