Page 134 of Once A Crime Lord

“Help Gavin!”

“I can’t.”

Blade sounded pained.

“If he dies, I’ll kill you,” she screamed and shoved him again.

The knife in Blade’s hand trembled. The fight in the room poured into the arena. Another masked man raised his axe above Gavin’s head.

“Blade!” she screamed.

Blade tossed his knife, which sank into the man’s belly. He screamed and dropped his weapon too close to Gavin’s head for comfort, distracting the man with the machete long enough for Gavin to gain the upper hand.

The masked men tried to leave the sandy pit, but the spectators blocked off the stairs. Thwarted, they scrambled to arm themselves from a wall of weapons, which included whips, chains, swords, spears, and other primitive weapons.

Gavin, Angel, and Eli hopped into the arena. There was a moment of silence, and then the spectators began to cheer. It was like they were at a football game. The masked men made a circle around Gavin, Angel, and Eli who were unarmed aside from Gavin’s brass knuckles and Eli’s knife.

“Blade,” she whispered. “Go.”

“I can’t!”

“I’ll stay right here. There’s no one in the room!” she shouted, shoving at him as one of the masked men began to swing a chain above his head.

“Fuck!” Blade whirled on Lucifer and gripped his shirt. “Watch her!”

“Sure, sure,” Lucifer said. “You’d better get out there.”

“You won’t let anyone touch her?” Blade demanded.

“You said she can take care of herself.”

“You—”

“Blade!” she screamed as Eli staggered from a whiplash.

Blade snatched knives and an axe from bodies before he ran into the arena. He broke the circle surrounding Gavin by cleaving a man’s head in two. It was brutal, chaotic, and gory. This was ten times worse than a gun battle.

She skirted the bodies and ran to the shattered window. Eli’s dagger landed in the throat of the man wielding the whip while Gavin played with a man who was trying to cut him in half with a sword. Gavin waited for his moment, pivoting while the man swung wildly, his actions becoming more desperate. When he miscalculated and staggered forward, Gavin’s hand flashed out, brass knuckles flashing in the stadium lights. His victim’s head snapped to the side. Blood and teeth splashed across the sand. Gavin followed this with a punch to the temple that made her look away. Fuck.

She tapped the edge of the window anxiously but wasn’t able to look away for long. There was a piercing scream followed by the roaring crowd. She looked back and saw Angel wielding a trident with the same ease that he drove the car. The crowd leaned over the rails, yelling their heads off as Angel sliced a man’s stomach open.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

Lucifer came up beside her with a champagne glass and a round metal shield. She gave him a disbelieving look before Eli sliced a man’s calf open and followed that up with an efficient throat slit. Blade stood back from the others, gauging and taking out the masked men with an efficiency that made her realize this wasn’t his first time in the pit. Gavin claimed a sword. The sight of him in a bloody suit with a sword would be imprinted in her mind for all time. She was about to take a breath when a man wearing a wolf mask snapped the whip at Gavin’s back. She let out a battle cry and would have launched herself forward, but Lucifer yanked her back.

“No women in the arena,” he said.

“You—”

She whirled around to search the room for a weapon to toss and saw Steven Vega hiding beneath the table. Despite his position, something about his face riveted her. He didn’t look terrified. No, he was... seething. Something vicious flashed in the dark depths of his eyes, and her world imploded.

23

Lyla

Even as shetried to come to terms with what she was seeing, Steven crawled out from under the table. He straightened and smoothed a hand over his suit.

She would recognize the malevolence in those eyes anywhere. She had been nice to this fucker. She talked to him in the bar and helped him up when he fell in his father’s hospital room. This man defiled her, used her parents as pawns, and massacred Manny, the only father figure she’d ever known. He robbed Nora of the privilege of having Manny as a grandfather and Vinny as an uncle. The memory of this man tortured her every night for over two years, and he had been hiding in plain sight. He was a true wolf in sheep’s clothing. She built Sadist up in her mind to be an invincible monster when he was just a sicko in a mask. No one would dream that the timid lawyer was actually a sadistic killer capable of running the underworld, not when he left a trail of mutilated bodies in his wake.

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