Page 42 of Spiteful Heart

“I hope you said goodbye,” Tony whispered, “because this face of mine is the last thing you’ll ever see.”

“Ew,” I deadpanned. “You got the better end of this deal, even with those knife hands.”

That got his jaw to grind and the pressure on my neck to increase. He was seconds from slicing my throat when the sounds of gunshots upstairs pierced the air. Tony clearly wasn’t expecting that, because he froze, the blade lessening its pressure just a hair… just enough to tell me he was distracted.

It’s all the distraction I needed. I couldn’t move most of my body; my hands were still cuffed, my right hand caught beneath his knee thanks to where it was placed on me. But my left? With the chain still attached, my left hand could move enough, and that’s all I’d need.

I brought my left hand up as hard as I could, hitting him right in the balls. Tony hadn’t expected that, and as he lost his balance and let out a groan of pain, I hit him again in the same place. It wasn’t that hard, considering, but it was hard enough to get him to roll off me and squeeze his legs together.

More gunshots upstairs, but I couldn’t pay attention to anything that was going on upstairs, too focused on Tony and the fact that I was still restrained and he still had those knife hands. He might be down right now, but as soon as he gathered himself, he’d pop right back up like a daisy after the coldest winter.

I pushed myself up and crawled on top of Tony before he could get ahold of himself fully. The man was still too busy with his ball pain, and I used that to my advantage. I curled around him like a spider monkey, wrapping the chain between my handcuffs around his neck and pulling with all my might, choking the motherfucker.

Another three shots rang out upstairs, but all I could hear was the grunting Tony did, the straining he did beneath the chain around his neck. I arched my back away from him, my legs wrapped around his torso, and I pulled. I pulled as hard as I fucking could, wanting to pop his head off his body like the worst zit ever.

But by doing that, I gave him other pain to focus on. His ball pain forgotten, he sprang to life, suddenly quite lively for a half-dead guy. He lifted one of his knife hands up, trying to stab my chest over his shoulder, but I’d arched my top half too far back; he couldn’t reach. Since he couldn’t reach, he went at me from another angle.

His other arm twisted back, the knife attached coming at me in a place I couldn’t dodge due to the fact my legs were wrapped around him.

Remember when I said I didn’t feel pain anymore? Yeah, that might’ve been a lie. I should’ve said I didn’t feel small bits of pain anymore, because this… yeah, let’s just say I felt it. I felt it and I had to let go of him when I did.

Splitting, searing hot agony coursed through me from my side, where Tony had stuck me with his left knife. Right in the side, in the gut. Everything in me felt like it was burning, and I gasped and wheezed, the chain loosening around his neck enough for him to lift my arms up and over his head. With an elbow to the chest, he pushed me back, and I fell to the floor, my eyes staring daggers at the ceiling.

Shit. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

Shit, shit, shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Those words were on repeat in my head as the pain flooded me. I pressed my hands against my side, where he’d stabbed me, trying to staunch the blood floor. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do much of anything, because with each breath I took, my insides were on fire. My lungs, my gut, even my skin. It was like my body was pissed at me for the agony it currently endured, and there was nothing I could do to make myself feel better.

Tony lumbered to his feet, standing over me. He breathed hard too, his chest rising and falling with uneven, haggard breaths. His neck was already red and bruised from my attack, but the motherfucker wasn’t dead yet.

“You fucking bitch,” Tony hissed out, sounding pained. Didn’t know why; he wasn’t the one with a fucking hole on his side. Sure, his balls might’ve gotten hit a few times and his throat might’ve been choked, but all things considered, he was still doing better than me.

He stepped over me, standing above my body. His shoulders rose and fell, the fury in his eyes palpable. He hated me above anything else, as I supposed a lot of men would, if they knew what I liked doing to their kind.

Filthy, disgusting, horrible men. If anyone deserved to be chained up and dying, it was him, not me.

He knelt down, bringing his bladed hands with him and resting one on either side of my neck. The blades were angled, crossing just above the skin on my throat. He was going to kill me, decapitate me like he’d grown so fond of doing.

“Goodbye, Night Slayer,” he hissed out, the muscles in his arms tensing.

I was so focused on my imminent death and what was coming that I neglected to hear someone bounding down the steps and throwing open the door, so focused on Tony above me and those metal blades arched around my throat that I didn’t even hear it.

The gunshot.

Just one. Tony’s body froze, his eyes widening. His head glanced down, and that was when I let my eyes fall to his chest, too. A dark wet spot had blossomed in his chest. His shirt was black, so you couldn’t see the color, but I knew what it was even before it started to drip onto me:blood.

Those green eyes of his lifted to my face once again, and I knew it then. Even though he was dying, he’d take me out with him. The knives around my throat constricted, starting to dig into my skin, but another shot rang out—this one I heard. This one split the air like a siren, and it ended with a bright red splatter. Outward from Tony’s head, warm gooey brain matter exploded onto me.

He couldn’t continue to tighten those blades around my neck because he was dead.

Tony’s figure slumped over me, and I couldn’t even push him off me because I had to keep pressure on my side—although that grew harder and harder as the seconds passed due to how much pain was traveling through my system. My vision had started to blur.

Someone ran up to us and carefully pulled Tony’s body off me, helping the knifed hands up and around my neck so they wouldn’t injure me further. The disfigured body slumped to the side and I could finally see the face of my savior. Relatively, past the blurriness, that was.

And the face that I saw? It wasn’t the one I expected to see. I’d thought, somehow, Sylvester was here. Or Maddox. Or Viper. Even Big Mike. One of my guys, here to save the day, here to save me from certain death.

But it wasn’t one of them. It was someone else, someone I’d doubted recently.

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