Page 24 of Velvet Deception

Now it was a scene of pending death—theirs.

Seeing that man hit her was all it took to unleash this feral need to slaughter him.

Watching the other asshole grab Ramon and hold him back did the trick of making something vital and powerful snap within me.

To witness the threat against the two people I cared about—the only two people in my life who had been so generous to me—was the trigger to send me stalking forward.

No weakness bothered me. Without an ounce of hesitation or second thoughts, I left the doorway where I’d kept Ramon back. We’d heard them come in. Hiding in the closet seemed safest while I surveyed the escape routes in Sofia’s room. Even in that, I felt most like my former self, whoever the hell I was supposed to be.

Stealth. Hiding. Subterfuge.

Those seemed like things I was used to, experienced in embracing a raw need to defend. An instant habit had kicked in for me to strategize both a counterattack and an escape.

Why? How? If I were a doctor, why would I have these skills, these automatic drives to act like a… fighter? Like a combatant?

When we heard Sofia enter, though, all bets were off. Ramon had run out of the closet to rush out there and help her, and I’d caught him just in time. But from the doorway to her room, we witnessed it all.

They weren’t here looking for me.

It sounded more like they were looking for Ramon, who escaped and sprinted out around me to reach his mother to help her. He was thehimthey referenced. These disgusting men were here on the assumption that Sofia could give them drugs, and they would take him to get her to cooperate.

Not on my watch.

Not this time.

Never again.

I was the unaccounted-for variable. The element of surprise could’ve been an advantage point over them, but deep inside, in my soul, I realized I didn’t need to rely on any advantages or tricks.

My feet moved of their own accord as I ran out into the chaos. Locked and tense, the muscles in my arms and legs braced for the exertion of a fight. Tuning out everything else as I rushed toward the fucker who dared to touch Sofia, I dropped into a darkness. It swept over me. It controlled me and fueled me with a streak of malicious energy that I wouldn’t be able to tame.

Not on my watch.

I grabbed the first man, yanking him backward and off her.

“What the fuck do you?—”

My fist silenced him. With a grunt and a crack, my punch cut off whatever else he thought to shout. Spit shot out with the force of my hit, and blood dribbled out of his mouth as he slowly spun his head back to face me.

Already, my vision was tinted in red. Rage descended over me like a well-fit hood, encasing me in an impenetrable will to inflict as much damage and pain as I could.

Seeing the blood on his lip thrilled me.

The evidence of his agony was the trophy I didn’t need.

Triumphing in the ability to strike back, I let this revelation push me further.

I wouldn’t rest until they were both down. Dead. And never able to threaten them again.

“You’re going to regret that,” his partner snarled. He still held on to Ramon, clutching the boy’s collar as he dragged him. Walking toward me, he raised his arm to stab me.

The man I punched growled, rearing back his arm to punch me back.

And so it began. Fending off both of them, I fought. With a grace and athletic mobility that suggested I’d done this a thousand times before, I moved without thought, relying on muscle memory.Memory. The only one it seemed I had anymore.

Forming fists and spinning into kicks, I was a force of death unleashed on them alone. Bending and dodging their hits, I marveled at how I could intuit and estimate how I could predict their likeliest moves. How I could guess and follow through on what they would try next.

One against two wasn’t that bad of a match. I was taller. I was bigger, faster and smarter, with knowledge I didn’t fully understand. Yet, I was still not one hundred percent. My head throbbed with the exertion of fighting off both men. Sofia’s careful stitches on my bicep broke free, and I bled again. Still lagging to a bout of hand-to-hand combat like this, they could’ve easily taken me down, but they didn’t.

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