Page 50 of Crescendo (Beautiful Monsters #1)

Maybe I should have. Maybe I should throw her against the wall of the training room and take her pressed up against the mats. Maybe I should make her regret that she accepted Dante Vialle so easily.

Maybe...if she weren’t too busy riding out a high, too far gone to remember her own name. Her head lolls as I set her down on the floor, her back propped against the wall. Her eyes stare, vacant and distant, chasing imaginary figures around the corners of the room.

Mack may be a son of a bitch, but I know he packs good dope. The little princess is on cloud fucking ten. She doesn’t react when I prod her leg with my foot before pulling my jeans back on. I shove my feet into my boots, but I don’t bother with the shirt.

Already, I hear murmurs from the main room swelling to a hum that mimics the buzzing taking residence at the back of my skull.

Confusion seems to be the overriding emotion.

Their Mad Dog has never lost a fight—as far as they know.

Mack most likely didn’t keep any history books lying around, but the tally of scars on both of our bodies reveal the true score.

Mack has only beaten me once during the entire length of our storied “careers.” Coincidentally, it was the same night I turned myself in for first-degree murder. How was that for fucking irony?

As far as our track records go, this was just another match among many where the Kitty has beaten the mad pup—but, in the years since, the dog grew an army of fleas.

If he changes his mind and decides to change the rules of the game, I’m not stupid enough to believe I could fight my way out.

The girl would be his, and I would be locked in a Kennel for his amusement.

It should be a sobering thought. Not a tempting one.

My body shouldn’t hum with excitement as I swipe a streak of blood from my lip before dragging the girl upright and letting her slump against me.

My body craves another fight—the result of an addiction that goes deeper than dope or the love of the spotlight.

My head is only clear when my fist is pummeling something. Crushing. Bruising. Hurting.

But Mack, while still a sore loser, apparently hasn’t grown stupid.

“We’ll do things your way, Kitty,” he tells me, leaning against the door of the cage when I finally exit the training room.

The bastard put his pants back on. His gaze drifts over to the girl at my hip, but they don’t linger, toeing the boundary I just reinforced with my fists.

“Darcy will show you where you can sleep. We’ve gotta make our guests welcome, now don’t we? ”

Only now do I realize that we might really be forced to stay here , on the bastard’s property. With Arno’s pub blown to shit, it isn’t like there are any other options.

“It’s a nice place,” Darcy pipes up from across the nearly empty arena, still seated in the high viewing box. “And your friend, she can stay with—”

“She stays with me.”

She’s limp enough for me to throw her over my shoulder again, and I wince as pain surges through my right arm. The bastard must have bruised something, but I grit my teeth and spit at my feet. It’s tinged red.

Mack notices the blood and smiles, but his hand doesn’t quite leave his throat. I made sure not to cause any lasting damage, but my finishing move was no love tap, either.

“Fine,” he concedes with a grisly chuckle.

He’s bleeding from his nose but doesn’t bother to wipe the mess away.

It bubbles up around his lips when he speaks, giving every word an acidic edge.

“I’m sure the bed is big enough. So, when do we get to hear this enticing master plan the little princess has devised? ”

I tear my gaze away from him, eyeing the now empty row of bleachers. “She’s not revealing shit until whatever the fuck you gave her is out of her system.”

Going off the fact that she’s still conscious, I can only suspect that he gave her less than a full gram but a little more than the average starting “happy” dose. He wanted her hooked fast and quickly conditioned to accept her fix with a new john. The exact same method he used on Parish.

I don’t see Arno when I look for him, but at the moment, I’m not sure I even want to.

Stacatto may have filmed his humiliation and given Parish the lethal shot, but it was no different from what Mack had done to her—only the bastard had done it slowly, spreading out his torture over years rather than two hours. Back then, I think he called it “love.”

My gaze flits over to the blonde slowly picking her way down the bleachers. She keeps her head held high above the carnage, her gray eyes cool and unaffected by the blood staining the sand a few feet ahead of her. I didn’t watch her during the fight, but now, I wonder just who she was rooting for.

“I’ll give you a day,” Mack says, though I suspect that the fucker never really stopped talking.

The corner of his mouth quirks when he realizes just who my gaze went to.

“Until then, you have the full run of the compound. Darcy will show you around.” He jerks his head just as the woman approaches me, trailed by a light, sweet scent. Strawberries?

She seems taller than she did before, though her head still comes to the same spot, right at the top of my left shoulder.

“You...you okay, Dante?” she asks, reaching up to trail a thumb along my jaw, inches away from the budding bruise. It doesn’t seem to matter to her that Mack is still within earshot, but I shrug her off and head for the door.

“Fine.” It’s a fucking lie, but oddly enough, there are no physical reactions to contradict it.

My hands aren’t shaking. My head feels clear.

My nostrils flare, catching a spicy hint above the dust and blood and Darcy’s artificial shampoo.

It’s...more real than all three—an earthy scent emanating from the strands of black hair that fan out behind me with every step.

Suddenly, my body does betray me; the front of my jeans tightens.

“Wait.”

I grit my teeth but force myself to glance over my shoulder at Mack . There’s a knife in his hand—a slender kitchen one with a blade too dull to cut the palm of the hand he’s tapping against it.

“Don’t let the princess forget her knife,” he warns, holding the blade out in my direction. “You wouldn’t want to leave her without protection.”

I say nothing when I cross the arena and snatch the knife from him. Then I shove it into my pocket. There’s blood on the blade—she must have cut that fucker Sammy good. I head for the door and clench my jaw against admiration before it even rises up.

“It’s this way,” Darcy murmurs.

Without even realizing it, I was already barreling my way out of the arena.

The night air is a slap against my sweat-soaked skin, and I relish the hit like a jolt of my own electric heroin.

Goose bumps prickle along my arms. My senses are on hyperalert.

I can sense every prick Mack has stationed in the woods, watching me.

I hear their unsteady footsteps and jagged breathing.

Stupid fuckers. I dare any one of them to. ..

“Hey.”

I flinch when a warm hand settles over my forearm, and it takes everything I have not to grasp the slender wrist it’s attached to and break it.

“It’s just up ahead,” Darcy says. Her face gives nothing away, but she quickly removes her hand from me and uses it to point to what appears to be a detached garage a few feet away. “There’s an apartment upstairs. Mack calls it the guesthouse—”

I come to a stop, jarring the woman dangling over my shoulder. Narrowed, my eyes trail from the building’s single door up to the windows along the upper level.

“It’s safe,” Darcy insists. “Trust me. He makes the people he doesn’t like sleep in the Kennel.” Shuddering, she glances over her shoulder at the building that houses the arena. “Come on. I’ll show you inside.”

I don’t attempt to follow when she prances forward, her hips swinging, her blond hair bouncing over her shoulders. Her fingers grasp the knob of the door, but she hesitates before pulling it open.

“It’s been five years, Dante...” She tilts her head, watching me through her lashes. “Don’t tell me you’ve stopped trusting me already.”

There’s a bitter challenge hidden in her soft tone. I don’t know how to classify what we had before. Friendship? Emotions other than hate rarely make a mark on my psyche, but I can’t resist the part of me that grudgingly steps forward when she finally opens the door, and I follow her inside.

The bottom level sports a few motorcycles and crates of tools and equipment. A rickety staircase along the wall leads to an upper level where a battered door separates a narrow apartment from the rest of the structure.

The small place reeks of stale cigarette smoke and booze.

There’s a narrow kitchen across from a stained couch I’d consider using as a toilet before I ever sat on it.

Down a short hallway is a cramped bathroom and then a room barely large enough to fit the king-sized bed shoved inside it.

Slipping past me, Darcy perches herself on the end of the mattress, running her hands along the plain, black comforter.

“It almost feels like old times,” she says softly.

“You kicking Mack’s ass in front of a packed house.

He was vicious, even back then...but the skanks who’d hunt you down after were worse.

” She laughs and eyes me with a playful shrug.

“You rarely went off with one of them though. Back then, you used to only fight for money.”

I don’t bother to answer the question in her tone.

I approach the bed instead and toss Stacatto’s woman down onto it.

Her fingers fly out in search of stability.

The pale skin of her stomach is bared; her sweater rode up far enough to reveal the jagged edges of an N and T.

After shoving her onto her back, I wrench the hem down.