Page 4 of That Girl is Trouble

A scream that sounds a lot like the teenage girl living a floor above me.

Fuck.

A heavy weight drops in my stomach, and without another thought, I barrel through my dark apartment, rip open the door, and sprint up the stairs.

I’m midway down the hall when the stink hits my nose.

Death has a smell to it. It’s metallic. Cold and sour. Heavy and wrong. Been around enough blood and carnage to know that smell—of someone bleeding out, of their insides being exposed to the outside.

Violence, blood, and brutality. It’s the life I live, the one I was born and bred for. The reason I know what I’m about to walk into.

Cautiously, I creep towards the room Kat shares with Jesse. The doorframe is splintered. A puddle of blood is spreading into the hallway. A rhythmic noise floats out from inside the room. It’s the kind that’s made when a blade is jammed into flesh, as the hilt hits skin over and over again. Gushing, oozing. Blood pouring out of a body.

There’s a man shoved against the wall, his head hanging limp against his chest. Rings adorn his fingers. Tattoos mark his skin. That shouldn’t send a shot of relief through me, but god dammit, it does. Because it isn’t her. It’s not Kat’s hand. There’s no blue nail polish streaked across those fingernails.

The body jerks lifelessly with each thrust of the blade. Dead, I assume. But whoever’s wielding the knife doesn’t stop, and that hint of relief quickly slides into a knot in my stomach. If he’s dead, then what the fuck happened to Kat? And who the fuck is the maniac in her room going knife-happy on one of my guys?

My gun is in my nightstand, my blade on my dresser. I should have grabbed them, but when I heard the scream, the only thing running through my mind was getting to her, and now I’m standing here in nothing but my boxers and T-shirt. With no weapon. Like a fucking asshole.

A shirtless Tex stumbles out of one of the far rooms down the hall, his blond hair wild and hanging over his eyes, his face dazed from sleep as he struggles to pull on a pair of jeans with a 9 mm in his hand. When he gets his pants pulled up to his hips, he leans against the wall and quietly cocks his gun, giving me a nod, telling me he’s got my back no matter who the hell is in there.

Finally, holding my breath, I peer in. And fuck me.

The blood.

It’s smeared down the wall, splashed across the white paint, but it’s the man who’s covered in it that catches me off guard. Graves. Jack McKenna. My VP and my best friend. The man I’ve fucking killed for and who’s killed for me.

“Graves?” I croak. The long hair he usually keeps tied back hangs over his face. His breathing is laboured, his knuckles are white as he grips the hilt of his knife. Blood soaks into his shirt, flecks his face, covers his hands and arms. He looks completely fucking unhinged.

The glow of Jesse’s red neon Budweiser sign on the back wall adds a malevolent sort of hue to the scene. Darkness. Blood. Violence. Red.

Tex nudges me and jerks his head to the bed, where Kat is cowering in the corner. She’s covered in blood too. Except it’s not the dead man’s blood, it’s her own. It drips from her nose, past her chin, and onto her chest. She sobs when our eyes meet, and she adjusts her hands to cover her naked chest, her shirt shredded and hanging off her shoulders.

“Fuck,” I growl at the mess on the floor. I know exactly what this dead fuck was trying to do.

I plant my hand firmly on Graves’s shoulder and grip him tight. “He’s gone, man. You can let up.”

Stab, stab, stab.

“Dude.”

Stab, stab, stab. Gush, gush, gush.

“Graves!”

He freezes, his eyes finally focusing on the corpse he’s holding against the wall. When he steps back, the body slumps to the floor, landing face-up.

I study the dead prick’s face. One of the nomads who was passing through South Bay looking for a bed to fall into and a pussy to fuck for a couple days before he moved on. Don’t know the guy all that well, but I like to think I can trust the men I let into my fucking house. The audacity to disrespect the club like this, to disrespect Kat, to take something that’s not his.

And she’s not his.

I snort out a gob of spit and hock it onto his limp, bloodied body. Graves would have killed him quick in his anger. He’s never been good at savouring a moment. But me? I have patience, and I’d have dragged the bastard out of her room, chained him up, and sliced my goddamn knife over every fucking inch of his body.

Graves drips with rage. He’s been pushed over the edge. Don’t blame him for what he did. Must bring back some rough memories, seeing a man try to take her like that, after what happened to his family, to his own mother. But when he gets this way, sometimes it feels dangerous, like I can’t predict what he’s gonna do next, like I can’t control what’s about to happen.

And I don’t like not being in control.

I glance over my shoulder at Tex. “Call the cleaner.”

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