“She’ll come to me once I save her from you,” he said confidently.
The man was unhinged. As he edged toward me, I glanced at the floor. A poker lay on the ground near his foot. If he stood on it, there was a chance he’d lose his balance.
His feet crushed over the broken glass. “She never wanted to marry. She must hate you.”
“I guess you have experience with that,” I ground out.
The man rolled his mad eyes. “She never hated me. Her father gave her to me because I knew where the bodies were buried. I buried them.” He gave an odd childish giggle that made my blood run cold.
“So, you forced him to agree to the match, but Suna didn’t go along with it. She didn’t want you.” Trying to throw this guy off guard enough to step on the poker without looking was frustrating. I hated hearing his twisted version of events. I wanted to smash his face in, but I had to wait.
“She wanted me. She just didn’t know it. She has wanted me since she was young. She didn’t like it when I pointed it out.”
“She hurt you,” I reminded him.
“Yes, and Min-Ho left me for dead. He was happy I was dying. But I didn’t die. I waited four years to come and get my fiancée, but her father guarded her like a madman.”
“Right, and you are perfectly sane—"
Hyuk-Su’s face twisted in anger, and he stepped forward onto the poker. I dropped low, ducking out of sight, and reached for my ankle knife. He recovered his balance and let out a frustrated cry as he came looking for me. Taking my chance, I threw the knife, and the blade sank into his gun hand. He cried out and dropped it.
“Suna? Tesora, where are you?” I called loudly.
My fear for her broke through the adrenaline of being held at gunpoint, and I took my eyes off Hyuk-Su. They said love was a weakness, but it had made me stupid.
His dark shape launched at me, but I turned in time to grab him, twisting him beneath me so he took the brunt of our landing as we fell. A sharp pain dug into my side, and broken glass sliced my arms through my shirt.
I was on him immediately, and we tussled on the floor. Hyuk-Su was old, but he was desperate, which made him strong, and I grunted as pain ripped into my side again.Knife wound. Times two. Lower left side. One part of my brain cataloged the sensation, even as the rest of me fought.
“Stop!” Suna’s voice carried through the room.
She stood in the hallway, a gun in her hands stretched out before her. She was okay. She was unharmed. I almost choked with relief.
“Vincenzo, move away from him,” she instructed.
I shifted to the side, fighting a grunt at the pain. Glass cut into my palms as I pushed myself to my feet and away from Hyuk-Su, who was focused on Suna with a toadlike stare.
“You wouldn’t hurt me, Susu, would you?” he said, his voice small and harmless as if he were speaking to a child.
My flesh crawled at the sound. I revised my plans to make this piece of shit suffer.
Suna let out a humorless laugh.“Oh, I would,” she said and glanced at me. “Are you alright? You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine.”
“Why don’t you let him bleed out right here, Susu. You don’t need him. You don’t need a husband. I tried to tell your father that.”
“Stop talking,” Suna said, her shout making her body shake. She looked strong as hell, but she was dangling over a precipice. She looked at me. “What should I do?”
“Whatever you want, tesora. You can shoot him to death or let me do it. I can take him somewhere he’ll never leave and make it slow… or we can dump his body in the Hudson tonight. It’s up to you,” I told her.
“I–I don’t know,” she muttered, a tear making its way down her smooth cheek.
My heart swelled for this woman. Intelligent and feisty as hell, she still had enough of a heart not to want to kill the man who had wronged her so foully. She was better than me or any other person in our world, and I never wanted her light to dim.
“Come to me with the gun, and I’ll do it for you. You don’t need it on your conscience,” I told her.
She looked relieved as she inched toward me.