Page 118 of The Ripper

THE RIPPER

GRIMM

The deadliest of poisons come in the smallest of bottles, and I knew better than to underestimate someone with her reputation.

I had already underestimated a certain blonde, and she practically put me on my ass that one time we had a fight.

She stopped next to my father and smiled at him, whereupon he pulled her into a fatherly hug and kissed her forehead, an action that made me frown and wonder if he spawned another child that Klaus and I had no idea about, but she bore no resemblance to any of us.

“Your secret weapon is a woman, Nikolai?” Damiano stepped closer and watched her from above. “What’s she going to do, kill us with her heels?”

I narrowed my eyes.

~ What an idiot.

~ Right? How is he not dead already?

~ Cockroaches survive the longest.

He didn’t see it coming, no one saw it, not even me.

In the next second, he was hauled over the tiny woman’s shoulder and laid on his back, Midnight’s pointy heel pressing down on his windpipe.

“Yes,” she said, giggling like a child as he gasped for air.

She took her foot off him and straddled him, sitting on his stomach and leaning down towards his face, a sadistic grin, that even I couldn’t master, playing on her otherwise innocent-looking face.

“Want me to demonstrate, pretty boy?” she asked as she pulled a knife out of her shoe and hovered the blade over his chest.

“Okay, I got it,” he tried to raise his arms, but her knees were firmly pressed on his forearms.

I watched with morbid fascination as she lightly stroked his skin with the tip of the knife, not enough to kill him, but enough to draw blood and leave a small scar, then she held the knife to her mouth and fucking licked the blood off the blade.

“You taste like fear,” she whispered over his face, allowing the blood on her lips to smear over his cheek.

Damiano’s eyes widened when she stood up, wiped the rest of the blood on his pants, then put the knife back in her boot.

Klaus burst out laughing, Hannibal watched her with sparkling hearts in his eyes, and I looked at her with nothing but respect.

Midnight held her hand out to help him stand up, but the arrogant asshole didn’t take it and stood up on his own, then threw himself in a chair. The woman bent over the edge of the table, looking him dead in the eyes as she licked her lips like a feline ready to cause trouble.

“Cat got your tongue, pretty boy?” she purred.

Damiano looked at her as if he wanted to gouge out her eyes, because he had an ego of astronomical proportions, and the little woman had just stepped all over it with her boots. Literally.

“That’s enough, my dear,” my father said.

“Yeah,” I intervened. “While I do enjoy watching this motherfucker getting his ass handed to him, and I’d pay eleven million to see more of it in the future, we have more important things to attend to,” I said, and she straightened up, finally looking at me.

Damiano flipped me off while Klaus actively struggled to stifle his laughter.

~ Didn’t hold grudges, my ass. You liked seeing him squirm just as much as I did.

“I’ll leave you boys — and lady — to it,” my father said as he turned and respectfully tilted his head in her direction.

He leaned down and whispered something in her ear, and she nodded as she looked at me, then my father left.

I stood up from the chair and chose to introduce myself first, because she was there for me.

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