Page 30 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

And I slam the door behind me so hard that it shakes on its fucking hinges.

Arno’s seated at the bar, waiting for me. He doesn’t react when I drop the camera onto his fucking lap. He doesn’t make eye contact. There’s a full shot glass on the counter in front of him, and he merely shoves it toward me.

I take it and knock it back, grimacing at the bitter taste.

It’s a dangerous fuel to add to the fire already consuming my fingertips.

The blaze grows hotter, lapping up my wrists and surging through my blood with every unstable beat of my pulse.

She did this. Her taste mingles with the alcohol.

I swipe at my mouth with the back of my hand, but she clings to my lower lip, stubborn and vile.

I rub at the spot, nearly stripping the skin raw.

Then I take the second shot Arno offered me and down it.

He says nothing when I leave and slam the door on my way out.

It’s dusk. A spreading night sky battles with a resistant, orange sunset that scars the horizon like a burning fire.

I scowl at it. Then I head down the street, going wherever my fucking legs take me.

I’m unfamiliar with this part of the city.

After five years, street names have changed.

New buildings have crept up on top of the ashes of the old ones.

Even the people are different. Tougher. Stranger. Louder.

They don’t offer me one fucking moment of silence to clear my head.

One moment to find the familiar beast that I know dwells in my skin like a parasite.

The barrage of sound doesn’t even succeed in drowning her out.

I still hear her moaning. Panting. Begging.

Pleading. The sounds form a noose around my cock, which is so fucking greedy after having been denied for so long.

Trolling the streets like a dog off its leash is a bitter way to brace myself for the wrath that will come once Stacatto sees what his fiancée’s gladly done. But the fucker can come for me. I’m ready.

Oh, the fuck am I ready.

I almost believe that fate’s playing some kind of cruel, twisted joke when a man staggers into me the moment I turn a corner. For the first time in his fucking life, Dante Vialle finally gets his goddamn wish...

“You got a problem?” the man demands, his head cocked. He has a five-o’clock shadow stretching over his jaw and wears the dirty jeans and the oversized sweatshirt of a punk with too much time on his hands and too much dope in his brain to know when to back down.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’ve got a big fucking problem.”

The bastard doesn’t hear the warning note in my voice.

Tt’s the jarring crunch of a bulldog breaking off its leash; it’s the second when the wolf realizes there’s blood in the air and releases a howl; it’s a danger even I sense, and my fingers clench, fighting to ignore the way they burn. Throb. Ache , still slick with her.

The stupid fucking bastard doesn’t know how close I am to losing control. How much I goddamn want to lose it. I need any excuse. Any fucking one.

And he presents it by stupidly stepping closer. His hot breath fans my cheek, mingling with the sweat from her skin. Her taste is still on my tongue, even as the bastard says , “I suggest you apologize. Friend.”

It’s like lighting a match above a pool of gasoline. Fire erupts, spreading wild and ravenous, and there’s no fucking way to contain it. My skull breaks open and something evil spills out. It stains my vision the color of blood, and my fist goes flying.

Flesh and bone reverberate beneath my knuckles.

Again. Again. Again. There’s shouting. I’m in the middle of the street in near broad fucking daylight, but none of it fucking matters.

I can hear each sickening blow I land. Maybe the bastard managed to get some in himself, because I’m not sure whose blood I taste when hands paw at my shoulders and finally pull me back.

Under...arrest ... The words come in slow motion. Pieces of my vision return like puzzle pieces. The conflicted sky. A confused sea of faces. A body lying motionless in front of me.

My mouth’s open, I realize. I’m laughing as icy metal encircles my wrist and some asshole reads me my Miranda rights while sirens wail in the distance.

I can’t fucking stop.

It’s been nearly a week, right on the dot. Van Hallen was right.

General lockup isn’t like being in prison.

You’re herded like cattle into a cage with other vicious mutts.

They size you up, warily wondering which dog has the biggest dick—who you just don’t want to fuck with.

Maybe it’s the blood on my knuckles. Or the look in my eye.

Hell, maybe it’s the subtle scent of I-don’t-give-a-fuck wafting from my skin.

Whatever the reason, I’m left alone. It makes for an interesting way to pass the night.

Arno might want to try it sometime when he’s not drinking himself to death on liquor.

Nothing says “fun” like waiting for the inevitable.

“Vialle.”

I stiffen at the sound of my name mangled by a Brooklyn accent.

An officer stands before the holding cell, reading from a clipboard—but his uniform isn’t the royal blue of a patrol officer.

He’s wearing a tan trench coat over faded-gray slacks.

He sure takes his job seriously, down to every last fucking cliché.

“Vialle,” Van Hallen reads again while his eyes seek mine out through the bars. “You’re free to go.”

Free? I don’t question it. I hold my tongue when an actual officer enters the cell and undoes my cuffs. He and Van Hallen lead me to the front of the station, where I sign a piece of paper. Just like that. I’m “free.”

“You’ve been bailed out,” Van Hallen explains when I start to head for the door.

“Seems you’ve got some powerful friends out there, Vialle.

The man whose jaw you broke won’t even press charges.

Says it was all just a ‘misunderstanding’—or he wrote it, at least. There are even corroborating witnesses who’ve stepped forward to say that he started it first. It was self-defense. ”

I should keep walking, but I don’t know what makes me slow near the glass doors to the station and glance over my shoulder. The only other person around is a clerk behind the front desk who does her best to busy herself with paperwork and pretend to be invisible.

“There a point to this, Detective?” I ask .

Van Hallen, the prick, merely smiles. “If you were out on parole, you wouldn’t even have the option of bail. You’d be sent right back where you belong.”

I shrug. “But my record’s sparkling clean, Detective. The DA saw to that.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Vialle,” the detective says gruffly.

“We both know it’s only a matter of time before you’re hooked up on something that intimidation and nice connections can’t wriggle you out of.

Tell me something. A man loses his temper and nearly beats someone to death right in front of a passing patrol car containing officers just about to start their break. Talk about coincidence.”

I raise an eyebrow, dissecting his words. “You’ve got a detail on me...” I spot a name tag stuck to his chest and play off the fitting name embossed there in gold. Richard V. H. “ Dick ?”

He shrugs, but there’s something smug about his expression. The buzzing at my skull perks up, but it’s only a dull whisper, sated by enough violence for now.

“Let’s be serious now, Vialle,” Van Hallen says. “A man would notice if he were being followed, wouldn’t he?”

I grit my teeth, irritated by this interesting new bit of information. “That he would, Detective.”

“A man would also try to keep things in perspective,” Van Hallen adds, and I suspect that this is the real reason why he cornered me here.

Not to gloat about the fact that he had men watching me, but to spew whatever is about to come out of his mouth next.

“I’ve been going through your old case file. Interesting stuff.”

I turn on my heel and head for a door, not giving a damn as to how it looks.

“You beat a man to death with a hammer...” The bastard keeps up with me.

“But do you care to explain why there were no fingerprints? No hard physical evidence? Nothing we could pin on you, not even with the fuck-up at the DA’s office.

A man who’s reckless enough to kick someone’s ass in broad daylight can’t even leave one bloody smear on the end of a ball peen—”

I barrel through the glass doors and allow them to slam shut behind me.

Van Hallen’s not stupid. He doesn’t follow me out of the precinct, but I feel him watching me.

Then I have enough fucking sense to scan the block for any patrol car or cop who seems to be on my trail.

It’s late. Pedestrians crowd the sidewalks, heading home or looking for trouble, while traffic churns through the streets.

It’ll be a long walk back to Mulligans, and I can only assume that’s why Arno didn’t send one of his thugs to collect me. He wants me to sweat it out. Clear my head. The bastard’s known me for way too long.