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Knuckles was out and spoiling for a fight. He shouted, “Enough. Let me go.”

I stood up, shook my head to clear the fog, then looked at him with the same bloodlust he felt and said, “Bring it the fuck on.”

And turned to fight.

I drew my Glock knowing there was no way I could beat the man to his trigger. He would fire as soon as he recognized what I held. But I also knew something he didn’t. He was a dead man.

I saw his head explode and then another man exit the door. Jennifer pumped two rounds into him before he could even recognize what was happening.

We raced up the stairs, vaulted over the dead body and bashed into the apartment, facing five guys standing up in a living room, all wondering what the commotion was about. Two of them had weapons in their hands. The rest had none showing, but that meant nothing.

A sixth man to my right hammered my wrist with something rigid, knocking my Glock free.

It clattered to the floor, and at that moment, I knew I was dead. There was no way to beat them all.

But I’d forgotten about Knuckles and his rage.

The first man raised his pistol and I charged forward to the immediate threat, ignoring the guy who’d smacked my arm. I knocked the weapon wide before he could fire, raking his arm over a chair and hammering the joint. He screamed, his arm splintered with the bones showing, and I drove a fist like a sledgehammer into his face, putting him on the ground. My second punch was to his throat, killing him.

The entire universe shrank into this room, and I entered the savage world of survival. It turned into a vortex of violence. Brett entered right behind me and immediately pulled the trigger on the other weapon in the room, punching two bullets into his chest.

A lamp shattered against my skull and I went to my knees. A guy jumped on me, grabbing my hair and raising my head.

Then Knuckles entered the fray. And he was a death dealer with a little bit of a rage issue. He could have just shot the man holding me, but did not.

He snatched the man’s throat, ripping him off me, then dropped, one knee out, hammering the base of the man’s head on the bony part of his thigh, breaking his neck like a twig. Another man jumped on him and Brett ripped him off, wrapping up hisbody in a rear naked choke, rolling on the ground. The fifth man yelled and raised his fists. Knuckles stood up from the body below him, turned, and smiled, a predator grin that told me what was going to happen.

I dove into the sixth man, the one that had first hit me, smashing his head into a cabinet. He tried to fight, but had no skill. I punched his leg right next to the femoral artery, in the tangle of nerves there, and he shouted, collapsing on the ground like a tripod with one leg cut away. He rolled on the floor, holding his thigh, and I hammered the base of his skull with a punch that had all of my weight behind it, separating his spine from his head.

While I was pounding my man and Brett was choking out his like a python, the one in front of Knuckles screamed and charged him, whipping out a blade and diving forward, waving it like a magic wand. Knuckles turned and took his attack like a ballerina conducting a dance. He trapped the man’s arm, then cinched it tight into his chest while bleeding off his energy by rotating around in a circle. He looked the man in the eye and then pounded him with the bone of his forehead right on the bridge of the man’s nose, shattering it, then picked the man up and drove him into the wall like a linebacker sliding a blocking dummy. His body hit the brick wall face-first, the knife dropping away, the carcass falling to the floor.

Brett stood up from his man and Knuckles said, “Is he still alive?”

Brett nodded, and Knuckles advanced on him.

I said, “Knuckles. Don’t do it. We don’t know he’s bad yet. He had no weapons. We don’t know what we have here. Could just be a drug den.”

He looked at me with the same rage I had held, and said, “They’re all dead. All of them.”

He wrapped his arms around the neck of Brett’s target and sank in his hold. The man was unconscious. Knuckles was going to kill a helpless target.

I said, “Stop. Stop what you’re doing.”

He looked at me with unbridled rage and said, “They killed Carly. They can now reap what they sowed.”

I honestly didn’t care about the man on the ground. He was a piece of shit, but this was murder. I knew it wasn’t right. We didn’t do what they did, no matter how much we wanted to. I’d killed two men in the room, but only in self-defense. We didn’t even know if these men were involved with Carly and Jahn.

Knuckles said, “They all die. That’s the way it is.”

I raised my voice, saying, “Don’t. You will never sleep again. Trust me. I know. And we can use his information.”

He released the man, snarling.

The body fell to the ground and the man began coming out of the loss of oxygen to his brain, regaining consciousness. He rolled over and tried to sit up, groggy.

Knuckles punched him so hard his head left a dent in the wood of the floor.

We stood for a moment, breathing heavily, surveying the damage.