CHAPTER 26
The Executioner
I don’t know how to feel, emotionally.
Seven’s cleaned my bodies, we’ve buried one, dumped another, and I know that she’s well aware of what I’m capable of, but…the way she looked at me once my red wore off and I saw her watching me…
She just helped me kill a man and witnessed me in my high. And that wasn’t even close to what she already knows I’ll do under normal circumstances. Between that and the fact that I all but forced her to be part of it—I wasn’t fucking thinking rationally. To be fair, I hardly am the majority of the time, but who the fuck is keeping score? We’ve officially seen each other at our lowest. And I went and said something so ridiculously stupid that I wanna go back, rewind, and just light Zane O’Dell up like a fucking Christmas tree just to have another chance at redeeming myself.
You look sexy in rival blood? Could you be any more fucking clueless?
But that’s the truth. Isn’t it? Iamclueless. I have no idea what to do with emotion anymore. I was so happy to see her alive and aside from her need for a hot bath...unscathed. I guess I thought we could fall right back into what we know, and I make some idiotic comment that sends her back home, where we fit. Where we’re comfortable. That strange place that we somehowunderstandeach other. I just failed at that. And the way she just asked me how many were left on my list…fucking terrifies me. She’s gonna run, I know it.I feel it. And I don’t know how to gether to stay. I can’t ask her to. I don’t deserve that. But fuck, I wanna keep her.
“I think I’d keep you.”
“I’d keep you too.”
This has changed everything. She might have meant everything she never said before they took her from that house. But the way she feels in my arms while I’m carrying her, bridal-style up to the main floor…it feels a lot like disconnect. I’m trying to convince myself that it’s the shock of what just happened and the fact that she spent half a day as a prisoner in a disgusting hovel.
But I know better. Deep down, I fucking know better. A few of her clients sat at the bottom of the main staircase, one of them being Simon as I approached with her and we took in the aftermath of our assault on the compound. There was blood and bodies scattered everywhere. Glass and broken pieces of marble and furniture. There’s no tiptoeing through that in bare feet. Seven met eyes with the gang as they all stood, and her brows knotted.
“What the fuck?” she breathed, utterly astonished.
“I made a few calls.”
Simon waddled forward and gave her a hard onceover before nodding. “Shamrock say trouble.” A guy that went by the name ‘Leach’, for reasons I’d rather not know, gave her a mock salute and a smirk.
“You covered our asses. Seemed wrong not to help when you needed it.”
She turned her face to look up at me, her lower lip quivering. “You did this for me?” I felt a lump in my throat and decided I wasn’t gonna look like a pussy in front of the men that just helped me kill dozens of assholes. I tightened my mouth and nodded my head.
“I told,” Simon added. “Goodman.”
I’d give my left nut to read her mind right now. She swiped away a tear and faced them again. “Thank you…all of you.”
Miguel appeared at the top of the staircase and gestured towards his right. “Gamer Guru is itchin’ to take ‘em out,ese…what you wanna do with these two up here?”
“Tell him to come down here and bring Bridget. We’re gettin’ the girls outta the house.” He jogged back to where they were holding Pop and Nolan, and I turned towards the others. “Are the fireworks ready?”
“Fireworks?” Seven asked.
Leach and his couple of men smiled, the former rubbing his hands together in excitement. “Rigged all the way around and straight through. They’ll see it in the next fuckin’ county.”
“You’re blowing it up?” She turned in my arms just as Declan came down the stairs, carrying Bridget. “I thought…”
“You’ve cleaned enough, Viper. Let us clean foryouthis time.”
She studied me for a long moment, and all I wanna do right now is kiss her. We’re probably both impossible to read right this second, but the threat of not making it out alive is gone. There’s already a group of us on the way to gut the fuckers watching her house. Her fingertips were caked with drying blood, and she brushed them over my lip ring, eyeing my mouth before she all but fucked my already spinning head up, and dropped her hand, looking away.
“Get me outta here.”
She’s second guessing it. Fuck.
Simon glanced at me with a look that said he knows I’ve got it bad, and I’m pretty fucked. We both dismissed it in the name of unspoken bro-code, and I turned and followed Declan out of the house. Bridget looked over his shoulder at us both.
“Malek…”
“Yeah?”
