Page 70 of Running on Empty

I didn’t know what had happened to Stevie, not the endless fucking details. But I saw the marks they’d left on her, both physically and mentally, and that was enough for me.

“So you’re the one that hurt my girl?” His fingers raked across mine, trying to loosen the hold I had on him, but that wasn’t gonna happen. He was a big cunt, heavy too, but my muscles didn’t even quiver as I held him up. I could do this forever.

But I wouldn’t.

“You took something from her, even when she was offering you so much more than you fucking deserved. You couldn’t just treasure the fact that out of all the stupid fucking cunts in this city, me included, that she’d chosen you, even if it was just for one night.”

“Jax.”

It was her voice that stopped me, gave Fuckhead a small reprieve because I lowered him to his feet, not letting go for a second as I turned around to see my Stevie standing there.

That look she gave me after surveying the groaning bodyguards? I could live for years on that. Full of satisfaction, of validation, I felt for once I’d done something right. But she put her hands on her hips and I was almost distracted by the swivel of them as she strode forward.

“You fucked them up for me?”

“Always, beautiful. That’s how this shit works now,” I told her.

“So are you going to share?” she asked, nodding to the prick I had pinned to the wall.

I’d momentarily forgotten that he was there, even as the alpha pawed at my fingers hopelessly.

“No…” the guy babbled. “No, no…”

Her eyes hardened then, becoming chips of emerald ice. Her lips pulled back from her fangs.

“I remember saying something like that,” she snarled. “And what the hell did you do?”

Chapter42

“No, no, no…”

When Jax slammed Rock down on his knees before me I just stared, seeing a whole other scene and it wasn’t one in a stinking alley.

I thought I was done with this, that I wouldn’t have to see them, feel them ever again, but apparently my brain had other ideas. Rock was nothing like the cool alpha I’d met before. He was drunk, stoned, barely even conscious, his clothes stained with vomit and other questionable bodily fluids. He looked like the kind of guy you edge away from if you saw him passed out on the street.

But he wasn’t always that way.

“No.” I heard my own voice mumble that, the vowels stretched out and distorted. “No.” I slapped my hands down on arms, chests and tried to push them away, but my bones felt like they had the strength of wet noodles. And when I’d protested, what had they done? Had they stopped, paused to listen to me? No, they’d just laughed.

So that’s what I did now.

My lips curved into a vicious smile, sharp as the blades Ronan had strapped to his thighs. Rock babbled and kept on babbling no as I got closer with him. I wasn’t the girl they’d been able to take advantage of anymore. I’d never let myself become so vulnerable with someone who hadn’t shown they deserved it. And I would make each one of them pay for what they’d done.

Ronan had described a knife as an intimate way to kill someone and somehow that’s exactly what I wanted. With Snake it felt like it was over too quickly, his end more merciful than he deserved.

“Beg for my cock,”I heard past Rock rasp in my ear, right before he shoved it down my throat.

“Beg me to spare you,” I commanded him now, my fingers flexing.

“Don’t…” Rock eyed my claws with wild eyes, the whites showing plainly in the thin moonlight. “Don’t hurt me. I’ve got money—”

“Offer me everything you’ve got,” I commanded.

“Everything. You killed Snake?”

“Fuck yeah, we did,” Ronan appeared by my side, that ragged smile of his in full force. “My girl blew his brains all over that pretty house of his.”

“Promise me you’ll make it up to me, that you’ll spend your life trying to make up for what you did,” I said, snatching two knives from Ronan’s sheaths and then holding them up.

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