Page 102 of Cruel Debts
Not for Hawke, though. He stopped on a dime like a dog at the end of his leash and scowled.
"What the hell do you mean you said something you shouldn't?" He leaned in now, right beside Asher, and now there weretworabid dogs in my face. "What exactly did you say, Liam?"
"Use your words, jackass," Asher growled, his eyes narrowed damn near to slits. "And make it fast."
"Now isn't the time to split hairs, you guys?—"
I no sooner made the excuse than I found my face being slammed into the marble countertop, quite possibly breaking my nose. It was hard to tell. Blood ran like a faucet, and it was tender to the touch, but I was afraid to shift it, for fear that it was actually broken.
"You broke my nose, you prick!" I swung on him, but from my position, it was futile. I missed by a mile, and ended up just making my own ears ring. With a swear, I bit the bullet and touched the side of my nose, and my eyes watered. "Sonofabitch, Asher, what thefuck?"
"What. The fuck. Did you say to her?" His words were punctuated by a finger in my chest, and at the cost of being more injured, I made a bad decision and lied again.
"It's not important." It was very important. I was just a pussy.
Wham!
My face met the counter again, and if my nosewasn'tbroken before, now it wasreallybroken.
I sniffed, and all I could feel was pain. Blood ran down the back of my throat, down the front of my face, and stained mywhite shirt red. It dripped onto the counter between us, leaving a nice little puddle as Hawke watched with his arms crossed and a leering smirk on his lips.
"Fuck," I mumbled, "okay, shit, stop abusing me." I tried to look cross-eyed at my nose, but the damage made me queasy. "If I tell you, will someone snap my nose back into place?"
Asher quirked a brow, but Hawke huffed something that sounded a lot likenot like you deserve it, but whatever.Taking the risk, I sighed.
This wasn't going to go well at all.
"Fix my nose first."
Hawke blinked at me. "No."
"Yes." If they found out what I said first, they'd break my nose a third time for shits and giggles. If they fixed my nose, they'd be more reluctant to shatter the remaining cartilage in my nasal passages, for fear they'd have to redo their work. "Nose first, then the words."
"Fine, you man baby." Asher leaned forward and grinned gleefully as he gripped my nose in one hand and the back of my head in the other. With the precision of a surgeon and the rage of a man betrayed, he snapped my nose back into place.
I jumped back with a yowl the second he let me go. "You could have been gentler!"
"You could be less of an asshole, but here we are. What did you say to her?"
I stared at the floor and held my hand under my still-bleeding nose. "I told her she was just a job."
It was enough of the truth that they didn't need to know more.
I could have easily copped out and told them that I told her she was changing them. But they would have known that wasn't the worst of it. It was better to give them something serious andwalk away with the full rage instead of their suspicion and more broken body parts.
Hawke was first to respond, surprisingly. His hands gripped the edge of the counter, and I could practically hear his teeth grinding in his mouth as he stared me down with lethal intent in his eyes.
"You—of all the low things—I swear to god I'll kill you, Liam, just you wait?—"
Asher held him back, and not soon enough, because he might have actually killed me had he gotten close enough to put his hands around my neck.
"Not now, Hawke," Asher muttered, his eyes pinning me with a malicious glare. "You can kill him when we get her back."
"We don't even know where the fuck she?—"
"We start at the club," Asher declared, his eyes hard. "And we go from there."
FORTY-THREE
