“Fucker,” he yelled, blood and spit spraying from his lips.
“Your second mistake was sending Grub to my home.” I stepped closer to him, my heart calm, my body thrumming. “But your biggest mistake was bringing Ronnie into this.” I drew my head down to his, fists balled. “I would have let you live if you hadn’t done that.”
“I’m gonna fuck that cunt to death,” he snarled, glaring up at me. “After I’ve finished tearin’ you apart.”
I grinned. “Let’s do this.”
He threw himself at me.
I heard more screams. More Trinity members collapsed to the floor, grown men crying and wailing like babies. From the corner of my eye, I saw others fleeing, running from the warehouse.
And then I drilled my focus onto Rufie and got down to business.
There’s a reason I’d made so much money on the underground MMA circuit. I’m unbeatable. I know how to fight. I fight dirty. I show no remorse or mercy. I hit with no regret and no compunction. And when my fist or my feet or shin or knee or elbow won’t do the job, I’ll use whatever I can.
Underground mixed martial arts is not a gentleman’s sport. It’s a sport for those balancing on the edge of animalistic violence. I’ve walked that hairline edge for many years. It was only Ronnie—the knowledge someone like her was in my life—that saved me from falling into a dark abyss from which I’d never return.
Rufie had dragged me back to that abyss. His threat to Ronnie, his promise of what he would do to her…
Lila kept the fight between just him and me. We weren’t interrupted. I let him keep his pipe, the occasional blows he landed a reminder I still had the ability to feel something apart from cold fury and murderous hate.
I toyed with him. I enjoyed it. I bathed in his pain and fear and flailing ego.
When he managed to smash my jaw with the fucking thing, sending one of my molars flying from my bloody mouth, I withdrew the chain hidden in my jeans and returned the favor. Three times.
Three molars.
And then a fourth. For fun.
Fun. My brain tripped over the notion, tangled in its grim reality.
I was enjoying myself. The violence, the pain. Delivering it. Fuck, even receiving it… I was enjoying myself.
Losing myself…
And I didn’t care.
For what Rufie had planned to do to Ronnie, for the images his words had put into my head, images of the girl I loved more than life, I would end him.
And if that meant losing my life—not physically, but emotionally—then that’s what would happen.
Because I was born for this kind of existence. I was—
“Lucas!”
The female shout stopped my fist—mid-strike—bare inches from Rufie’s face.
“Lucas,” Lila called. “Stop.”
I drew a deep breath, my gaze focusing on what my knuckles and the chain had done to him. The blood lust turned everything red. Or maybe that was the sweat and blood trickling into my eyes.
On the ground, pinned there by my knees, Rufie groaned. I’d turned his face to mush. When had I done that? How long had I been hitting him? When had I even put him on the ground? It had been a long time since I’d fallen into such a primitive state of mind. It scared me. Sent a chill straight to my soul.
Whatever happened next, there was no going back to Ronnie now.
The man she loved was gone. I’d killed him as surely as I was about to kill Rufie.
And I was going to kill Rufie. He had to die. For what he said. For what he’d planned.