Page 12 of Stay Little Fighter

I never should have let her take a fucking bullet for me.

My internal meltdown is cut off when the door at the top of the stairs opens and light streams into the dark basement.

I quickly roll Chloe onto her back and position myself between her and the stairs.

One of the assholes that brought us down here takes the steps two at a time, his dark eyes darting between us with a smirk I’m desperate to punch off his smug face.

I’m so busy plotting his death that I almost miss the second set of footsteps.

“Oh my god,” Chloe murmurs, pulling my attention from the dead man.

My jaw drops open, my mind swimming as I stare at eyes I never thought I’d see again.

“If it isn’t my almost husband and the whore he could never get over.”

CHAPTER SIX

RYKER

NOW

“You’re going to pay for this,” Sebastian spits out like the villain in every shitty action movie I’ve ever seen.

“Sure I am,” I scoff, looping the rope around his back, ensuring he’s secure for transport.

My palms itch with the need to torture him, to get every piece of information he has before ending his sorry existence.

Unfortunately for me, I may not get to kill him if it means starting a war with a crime family, but I’m looking forward to maiming him while I wait for confirmation.

I’ll never begrudge the time I’ve spent guarding Chloe because it’s brought me the single best thing to ever happen to me, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t missed killing the scum of the earth.

“You have no idea what they’ll do to you when they find out what you’ve done!” he shouts.

“I imagine whatever I’m going to do to you in the meantime will be far worse.”

I shove a rag in his mouth before he has a chance to spout any more threats. He’s not going to give me anything useful while his life isn’t in immediate danger, and I don’t want to listen to another second of his shit until after I’ve made sure Chloe is unharmed.

It’s not lost on me that before she came along, all I cared about was work. All that mattered was killing men like the one who stole my baby sister from us when I was a teenager, and I lived and breathed that goal.

But she changed everything.

She changed me.

I’m the same cruel monster that can dismember a screaming man without blinking, but under the surface, there’s something that’s never been there before.

Love.

It’s not an emotion I’ve ever thought much of. I’ve seen others feel it, watched as people around me found the soul that theirs spoke to, but it never occurred to me that I would ever fall in love.

Until Chloe.

She changed everything, and I’m not too proud to admit that she’s changed me on a fundamental level.

As badly as I crave blood coating my hands, I know without ever having been faced with the decision that I would never kill again if that’s what she wanted.

It seems I am endlessly adaptable when it comes to my siren.

As if conjuring one of the most obvious signs of that, Ronan steps up beside me, his jaw set in a hard line as he stares at Sebastian.