Page 8 of Deal with the Devil

Like Candace, a damsel is my weakness. Nothing sends my protective streak into overdrive quite like a woman in trouble. A woman hurt is something else altogether.

I’m capable of things. Dark, disturbing things when it comes to a man who has hurt a woman or child. The shell I keep around the monster I was raised to hold behind the bars of sanity cracks, a little of the black leaking through. Its mission—total destruction.

The curtain parts. The doc moves through the slit, and it falls quickly back into place, but I saw.

I saw her.

Sunshine waves a blood-streaked mess around a face that is swollen black and blue.

The girl I haven’t been able to get out of my head for a week.

The sight is a shock to my system. It connects with the shell, shattering it. The bars bend and the monster breaks free.

I’m moving before anyone can stop me. Before sanity has a chance to wrangle back the dark demon and root me in common sense.

I flip back the curtain and see both eyes blink wide before she winces at the pain of movement, the tensing of the stitches that close the cut above her puffy left eye taut. Her face is bruised and swollen, but it’s her. Without doubt.

And she is—mine.

four

Nevaeh

Big Guy is here in my hospital room. Big Guy from the other night at the club. Big Guy who I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I met him, felt his hands on my hips, heard the rough timbre of his smoke heavy voice drenched in that wicked accent, rumble against my ear.

My big protector—the very man who drove Antonio into a jealous rage that had him hiring a psychopath to deliver me a message that very well could have killed me—thatBig Guy is here.

I feel like I’ve seen a ghost.

He looks like he’s seen one.

But it’s the devil I see raging behind those glaciereyes that has me crumbling. Because this rage I see—it’s for me. Because of me.

What I must look like to him.

I can’t help the tears that spring to my eyes. Haven’t they gotten the memo? I’m all out of tears—or I should be. I’ve cried and vomited so much that I have an IV drip for dehydration currently rehydrating me.

Maybe that’s where the tears come from. Damn drip.

I drop my face into my hands and whimper at the pain of contact. I know what I look like. Beaten and bruised.Damaged.

And that’s the reality. I am damaged. So painfully damaged.

Antonio has made sure I know it, too. Know that he’s the most powerful man in the room, capable of hiring monsters to do his dirty work so that he can keep the appearance of clean hands, the adoration of his political worshipers. He knows there’s no monster big enough to go up against him—not one I could find, anyway. And he’s made sure I know it, too.

The very harsh reality is that there is no man brave enough to go against someone like Antonio. At least not a man with his sanity intact. Because with the power he holds, and the reach his power has, he knows he has me. He’s made it clear that he has me, willing or not. He’s made it clear that any man unluckyenough to try his hand at saving me will be destroyed in the process.

I’m stuck. Well and truly helpless.

And Big Guy might look mean, but I wouldn’t even sic Antonio and his goons on Uncle Miguel, who I know can hold his own.

It’s checkmate.

That ring in the bottom of my purse—I’m going to have to put it on again. Like a prison shackle. I may as well have been tossed overboard with an anchor around my ankles. I feel like I’m drowning.

“What the hell, Kane, get out!” The pretty nurse they call Candy hisses. I know it’s her, even though I’m not looking at them.

Big Guy—Kane, apparently—makes a noise. It’s a sound between a growl of agony and something more dangerous. A warning. A threat.

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