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“Want to try again? I have…eight days to do this. I mean, I’ll have time after the wedding and honeymoon, but I’d rather get this over with now, if you don’t mind.”

Why am I surprised by this side of Everest? She grew up in the same fucked lifestyle I did. There’s no way some of that darkness didn’t rub off on her.

Not to mention having to survive four years on her own with nothing but her body and her wits to survive.

When she raises the hammer as though to swing it again, Denis screams out, “Fine! Fine!”

I grin over at Brix. He’s currently gaping at Everest and a quick glance down shows me he’s just as turned on by this side of Everest as I am.

Chapter 39

Everest

Irefuse to show it, but I’m a wreck. I can’t believe I just did that. I can’t believe I tortured information out of someone.

Thing is, I’m not a wreck because of what I did, but rather the fact…well, damn. I kind of liked it.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t plan on going around hurting or killing innocent people, but that jerk was far from innocent and was one of the people who caused me to lose my child. He was one of the people who caused me to lose four years with my soul mates.

Saying he wished he’d been the one ordered to take me away and kill me so he could rape me…

He deserved every moment of pain. I really hope I managed to splatter his balls. Maybe even crush his dick.

What sucks is I can’t hurt him anymore. Because he’s dead.

After we got what he knew about my father, Eriks, and Mikhail, Brix put the barrel of his gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger. I’m confident enough to admit I turned my back onthat. I didn’t want to see his brains and pieces of skull splattering against the floor.

I’m currently standing under the shower with Maddox carefully cleaning blood splatters from my skin while Brix tells Kato what we learned.

“You okay?” he asks softly, like he’s afraid he’ll spook me if he speaks too loudly.

“Honestly? I’m not sure.” I tilt my head up to look into his face. “Shouldn’t I be…I don’t know, puking or something? I should have some kind of visceral reaction to torturing him and being feet away from him when his brains were blown out, but I’m not.”

“You’re shaking,” he says as he runs his hands over my shoulders and down my arms.

His cock is standing at attention, but he hasn’t tried anything, hasn’t touched any part of me that didn’t need to be scrubbed free of blood.

“I know. I can’t make it stop.”

Lifting my hands, I stare at them as they tremble.

“I’m not freaking out. I should be freaking out, right?” The fact I’m not freaking about torturing someone and beating them with a hammer is actually what is freaking me out.

“Everyone reacts differently. It could catch up to you later.” A wicked, sexy as sin smirk quirks up one corner of his mouth. “Or you could be like me and just enjoy making assholes cry.”

I can’t stop the grin that stretches across my face. “I really shouldn’t have liked that, but –”

“He made you cry, right?” I nod. “Then I say you had every right to enjoy it.”

His arms wrap around my back and pull me close, one of his big hands cupping my head to hold it to his chest.

“Even if you freak out later, it’s okay. If you don’t freak out…still okay. Everyone reacts differently to different shit, and thatasshole put you through hell. If anyone deserved to have his balls popped with a hammer it was him.”

Fantasies of what I’ll do when we finally find Eriks and Mikhail play through my head, and I have a moment where I’m mildly ashamed of myself. Only mildly, though. Even if they don’t spew the same vitriol Denis did, they still almost destroyed me and my whole life.

I chuckle when an image of Denis’s balls literally popping like balloons filled with confetti floats through my head, then shake my head when Madd asks me what’s so funny.

“I’m getting married in a week,” I mutter after a few silent moments of simply letting Maddox hold me under the shower spray.