Page 10 of The Last Time You Break Me

Dom didn’t get a chance to inform the rest of us of his scheme. The door burst open and a shot was fired. Chairs shrieked across the vintage hardwood floor as the table cleared, guns drawn and pointed at the intruder who stood there, completely and utterly unphased as she glared down at the bullet hole that hit dead center between Smithy’s eyes and sent him sprawled backward over his seat. Gunpowder and the smell of metallic blood mingled within the air, a scent that had my mouth wet and my heart untamed within an erratic rhythm.

Lara stood there, as tall as a regal queen and as fearless as a Viking warrior as the shadows encroached her. My eyes widened when I saw the blood which dripped from her wrists, down onto the ground beneath her. A vicious growl burned for freedom within the back of my throat as my body buzzed with the need to fly across the room and pull her into my arms.

To burn out the eyes of anyone who watched her vulnerable as she bled. I knew she’d hate that. That it would send her into some kind of defense mode where she felt like she had to go that extra mile just to show she wasn’t affected. It usually ended up with her hurt even more. Crazed with the need to prove she was unbreakable.

“Put down your fucking guns!” I bellowed, my order clear yet everyone remained unconvinced. As if Lara was some kind of threat. I pulled my gun and shoved it down the throat of the man sitting next to me. Donaho. I don’t give a fuck if the man was fifty-five and Dom’s cousin. I’d pull the trigger right here and right the fuck now. “Lower your fucking guns and get them off Lara’s head, or I will kill you,” I sneered, deadly calm.

Dom and the boys heeded my warning and when Dom noticed nobody else followed the order, he shouted, “Now! Get your fucking guns off my daughter before I break your goddamn wrists!” As one, the guns fell and Lara sauntered further into the room and right over to the table while she pointed at Smithy. “There’s your rat.” Then something heavy thumped against the tabletop. “That’s the tongue of his informant.” A piece of paper followed, as did the knife she stabbed through the white page, pinning it to the table. “And here’s the location of the next shipment. I’m ready for my seat now.”

Chapter Three

Reggie

Haunted - Diamante

“What the fuck, Lara?” I barked as I thundered my way toward her and yanked her arm higher into the air, extended so I could better see the damage. “Who the fuck did this to you? I will slit their fucking throats and pull out their eye sockets just to crunch the bones within their ear so the sound fucking echoes. All while they scream blindly in terror!” I encroached upon her space, while I seethed. I grew in height and had to fight every instinct within me to not back her up into a wall and protect her from everyone that stood around her until she was healed. Like some kind of primal animal in the wild that becomes vicious when their mate was hurt.

It was fucking crazy.

I wasgoing crazy.

“Relax, I took care of it and I brought you a gift.” She reached into the inside of her leather, thigh-high boot and pulled out broken ribs that she threw onto the table next like they werenothing. Less than fucking nothing, as she turned her focus back to her father utterly indifferent and blanking me.

Hellcat wasfucking certifiable.

She drove me insane for all of these years. As a fifteen-year-old with a delusion, all until she turned into a seventeen-year-old with a darkness that spoke to my own. When she turned eighteen, I finally noticed her as more than the daughter of my best friend. She became a person then, the first time that I saw her as a woman. A woman who held my heart.

I saw her so differently.

How quickly a year can change the world.

It was wrong, sick, and depraved and I shut it down every chance I got.

Even when she turned eighteen and I knew… I knew I had to taste her.

It was the hardest thing I ever did walking away. Lying to her. Hurting her.

But we were all wrong.

It was all fucking wrong.

Twisted in a toxicity that would dissolve her delicate touch had I ever allowed it to reach her. I thought I was being the bigger man. The man who was protecting her. Doing right by her but all I did was send her begging for the hand of the devil. She gave her soul to her father to dismantle and rebuild. She gave herself to his lessons and his torment, just so she could rise as somebody even I couldn’t touch.

No matter how hard I tried. No matter how many regrets I held.

My hellcat never once looked at me the same after that night and it gutted me to my core. Now I’m left livid, boiled alive under my wrath, forged from the sight before me. But I had to be careful. I had kept myself in check all these years, I couldn’t come undone now.

“Lara, my love. Who did this? Who did this to you and how did you get his information?” Dom asked as her brothers kicked over chairs in their stride to get to her side.

“I’ll fucking gut them.”

“Hang them.”

“Fucking destroy them.”

They all sneered, but they’d have to get in fucking line. Nothing would save them from me.

“They are already dead, brothers. Do you really think I’d leave them alive?”she queried with a smirk, reassuring them of her wellbeing. “And I did what Daddy taught us, of course. Flipped the tables and went straight to the source. The best tactic is always the one that knocks them off their feet, right? The tactic that gets inside their head?”

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