Rogue (Dead Man's Ink, #2)(22)

One Eighty-One, the number he assigned to Sophia in order to sell her. Motherf*cker. I glare at him, willing him dead. It’s the only way I can maintain my relative calm. If he says her name…if he so much as mentions her again…

“That was very underhanded, you know. I can’t say that I like you tricking me out of her like that. Bad business. My good friend Raphael has aired his concerns about her association with the Widow Makers. He’s…worried about her safety. Normally, I’m careful to ignore Raphi’s council, however in this particular instance I think he may have a point. I want her back, Jamie.”

My vision blurs in my peripherals, my heart rate doubling. No way. No f*cking way is he having her. “You’re certifiable if you think I’m handing her over to you, *.”

Hector shakes his head, as though he expected more from me. He looks away, out of the shop window, biting down on the fat cigar in his mouth. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I suppose these things can’t be helped. If you are not willing to return the girl to me, I will simply take her from you. You won’t be able to stop me. And this way, when she is back within the confines of my household, performing for my pleasure, I will not treat her well, my friend. I will treat her like the whore she is. I will ruin her. I will make her obey me in everything. She will be degraded and tortured, and when I have had my fill of her, I will kill her. And this time I will make sure to send you her head and her hands instead of the rest of her body. No. I will keep the rest of her body. A * is still a *, after all, no?”

I don’t feel the pain in my side anymore. My head is no longer fuzzy, my vision no longer blurred. Everything is crystal f*cking clear, and my body is vibrating with fury. Only a second ago, I was clinging to the fact that his provocations wouldn’t work on me, and I honestly believed that to be true. But now, with this? I cannot stay calm. I cannot keep a cool head. Sophia is a game changer. I swore I would protect her, and now Ramirez is threatening to violate her dead body?

No.

Just. Fucking. No.

He doesn’t see the baseball bat coming. I whip it out from under the counter so fast that he has zero time to react before I’m swinging. Back in Alabama when I was a teenager, my father used to force me to stun his livestock with a sledgehammer before their throats were slit—‘one fierce blow to the temple, boy. What’s the matter? Are you a f*cking * or an Aubertin? God, you disgust me.’

There were other, far more humane ways to end the animals’ lives, but my father derived some kind of sick pleasure in watching me cry as I swung that sledgehammer at his cattle. He had me do it over and over again, hundreds of times. I hated every second of it, disorienting those cows so they could be slaughtered, but the experience taught me a lot. I’ve had plenty of experience. So when I slam the baseball bat into the side of Ramirez’s head, it’s with a precise and brutal force.

Ramirez’s head rips around, the cigar flying out of his mouth. He drops down to one knee, making a low, gurgling sound at the back of his throat. Blood. There’s blood all over the baseball bat, and Ramirez’s head is pouring more of the bright red liquid down his face, soaking the crisp white collar of his shirt. I vault over the counter, already lifting the bat in my hands, ready to bring it down on his head again. I’m prepared to keep on lifting it and bringing it down until the man in front of me never gets up again. I can’t have him hurting Sophia. I won’t f*cking allow it.

I’m two seconds away from landing another, terrible blow when Ramirez starts laughing. That was the gurgling sound he was making—laughter, while choking on the blood gathering in the back of his throat. “You…you really caught me with that one,” he says, grinning. His teeth are covered in blood—bright white obscured by crimson. “Oooh, Jamie. You should see yourself,” he growls, looking up at me, dark eyes burrowing into me. “You look fearsome. You look like the kind of man who’s unafraid to kill another to protect what is his. Perhaps you’re not such an unworthy adversary, after all. Your father was wrong. You do have a backbone.”

“My father can go f*ck himself. And so can you, motherf*cker.” I swing, and this time the bat connects with Ramirez’s shoulder, sending him crashing to the floor. The crazy bastard curls up on his side amongst the shattered glass and laughs long and hard. He’s insane. Has to be. He must know he’s about to die, and yet his only response is this complete and utter hysteria. “Like I said,” I growl. “You should never have come here, Hector.” I raise the bat over my head, gripping it in both hands, and I’m ready. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve killed a man, but this right now is well deserved. Hector killed Ryan. He killed Leah, and Bron. And now he’s a threat to Sophia? I won’t even feel bad about ending him. My conscience will be clear. There’s nothing on earth that can stop me from finishing this, here and now.

It’s at this exact moment that I’m thrown off my feet. It feels like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck. My back smashes against the counter, and my body wants to sink to the floor but I can’t because my muscles have locked and my jaw is clenched so tightly that my teeth feel like they’re going to shatter. Pain claims every nerve ending I own from my head to my toes. I can’t make a sound, but if I could I’d be yelling out in agony. Barely able to even move my eyeballs, I look down at the source of my pain and realize that there actually is something on this earth that could stop me. Two things, actually. The first, a fifty thousand volt Taser gun, the prongs of which are embedded into my chest. The second, the female police officer standing in the shop doorway.