On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1) (22 page)

“Actually she’s not my guard. She’s my neighbor.”

He smiled. “How unfortunate for me, huh?” He turned to look at Bride. “Hello, neighbor. As charming as I’m sure you are, I’d rather have not made your acquaintance.”

Bride kicked in the knee of the man who was over twice her size, sending him to the floor a little more rapidly, because apparently he wasn’t getting to his knees fast enough.

A shadow filled Sabrina’s hall and silently moved closer to them. When she saw it was Zeus, she took a step in his direction when she should have run from him. Fast.

She prayed there wasn’t a dead man in her kitchen, but as Zeus moved through the shadowed hallway, her heart sank. Something bad had been unleashed in him, and he was stalking through her home.

Sabrina moved away from Kragen, and he had the good sense to let her. He must have sensed the man advancing was beyond being reasoned with. Zeus’s eyes, gray orbs in the shadows, were locked on to Kragen, who appeared unfazed by the almost certain death stalking him. That man had his own demons, Sabrina determined. And strangely, they didn’t appear intimidated by Zeus in the least.

“So, the rescuing bodyguard survives,” Kragen said. He was aware of Zeus, but his eyes were focused on Sabrina as if he didn’t comprehend the level of danger he was in. Maybe the sight of her was the last thing he wanted to see before he died. Though she didn’t think
he
believed he was going to die.

Sabrina didn’t believe he was going to live. Not the way Zeus’s energy was filling the air with dark jags of electricity. Flashes of silver appeared from the shadows to Zeus’s left, then more flashes to his right. In the moment between Zeus striding from the shadows and arriving in the muted light of the living room, she almost believed he was a god made flesh. Pale, golden-bronze beauty, power, death. Hell, he was making her as delusional as he was. Those weren’t flashes of electricity bursting from his hands but light reflecting off rapidly revolving metal blades different than any she had seen him use before. There was no hilt on these blades; they were flat, oblong pieces of double-edged metal with needlepoint tips. No place for a normal person to safely hold without having their fingers cut to shreds.

He was a man possessed. God, demon, it didn’t matter. Whatever humanity he’d displayed when he touched her, held her against his warmth, was devoured by this metal-eyed killer.

The blades in his hands moved so rapidly they blurred. Silver streaked through the air. Bride shifted, moving into the hall and out of sight. When Zeus’s blade sank high into the right side of Kragen’s torso, he was propelled backward into the hall, sliding down the wall across from her door.

The bodyguard kneeling on the ground reached for something at his ankle, and another flash of silver catapulted into him. He fell face-first. Sabrina didn’t scream, didn’t make a sound when she saw that the tip of the blade had pierced through to the back of his neck. He was dead in a matter of seconds.

Kragen wasn’t so lucky. He was like a fish on the hook, waiting for death to come.

“I could shoot you,” a voice offered Kragen from the hall. Bride. Was she being humane, or did she simply want the kill?

“A knife
and
a gunshot wound? I don’t think Dolce or Gabbana would forgive the insult.”

There was a moment of silence. Sabrina imagined Bride shrugging her acceptance on the other side of the wall.

Movement inside her apartment forced her to turn back to Zeus. There was another blade in his right hand when he stopped alongside her. She’d never seen this one either. It was like a small machete. Where the hell he was pulling them from, she had no idea.

“Go upstairs,” he commanded, his voice surprisingly normal.

“No.”

“Then go to the kitchen.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “No, the bathroom.”

“I’m not leaving,” she said. Something in the region of her heart rooted her where she stood, because she believed Zeus would need her to pull him from the depths of nothingness once Kragen was dead. “You’ll need me to be your witness.”

“You’d let him hack me to pieces like yesterday’s mackerel, my love?” Kragen asked, smiling as if this whole situation was humorous.

“Look at my face. I’ve been kidnapped and beaten because of you. If not for him, it would have been a lot worse, so, yes, I will bear witness to whatever punishment he decides.”

Kragen positioned himself a little straighter against the wall. “I always said you needed to develop a harder shell, Sabrina. You were always such a timid thing. I don’t know if I should be proud you took my advice and became a bit bloodthirsty during our separation.”

Zeus twirled the machete slowly as he advanced. “He’s damaged. Need to put him down, Bree.”

Kragen’s gaze followed Zeus’s advance. There was no fear in the injured man. No conflict, only acceptance. She knew it wasn’t death Kragen accepted, but the belief that no matter what was said or done Zeus didn’t have the power to destroy him.

Sabrina agreed with Zeus. Kragen
was
damaged. He was a sadist who supposedly enjoyed hurting women before he threw them away, as if they had less value than his designer suit. But she wasn’t quite willing to see him murdered before her.

Kragen slumped farther down the wall. “You’re breaking my heart. I know you say you don’t remember, but what we shared was more powerful than anything you could have had with this crude mercenary. When we’re together again, you’ll see. I’ll forgive your affairs of desperation, but when we’re together, there will be no one but me. Just you and me.”

“Insane,” Zeus muttered as he leaned forward and pulled the smaller blade from Kragen’s shoulder. Kragen yelled out as if he’d been stabbed again.

A buzzer sounded down the hall, indicating someone was being let in the front door. Sabrina stuck her head over her door’s threshold to see Detectives Cassidy and Sedgwick enter the building with guns drawn.

“Drop the weapon,” Cassidy ordered, pointing the gun at Zeus. A killing would be easy to justify with Zeus holding the machete close to Kragen’s head.

“Detective,” Sabrina said, ready to defend Zeus against the detectives’ trigger fingers.

Cassidy didn’t acknowledge her as he leveled the gun at Zeus’s head. “Drop it.”

Zeus released the blade.

Kragen cried out as the tip lodged in his leg.

Rapid footsteps stomped overhead, and in moments, Randy was descending the stairs, only to come to an abrupt stop as he took in the sight of the cops pointing guns in her direction and Zeus standing over a bleeding Kragen with a mini machete sticking out of his thigh.

Randy held up his hands. “Officers, I’m the one that called you. Me and my roommate here.” He pointed to Bride, who was still leaning against the wall near Sabrina’s door with an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. “Heard a loud crash, then a shot, and thought someone was breaking into Sabrina’s place again. I just knew she and Zeus were dead. You okay, Bree?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. Zeus protected me.” She didn’t want to say
again
because the cops didn’t know about what really happened at the warehouse.

Zeus pointed toward her apartment. “Dead men inside. This is their boss. Guess his name?”

“Kragen?” Cassidy said as he lowered his gun. His partner was slower to follow. Cassidy approached and looked Kragen up and down.

“EMTs are on the way,” Sedgwick said. His fingers played with a chain around his neck as he eyed Zeus.

“What happened here?” Cassidy asked.

“Purely a misunderstanding,” Kragen said. His skin had grown paler; maybe due to blood loss, maybe because he was about to be arrested, especially with all the bodies he had hidden in his closet.

“There wasn’t a misunderstanding,” Sabrina countered. “I answered the door, and he was there with two of his men. He sent one to the kitchen to ‘take care’ of Zeus. The guy in the living room was reaching for what I believed was a weapon, and Zeus must have agreed because he buried one of his blades in the other man’s throat. This guy,” she said, waving toward Kragen, “said his name was Kragen and tried to get me to go with him. What are the chances he has the same name as the guy the kidnappers were working for? He tried to force me to come with him. Zeus stopped them from taking me.”

Cassidy looked at Kragen, who shrugged. “Like I said, a misunderstanding.”

“They didn’t come here to welcome me back home, Detective.”

For the first time since he’d entered the building, Cassidy looked at Kragen as if he were something other than an attempted-murder victim.

Kragen leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. “Like I said, it was all a misunderstanding. My men are loyal to me to a fault, and sometimes they behave in ways I do not condone to protect my interest. Will the ambulance be here soon?”

Cassidy nodded. “It’s gonna hurt like hell when they pull that knife from your thigh.”

“Not a knife. It’s a kukri, custom-made,” Zeus corrected.

“Sabrina, my fiancée, went missing a number of years ago.” Kragen informed them. “When I finally found her, men who were not as loyal as the ones who died today, chose to kidnap her, knowing I would pay any amount they requested for her release. I am a very rich man. Today my men may have acted prematurely when they learned another male was in the apartment posing a possible threat to my Sabrina. I couldn’t know the lethality of the man’s response.” He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes before continuing. “I came to San Francisco last night for business, as well as to verify if the Sabrina I’d been engaged to was the same woman before me. She is.”

“I’ve never met this man in my life,” Sabrina told Cassidy. “He’s delusional.”

“She likes using that word,” Zeus said to no one in particular.

“It’s not that I like it. It’s that these last couple of days have put me in direct contact with people who could be certified as such.”

The piercing wail of sirens grew louder and more irritating the closer they came.

Detective Sedgwick came out of Sabrina’s apartment and nodded to Cassidy. “Two men dead inside, both armed with some deadly hardware.”

“Armed but not dangerous,” Zeus said, his eyes glinting with what she recognized as humor. Sabrina didn’t think the cop, Sedgwick, was conscious of gripping his chain.

More cops arrived and processed the scene and asked a million more questions. Kragen was taken to the hospital when she secretly wished he would go straight to hell via the morgue. With all the traffic and the dead men awaiting the coroner, her apartment no longer felt like hers.

“Are you going to be okay?” Detective Cassidy asked. Maybe because she’d been staring at the same spot on the wall above Zeus’s new television since she’d sat down. It had to be blood.

“I’ll be okay, Detective. I’ve survived worse.”

“Well, I’m sorry you had to. If we hadn’t been pulled away, we could have stopped this from coming to your door.”

“But you didn’t,” Zeus said, coming up behind Detective Cassidy.

“Keep pushing it. I may still arrest you.”

Zeus shrugged. “And cause your already strapped department time and money? Go ahead. I’ll be out in enough time to make the five o’clock news. Bodyguard arrested for stopping a second kidnapping in almost as many days. Won’t be a good look for you, Cop.”

Wow. Forget the fact that he’d strung more than two sentences together. Zeus had just shown he was capable of solid reasoning.

Cassidy looked embarrassed. “We had a unit sitting on her place, but there was a report of a domestic situation where the perp was threatening to shoot himself and his wife and kid—”

“And Kragen just happened to show up when the detail was sent away.”

“You think he had someone watching the place as well?” Cassidy said.

“Don’t you?” Zeus challenged.

“We’ll look into it. Ms. Samora, do you have someplace safe to stay tonight?”

“We’ll manage,” Zeus told the detective.

“Well, could you manage without cutting or stabbing someone?”

“Probably not.”

Detective Cassidy closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Didn’t think so. I’ll be in touch soon.”

“Thanks, Detective.”

Zeus frowned. “Why thank him?”

“I’m thanking him because I appreciate how he’s handled this situation and because it’s polite, Zeus.”

Detective Cassidy nodded toward her and left the apartment with his partner.

Bride walked farther into the apartment and plopped down next to Sabrina. “I need a drink.”

“Me too,” Sabrina said, leaning her head back and shutting her eyes.

Chapter Eleven

The crowded interior of Randy’s living room felt like barbed wire wrapping around Zeus’s neck, cutting through skin, preventing blood and air flow to his brain. He was light-headed from the need to destroy everything around him just so he could fucking breathe. He looked at his supposed Brood mates: Price, Big Country, Bride, Lynx. He needed distance from all these fucking people, with their words and needs and noise.

Sabrina reached out and placed her hand on the small of his back, rubbing gently. The blade dancing through his fingers lost some of its momentum and quieted against his palm.

He needed to protect Sabrina, keep her safe, and he couldn’t do that here with all these bodies pressing him in. He couldn’t do it in a building where his shoulders nearly touched walls every time he moved.

He wanted, he needed her again, but the space was crowded with Brood members. And Randy. He didn’t like that he kept thinking about Sabrina. Nothing but his consciousness and the spirit of the blade should command his attention this much. The blade began to move through his fingers again.

He cut his eyes to the side and looked down at Sabrina. “You need to move away,” he told her.

His voice was rough, but talking was hard. He needed silence and separation. When she pulled away, the wildness inside of him grew instead of lessening. This fucking assignment was causing him a disturbance. And Sabrina looked at him with the same wary speculation she’d had back in the warehouse. He closed his eyes and let the blade dance.

He didn’t like the idea of her not trusting him completely. He really didn’t like Coen sitting on the couch next to her, ready to take his place.