Page 92 of When Kings Fall

He went to push out of the chair, to come at me, but I spun my knife in my hand, making the threat clear.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

“That’s my question. You’re working for Malcolm Lynch.”

He paled. “How do you—did Knight find that out for you? Little interfering shit.”

“I found it out.”

“What?” He scoffed. “No. Don’t bother protecting him.”

“I’m not. There you are, though, completely discounting me and underestimating me. Is that what Lynch ordered you to do? To gaslight me? To keep me down? To have me reeling in what happened?”

“Yeah, all right? That was the deal.” He smiled nastily. “And it worked. Like a fucking charm.”

“When? When did you start working for him?”

“Six months before the kidnapping. He needed somebody on the inside.”

“You betrayed me! Betrayed the club!”

“It wasn’t personal. Just money. A hell of a lot of money. Well, and getting to fuck the club princess. That was a big time achievement I was real proud of. You being so scared and submissive after Lynch fucked you up was a treat too.” He winked. “I like them pliant.”

Something caught my eye in my peripheral vision, a moment before Tommy shrieked as a knife plunged into his groin, driving deep through the denim of his jeans.

He collapsed to his knees, shrieking and shrieking non-stop.

Levi bolted past me and took him in a sleeper hold, slapping his hand over his mouth to silence his screams. “Take your punishment, motherfucker.”

Before I could get over the shock of him suddenly rushing in here and doing that to Tommy, he reached underneath Tommy’s jacket, then he was tossing me a gun.

“He didn’t leave his Desert Eagle at the door. The woman who ran out of here warned me.”

“Shit,” I breathed.

He smiled at me. “Got you, baby. Always.” That smile faded as he glared down at Tommy flailing in his arms in horrific pain. “You want to do the honors? Or should I?”

“The knife to the dick was satisfying enough for me. More than I could have hoped for.”

“Well, the punishment fit the crime. He hurt you, played you… he’s working for the monster who tortured us. He can’t survive that.”

“No,” I ground out, glaring at Tommy with a dangerous cocktail of fury and vengeance. “He can’t.”

As much as I knew that to be true, and that he was too dangerous to be left alive with his close association with Malcolm Lynch, and knowing that we’d tracked him, what we were capable of together, I still fucking well hesitated as I stepped forward to finish him with my blade.

Levi, knowing me so well and being his amazingly attentive self to my needs, noticed right away and recognized what it meant.

He yanked the knife from Tommy’s groin, then jabbed it into his eye, killing him in an instantaneous move.

Releasing him, he got to his feet and spat on his corpse with absolute disgust.

He dialed Roman’s unit waiting in the wings hidden outside to shut the strip club down for the night so they could come in and conduct their cleanup and bury the body—literally and figuratively.

And then he was there, wrapping his arms around me. “He’s gone. That chapter of your life is over. The lies and manipulation have died along with him. It’s brutal justice. It was necessary, my Wildflower.”

My Wildflower.

That was what I held onto in order to fight off the chill that ran through me as the cold, hard reality of taking a life started to sink in all too quickly.

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