Page 29

TWENTY-EIGHT

FLIP A COIN

ROYCE

N icolette’s face is covered in blood. Both eyes are swollen shut, mere slits now, and her nose is crooked. The tiny diamond stud is missing, like someone pulled it out—or punched it out.

She struggles to go from lying on her side to rising up on her knees. “Is someone here?” she whispers.

Fucking hell. Can she not see me? There are two weak lamps down here and no windows, but that’s light enough that I can see her… but I don’t look like someone took a barbell to my face.

That realization gets my ass in gear. I don’t even finish walking down the stairs. I jump down the last four.

“ Nic .” The sound is ragged, torn from my chest. I immediately shove my gun behind me, tucking it in my waistband as I drop to my knees on the cement floor. I could give a shit if the gun goes off and I shoot myself in the ass. All I care about is getting to her—and finding out what the hell happened. “It’s me, baby. I got you. I’m here.”

“Royce.” Her bottom lip is split, dried blood welling in the corner while the gash in the middle is shiny and red. When she fights to smile at me, my heart breaks at the same time as pride joins the other parade of emotions marching through me. Whoever did this to her tried to break her—but that will never, ever happen, and her strength fucking amazes me as she fumbles for my hand, squeezing it tightly. “You came.”

Of course I did. I’d walk over fucking glass and hot coals to make it to this woman.

Her battered face screws up, free hand scrabbling against the hard floor as she tries to scoot closer to me.

“How did you… how did you know where I was?”

My first instinct is to grab her face, to hold her steady, to witness every mark blooming on her skin because someone has to take it in. I don’t want to cause her any more pain, though, so I settle on laying one hand on her shoulder, tightening my fingers around hers with the other, giving her a connection so that she knows I’m here with her.

What I don’t do is tell her that I tracked her through a microchip. She’ll need to hear that eventually, but in this state? Knowing Nicolette the way I do, it’ll only agitate her more.

She can hit me with another frying pan if it makes her feel better later. Now? It doesn’t matter how I found her.

All that matters is what happened to her while I was racing to get to her.

So, in a voice stifled with an ice-cold anger I can’t deny, I ask her softly, “Who did this to you? Who hurt you?”

She gasps, choking on a breath that I quickly realize is a sob. That’s answer enough—as is the fact that we’re in a Dragonfly hidey-hole—but I wait with as much patience as I can scrape up for her to finally whisper, “Kieran.”

Alfieri .

The bastard who stole her innocence, then stole the last ten years of her life. First, because he’d trapped her in an abusive relationship. Later, because everything he did left its stamp on her, including her need to have her independence to the point that she almost lost it.

I’ll get her out of here. I’ll get her safe, get her help, and then I’m coming back to deal with her nightmare.

I start to scoop her up. It doesn’t even occur to me to see if she can walk. She’s still on the floor, and I’ll gladly carry her.

I don’t get the chance. Before I can figure out how to lift her up without aggravating her injuries, I hear the door behind me open. One step, then another, jaunty fucking steps that are ten times worse because whoever is coming down here is whistling merrily as he does so.

Nicolette starts to tremble. And that? That seals it for me. When I walked down those steps, my only plan was to find her and get her back where she belongs: with me. But the way he whistles, jogging down the stairs as though he didn’t leave Nicolette in pain and whimpering on the floor fucking infuriates me. It takes a lot to push me; my even-keeled temper is the foil to Devil’s rage. But now?

I finally understand what could cause one man to hack off another’s head the way that he did all those years ago.

An hour and a half. Alfieri got his paws on her, tossed her in this basement, and fucked her up this bad in an hour and a half—and the motherfucker is whistling .

I try not to think about how much worse off she would’ve been if I’d been any later. I got lucky Alfieri wasn’t down here when I arrived, but my luck just ran out. Before I could get Nicolette out of here, he’s back .

Swearing to her that I won’t let him hurt her again, I’m on my feet, facing the stairs as Alfieri appears without ever thinking about grabbing my Beretta.

That was my mistake. So used to my fists being my weapon of choice, I balled my hands tight in barely restrained fury when I saw the look of surprise on Alfieri’s face. He recovered quickly—quicker than me, god damn it—and he dropped the glass of water he’d held in his hand, trading his surprised expression for one of pure murder the same time as he went for his gun.

I don’t flinch. It hits me a second too late that I fucked up, but I do what I always do in situations like this: I pull a half-smile to my face and hope he’ll underestimate me. That’s all I need. One second and I’ll take care of this.

And then the bastard snorts, lowering his gun to his gut, and I want to think I have him right where I want him… until he says, “Rolls fucking Royce in the flesh. Shit. You got here quicker than I thought. Good. That’ll save me time.”

I don’t give anything away. I’m sure of it, but Alfieri laughs.

He laughs . I want to rip his tongue out of his mouth and his lungs out through his chest so that he can’t say another word, and he laughs .

“Oh, yeah. I know who you are. When I saw you with my property, I made it my mission to learn everything about you.” Alfieri gestures at my curled-up empty fists. “What are you thinking, fixer? You don’t get your hands dirty. You use your mouth for Devil.” He curls his upper lip. “Pretty boy like you, I wouldn’t be surprised if you give him your ass, too.”

Oh, come on. A woman-beater and a homophobe, too? Could this guy be any more garbage? I know there’s some fellas in the syndicate who have a problem when it comes to who a couple of ‘em love, but that’s never been me. As long as the adults are consenting, who gives a fuck, right?

Nicolette loves me. She chose me. I didn’t have to throw her in a basement for her attention after preying on her when she was a kid.

He deserves to die for that alone. Hurting her. Making her bleed… making her afraid … if he wasn’t already a dead man when I pulled my car up to the door, he is now. No need for outsourcing, either, not like I did with Miles Haines.

I was still trying to take care of Nic and the Sinners at the same time. Now? In this moment, I know exactly which one owns my loyalty more than the other.

And I’m not making Nicolette spend a moment longer in this hellhole than I have to.

I move my left hand from hanging at my side to the top of my thigh.

“Hands, asshole,” barks Alfieri. His smarmy bastard act disappears in the blink of an eye as he trains his gun on me again. “Let me see your hands or I stop fucking with you and just take you out now.”

Will he shoot me? Oh, definitely. I don’t have a doubt in my mind that he’s doing exactly what he said: believing he has the upper hand, he’s fucking around, taking his time before I become another leaf on the back of his bicep.

Dumb fucks. They always underestimate me, don’t they?

“I just want to reach in my pocket. Come on, Alfieri. You don’t think I got a piece in here, do you?” I throw my suit jacket away from me just enough to reveal my empty holster while still keeping the gun hidden behind my back concealed. “You were right. I came as quick as I could. I forgot my gun, but I do have this.”

He doesn’t stop me from slipping the fingers of my left hand into my pocket, retrieving one of my coins. I show it to him.

“A coin?” Suddenly amused—and still not thinking I’m capable of doing anything other than rolling a pair of dice—he lowers his piece. Good . “What the fuck do you think you can do with that?”

“Let’s flip it. Heads, you get Nic. Tails? She’s mine, and you never bother her again. We walk out of here and forget this happened,” I lie. “Same as if you win. Come on, Alfieri. I know your kind. A Dragonfly first, yeah? You gonna fuck up Libellula’s truce with the devil of Springfield over some pussy?”

If he won’t, I definitely am.

I hope to fucking hell that Nicolette knows better than to believe anything I’m saying. Alfieri was right. I’m a walking mouth. If I can use words first, I will, but sometimes they’re just not enough.

I raise my eyebrows at the fucker who thought he could take the only woman I’ve ever loved like this.

He shrugs. He’s as much of a liar as I am, but I let him think I’m dumb enough to be fooled as he says, “Sure. Go on. Flip it.”

I do.

The cocky bastard’s eyes trace the arc of my quarter. I know he couldn’t care less which side it lands on. The proof is in how, even as the coin spins, he’s lifting his gun once more, aiming it back at my chest. There’s no way in hell he’ll let me have her.

Fair enough. I don’t plan on letting him have her, either.

Will he shoot me the second the coin hits the ground? Probably. Good thing I start to react before he did.

He’s watching the coin, so sure he has the upper hand that, for a split second, that’s the only thing in this basement that has his attention.

Fucking moron. Alfieri never should’ve taken his eyes off of me. He also never should’ve taken my word that I didn’t have a gun just because my holster was empty.

His gun is still only halfway to position when I reach behind me, yanking my gun out, and aiming right at him.

I’m not a marksman. I don’t have the practice with my Beretta that Link has with his Sig Sauer. When he made an example of Twig Mathewson, shooting him in the cock first, then the head… that was for an audience. Fuck that. Alfieri hurt Nic. Just when I promised her that she was safe, he shattered that illusion, stealing her away from me—and he hurt her.

A Beretta M9 holds fifteen rounds. Despite rarely firing it, I spent the last ten years in guns. An irresponsible gun owner is a dead gun owner. I take care of my shit, and that includes checking how many bullets are in my magazine.

I empty five of them into Alfieri. Right to the chest so that there’s no hope of him surviving. One of the first lessons I learned when I started out in the life was that a sharp mind and fast tongue might get me far, my quick fingers even farther, but if I decide to fire my piece?

I’m no cop. I’m not trying to incapacitate anyone. Sinners shoot to kill.

And that’s exactly what I do.

Blood sprays everywhere when the first bullet tears straight through his chest and out his back, and I’m grateful that Nic is crumpled up on the floor, far enough away from the spatter that it barely hits her. His chest so much fucking Swiss cheese, Alfieri flops upon impact of each bullet. He’s dead with the first hit—a chest shot that hit his heart—but his body takes a few seconds to catch up. The other four bullets are simply a mix of insurance and revenge.

Tough guy thought I was an easy mark. Like so many others, he was wrong.

I don’t often let my rage out of its cage, but I make an exception for the monster who hurt my girl. Shit, I would’ve made him suffer more if I could. If Nic didn’t have her hands over her ears, blocking out the deafening gunfire that echoes around the empty room he kept her captive in, I’d take out the last of my aggression on the worthless corpse sprawled out on his belly.

I spare a quick assessing look over Alfieri, verifying that there’s no surviving the damage my gun did or the blood he’s lost. The quarter, I notice, landed about ten inches away from his shoulder. Tails.

Of course. I needed my right hand to pull my gun. My ‘heads’ quarter was in the other pocket.

Oops. Oh, well.

Now if she didn’t have her hands over her ears… but she does, and despite how loud it is, I can still make out the sound of her sobs over my ringing ears.

Once the threat to her is gone, I go right on autopilot. Stopping only to engage the safety on my gun, holster it, then snatch up my bloody quarter, I’m immediately at Nicolette’s side. Crouching down low, I scoop her up, lifting her onto my lap as the first tremors run through me.

If she struggled, if she made it clear that she didn’t want anything to do with me at this moment, I don’t know how I would’ve reacted. It would be totally understandable, but just like I had to off Alfieri, I need to make sure that Nicolette is okay.

“I got you,” I swear again, and this time I fucking mean it. “He can’t hurt you anymore. Never again, baby. You hear me? Never again.”

Instead of stiffening or trying to get away from my hold, she collapses into my embrace.

“I thought… I thought… Oh, Royce.” She buries her face against my chest, jolting when she hits her obviously broken nose. Yanking back, Nicolette glances up at me through her swollen eyes. “I thought you— shit. I got blood all over your shirt.”

Fuck the shirt. I cradle the back of her head, guiding her down so that her cheek is pressed to my chest. I’m careful not to bump her nose. I want her to know that her comfort is the most important thing in the goddamn world to me right now. Let her bleed all over me so long as it’s blood she can spare.

“Shh…” I stroke her hair, doing my best to be soothing—and not think about the last time I was crouched low, a bloody blonde in my arms. A Dragonfly hurt her then, too, but I wasn’t able to avenge her—or save her. With Nicolette, I’ll do both. “I’m gonna move you. Is that okay? I’m gonna carry you up the stairs. I got my car. We’re getting you home.”

Her fingers dig through my shirt, into my chest. “I thought you were going to let him keep me.”

“ Never ,” I vow. “I will never let anyone take you away from me.”

It’s as though that’s all she needed to hear. Still clinging to me, she nods, shudders out a breath, and closes her eyes.