“You fucked her in public after Karsten’s son was hit?” I howled. “What the hell were you thinking?”
The answer washe wasn’t. He never did when it came to her, and that made his love dangerous. I slammed my fist into his chest until I felt bone, hating the way Wolfe didn’t flinch. He wasa machine built for violence and repaid the favor by landing a clean punch to my throat.
I gagged, laughing through the sting, and head-butted him hard.
“And now those fuckers think she’s someone you care about.” I hauled him up by the collar, grinding my pain into the side of his temple.
“SheISsomeone I care about!” he broke, and whatever was holding him together slumped between my fingers.
“Yeah?” I paused, searching the black in his pupils for a sane moment. “On a scale of one to ten, how much?”
Wolfe’s eyes flashed, and the air blistered between us.
Did he really think I didn’t know all the ways he liked to play with my woman? That somehow the way she yearned to be dragged under, reborn, and pulled apart had escaped me, while my entire being formed around her? Of course, she craved intensity. Thirsted for pain. Daphne desired the type of darkness you could taste but never run from.
“Who do you think taught her body how to want all those dark, violent things?” I asked, pinning him against the back seat with my weight. Wolfe didn’t flinch when my forearm smashed his windpipe. “She let you in for one reason and one reason only.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?” Wolfe’s eyes darkened.
“Because you are the only one who’s ever gotten close to giving her what she wants most,” I growled between us, the mask sticking in my mouth. “Me.”
“That’s only half true,” he spat a bloodied clot onto my face, not giving me an inch.
In all the years he’d loved her, he had never once tried to compete with me. I think I provided the safety latch to his emotional tether to her, the thing he used to feel human and discard whenever he had to be everything but.
“And I get that she’s your fucking world, Threx, but she is also mine. We will fix this.” He grabbed my collar, pulling me closer. “Together.”
We’ll see.
I snarled, shifting my weight back into the seat next to Nathem, who looked like he was about to kill us both.
“There they are,” he said, pointing ahead to the gold Ford Escape keeping its distance. It was already ten, but the weather painted everything in midnight.
“That is definitely one of Karsten’s cars,” I grumbled, making a face at the crew’s color choices.
“How many?” Wolfe asked, cracking his nose back into place and dropping the window.
“Two, I think,” Nathem answered.
“Good,” he muttered with a scowl, “I like options. Alert Rinley and the rest of the crew for cleanup,” he ordered, taking a shot at the tires in front of us and watching them blow.
I did not even hear gunshots anymore or feel the pressure of the trigger under my finger. Daphne could make my heart do stupid, sick things that the stench of death no longer could. It was a symptom of losing it all and a side effect of the Underworld.
We held on as Nathem hit the brakes to avoid the blowback, and there was a curious satisfaction in the way a car spun out of control. It was what my insides felt like: tires and the gravel earth whirling on all sides.
“Who wants to be the bait?” Wolfe asked, leaning over to see if either of them had the balls to step outside. No one moved, which meant they needed something to empty their magazines on before we dragged them out to die.
“I will,” Nathem decided through a yawn, fixing his vest and reaching for the door. “You two play nice, unless you want Blade taking the lead on this shit.”
I stared into his uneven eyes and nodded. No one with a shred of sanity wanted that. Daph once took him to an escape room, and after getting the safe code wrong twice, he blasted it open with a sawed-off he had shoved in his pants. We don’t take him out in public if we can help it.
There were a few quiet moments before the orange light of gunfire tore through the industrial strip, pinging off God knows what.
“What time does her plane leave?” Wolfe asked from the back seat.
I glanced at my phone, hitting her picture in the corner.
“Hey?” she picked up after a single ring. “Did you send Kade to stand guard outside my window?” Her voice went quiet, as if she were squinting in the dark.