Page 44 of Scarlett Thief (Criminal Underground 2)

“She can’t,” Jaxson said, very matter of fact. “She may be a hardened thief—a very good one at that—but even she balks at shooting an old lover.”

“Old lover?” I jerked my gaze down to her just as Hadrian’s voice yelled at me through the comm.

“What the fuck are you two doing?” he snapped. “Get a move on. Now! The distraction is over!” And he was right, the music was being turned down and though we were close to the door once more, we couldn’t go back through this one. We had to go the rest of the way down the hallway. Beyond where Jaxson was standing, and it looked like I couldn’t count on Scarlett to pull the trigger.

Fuck. I hoped I didn’t get shot doing this.

I didn’t give either of them an opportunity to anticipate my intentions. One minute, I was standing a foot behind Scarlett, and the next, I was rounding her body and barreling toward Jaxson. His eyes widened and his gun swung my way. A loud crack sounded, but I pushed on—fully expecting to feel the burn of a bullet in my gut any moment, but it never came.

Instead, Jaxson’s arm went flying back and the gun dropped, skidding across the floor until it bumped into the wall. By the time he realized what had happened, I was ramming into him—lowering my head and lifting his body as I picked him up and slammed him into the ground. Once there, I laid into him. My fist flying at his face—one punch and then another and another.

He blocked and threw a few punches, one of them landing in my gut. We rolled across the floor, arms flying, legs in a tangled mess. An uppercut. A jab. A chokehold. The man fought like a violent beast, eyes wide, teeth gritted into an insane grin—as if he enjoyed this. The bloodiness of battle. Of pitting a man’s body against another’s. He laughed just as I shoved my fist in his face again, feeling the satisfying crunch of cartilage as I broke his nose.

Blood poured from his nostrils down over his teeth.

“Wolf!” Scarlett screamed, grabbing my attention. “We have to go.”

I lifted my head and realized that she was right. More men were coming from the opposite direction around the corner. They took in the two bodies we’d left behind on the floor and pulled their weapons, yelling in Italian. I punched Jaxson in the face one more time, wanting to kill him, but Scarlett was there, yanking me up and toward the double doors at the end of the hallway, the ones that would lead outside. I hated to leave the bastard there, alive, but there was no choice. We had to run, and so we ran—out into the night as gunshots and Italian shouts followed us.

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