Page 98 of Bitter Prince

Dante smiled, unleashing all his crazy.

He stabbed both knives into his thighs. A piercing scream shattered the air and even the small basement window rattled.

Kingston reached into his pocket and pulled out his pliers. “Fucker, you’re nuts,” Dante said, laughing like a maniac. “Why in the fuck do you have pliers in your pocket?”

That was the pot calling the kettle black if I’d ever seen it.

Kingston floated over as though on a cloud, pried Dietrich’s mangled mouth open, and yanked out a tooth. I’d been used to blood and violence from a young age, but fuck if I’d ever feel unbothered seeing a person’s mouth ripped apart. Needless to say, being a dentist wasn’t my calling.

“Man, that’s gross,” I gritted, blood spurting out of Dietrich’s mouth. Kingston had a habit of keeping a tooth from every man he saw die or that he killed. Rumor had it that it was the only hobby he had growing up under Sofia Volkov’s brutality.

Just like my mother had said a million times while raising Dante and me: there would always be someone who had it much worse than us.

“Okay, now tell us what your boss’s plans are with Reina Romero?” I demanded while blood dripped down his chin.

He started crying. “I don’t know,” he stammered. “He just likes blondes. The other one he wanted as a way to blackmail her.”

Dark pools of rage flooded my senses until I shook with it. I couldn’t allow my emotions to overtake me. Not yet.

Instead, I pulled out a knife and rammed the blade into his thigh, leaving him with a new wound.

Dietrich stiffened in my arms, crying out like the pussy he was. “Please,” he screamed. “Please. I’ll never touch her again. I barely grabbed her ass.” Snot ran down his nose. “She started the fight. All I wanted to do was dance with the mute and use her to have her dumb sister follow me to the car.”

It was exactly the wrong thing to say. I laughed darkly and leaped at the man like a tiger pouncing on its prey. It pissed me off that he touched Reina. A scream rang as Dante slashed his blade across his cheek. His smile was a little wrong and his fury very right.

Nobody fucked with the Romero girls. And if I had to venture a guess, it infuriated Dante that the fucker called Phoenix mute. He claimed he didn’t particularly like her, but I knew that Phoenix being degraded unleashed Dante’s madness. My brother smiled cruelly and brought the knife down on the man’s face again.

“Dante, control yourself,” I gritted. If he lost control, it’d take both Kingston and me to secure him, and I’d rather the Omertà didn’t know how mad my brother really was. “It’s more torturous if we spread the pain over a longer period.”

“I can attest to that,” Kingston chimed in coldly.

“Fuck slow and easy,” Dante muttered and I pushed Dietrich to the ground, towering over him.

It was all my brother needed. He jumped forward, smashing the fucker’s wrist and breaking it with a bone-crunching crack. Dante beat on him like a madman. He kept punching him with his fists. Blood splashed over his clothes, and slowly but surely his white pants were drenched in red.

My hand came to his shoulder and he froze. He turned his head and his eyes met mine, the familiar darkness lurked in his dark blue eyes. “When you’re done with him, I’ll cut out his tongue for speaking about her that way.”

Her.Phoenix or Reina, I didn’t know, but I nodded nonetheless, knowing he needed that.

I looked around until my eyes landed on some rope in the corner.

“Get the rope,” I said to Dante, knowing he’d ensure the fucker’s wrists fell off when he was done tying him.

I pointed to the metal spindles on the banister, meeting Kingston’s gaze. “Okay if we tie his arms to the bottom of the spindles?”

“More than okay.”

I carried a bloodied Dietrich to the staircase, and Kingston tied his wrists to a couple of the metal spindles. The wall was high, and when he moved back, the fucker just hung there like a sack of potatoes.

Dante pulled his knives out of the asshole’s legs, then wiped them on his trousers while Dietrich screamed and pissed himself at the same time.

“I fucking hate when they piss themselves,” Kingston deadpanned. “The stench.”

“Undo his shirt,” I said to Dante. Kingston moved behind me, sitting down in the chair, content with watching the show he knew to expect.

I turned back to our captive, his shirt already ripped open and his torso bared. Apparently the fucker spent hours at the gym and thought himself every woman’s dream—willing or not.

Taking my own knife from my holster—the one my old man gave me for my tenth birthday, the one I’d used on my first kill and every kill afterward—I walked closer to Dietrich, stopping a foot before him to stare dead into his eyes. Silence filled the basement.