And today, with all my pent-up adrenaline, I was itching for it too. “If I can make one request?”
He waved me on, not looking up from the demons he was battling.
“I want the man on your left first.”
Bastian’s head shot up, and he glared at me. He thought I was taunting him, thought I was asserting that I could beat his men one by one. He didn’t know there was a mole among us.
He probably didn’t know that I could beat them all too.
I didn’t care about my life. I only cared about surviving for others. When the wind shifted and I became a monster and a killer, it wasn’t about points being proven or saving my own soul—it was about taking away the threat.
Bastian shifted in his seat. The only sound in the club was the soft music pumping around us.
His left hand lifted, and one forward motion of his pointer finger had our mole descending upon me.
He moved much quicker than a man of plain muscle. He had training, the type of training that makes you light on your feet, that focuses on fluid motion, and I could tell immediately that, when he aimed at my gut, it would hurt more than most.
He was ready to use my momentum against me, but I didn’t bend over in pain. I stood from my chair instead. He backed up and swung around to hit me with a kick that would bring me to my knees. If I fell to them, the torture would begin. That’s when he’d make an example of me.
I took the hit but met his fighting style with my own. I pulled him to me and plowed my fist into his jaw. I could work with momentum too. I’d learned enough fight styles under my father’s tuition to know how to toy with anyone.
I took sick pleasure in it now. I needed to let off steam, needed to center myself, needed to let the animal out to play. We danced a bit more. He got a hook to my face, and I spat the blood on his shirt. I twisted his arm as I caught another punch, and he flew down to swipe my legs out from under me.
No one said a thing. The sound of bodies breaking down and two men trying to rip one another apart mixed with the music overhead.
We grappled on the floor. He got a hold of my throat and, thinking he had me, smiled as he squeezed hard enough for me to lose my breath. The look in a man’s eyes when he’s about to take a life can show you exactly what terror he can inflict upon the world. This one was sick, joyous, thirsty for any and all blood to be spilled by his own hands.
I smiled back. A killer to a killer. One monster to another.
His smile disappeared when he saw that my monster was meaner than his. He’d forgotten that at the end of the day, strength sometimes overpowered the fancy footwork. I pried his hands off, snapping two of his fingers in the process. He screamed out like he’d never experienced a damn broken bone before.
The well-trained ones were always screamers. They’d been taught in a gym, where no one ever beat them enough to understand real pain.
I glanced at my family. Cade and Dante were smiling like they’d known all along I was about to give them a show, but my eyes fell to Bastian’s. “I’m the underboss, but I protect this family like you. He’s a mole. Let’s work together, huh? Let me have him, and we’ll figure the rest out.”
I gave him the last call, stepped to the side and let him rule. There would be times I wouldn’t back down, and one of those times would be with Katalina. But here, we needed to find a balance.
He breathed in deep like we’d found a middle ground finally and nodded his head.
“My blood is your blood. You bleed, I bleed, brother,” I said to him. I meant those words for the men sitting around me. I meant them for the family.
I turned to the man crawling away from me and stalked forward. “You with Dimitri?”
He spit and swore at me in Russian. It was all the answer we needed.
I was happy I got to tear apart someone who’d threatened us. I jerked his arm out from under him and turned him back to face me. I kicked him hard in the nose, and the blood poured from it as he screamed. I took both his ears in my hands and bashed his head against the tile.
Over and over again.
His eyes rolled with the first hit. The second and third, he lost consciousness. I felt the skull give on the fourth blow. The satisfying crunch loosened the muscles in me, relaxed my soul, and calmed the monster. He’d had his fill for the day.
Dante was shaking his head. “That’s a damn mess, even for you.” He pointed to the blood pouring from the mole’s skull and at the blood on my shirt.
“I needed it,” I admitted as I came back to sit in my chair.
Cade was calling a cleaning crew and waving the boys out of the booth so he could get on with handling the mess.
“I could tell.” Dante chuckled and cracked his knuckles. Like me, he had his own demons that had to be silenced every now and then. I could tell our fight had made him itch.