East End (Hear No Evil Trilogy #1) - Nana Malone Page 0,52
I just threw myself headlong into her taste and her flavor, and not giving a fuck where we were. Then I felt the hit. Nyla was being jerked away from me. For the first time since being inducted into the Elite, I was grateful for their barbarian training methods, forcing us out into the woods, in the cold and the rain, hungry and tired. Forcing us to learn to rely on our instincts, on our training, because to fight the two men who had made a grab for Nyla's bag, I needed all my wits.
But even better, as I whirled on the larger man to the left, I saw Nyla delivering several elbows. No qualms, just full lips set in grim determination.
I wanted to keep her safe. I wanted to tuck her behind me and take both of them on, but Nyla was a goddamn Interpol agent. She knew how to fight. She didn’t need me in there protecting her. That was a recipe for disaster and a path that could get one or both of us killed. So I just focused on the man in front of me. I blocked his attempted hook shot to my temple.
I blocked wrist to wrist, keeping his arm far away from my body. I delivered a front kick just above his groin, doubling him over, and then sent an uppercut. He was big and meaty. Built like a fucking brick shit house, but I kept up the assault. Kept going. Strike. Strike. Jab. Kick. A knee kick and another hook brought him to his knees, and then I delivered a knee to his face. With a crack and a groan, he toppled over. I whirled on Nyla and her opponent. She had his arm behind his back. He was fighting and twisting, and Nyla grabbed him by the hair and leaned forward. "Stop fighting, or you'll hurt yourself."
"Fuck off, you bitch."
"God, you are so rude.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “What do you want?"
"We were sent to deliver a message," her assailant snarled.
"You wanted to deliver a message?” she asked incredulously. “You came all this way and ruined a perfectly adequate kiss for a message? You couldn’t have texted it?"
I threw my hands up. "What? Adequate?"
Her gaze flickered up to me, and she shrugged. "I mean, as billionaires go, you're okay."
A smirk played across my lips, but she was already leaning forward, speaking to asshole number two again. "Go on, tell me, what's the message?"
She had him in a good hold; any movement and he could break his arm. And by her pulling his hair back, he was forced to arch into a position of pain. If he wiggled, he'd hurt himself. "And I told you to fuck—" Nyla tipped his head back just a little bit more, and he howled. Grimacing, he gasped out, "Don’t pursue the case, or we will kill your family."
Nyla laughed then. "Oh, you must not know who my family is. He has guns that are a lot more terrifying than you."
Then the idiot fought her hold, and sure enough, he dislocated his own shoulder. He shrieked and cried. From somewhere behind us came a crack, and a stone to the right of us splintered. I grabbed her, tugging her safely behind a car for cover. Frick then used his good arm to push himself up and ran over to Frack and dragged him toward the alley.
I started to go after them, but Nyla held me still. "Ah, hello, you idiot. Someone's shooting at us."
"They're getting away. Don't we need more answers?"
She stared at me. "They have guns. We don't fuck with guns."
I remembered then that she didn't know anything about who I really was, what I could do, just what I could get away with. To her, I was a guy who wore a suit. A billionaire with the jets, and the cars, and the fun. She didn't know me as one of the most powerful men in Britain, if not the world. She didn't know I was Elite. "Are you okay?"
She touched her jaw and cheekbone and then winced. "I'm fine. He hit like a bitch."
I bit back a chuckle. Considering I had witnessed her deliver some grade-A punches to him, I knew what this particular woman could do.
And then I saw the police lights. Someone in the building must have seen what was happening and called.
"Are you in the mood to have a conversation about this?"