“You motherfucker,” I growled and grabbed him by his shirt.
The movement made him groan, and his eyes slowly lifted. “Jags?” He rasped my name then tried to swallow. Whatever had been his drink of choice earlier had apparently left him with cotton mouth.
He blinked a few times before his mind caught up to him, and then he paled. “Oh God. I think I fucked up. I—”
He didn’t finish because my fist to his face shut him up. “Yeah,” I told him as I punched him again. “You did.”
I hit him over and over again until both my hands were throbbing. I might have still been hitting him if strong arms hadn’t wrapped around my chest, locking my arms to my sides and pulling me off him.
“Let me go, man!” I struggled to get free, wanting to finish what I’d started.
“He’s out, Jags. Fuck, man. He’s out!”
When I heard my brother-in-law’s voice, I went still. Breathing hard, I looked down at Cannon, who was a bloody mess on the floor of the tree house.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I demanded, trying to shrug him off me.
Barrick’s hold only tightened. “Emmie called and said she didn’t trust you to stay home. Told me to watch the GPS on your car, and if you left the house, to do what I needed to in order to return you home. By that time, you were already driving.” He pulled me outside and then blocked the door before releasing me. “I don’t know what’s going on or why you just beat the fuck out of your best friend, but I have to call your mom.”
I shook out my throbbing hands, not even looking to see how torn up the knuckles were in the streetlights surrounding the park. “Do what you have to. Just let me finish what I came here to do.”
He crossed his massive arms over his chest. “I can’t do that, little bro. Mia will kick my ass if I let you commit murder.”
“So leave and say you didn’t find me until after I killed him.” I tried to push him out of my way, but Barrick was unmovable. The guy was not only a security expert but a Marine vet and an underground cage fighter. There was a reason my dad had chosen him to protect Mia when he’d needed someone to watch over her while she was at college.
Part of me was glad Mia fell for him. She would always be safe as long as he was still breathing. But right then, a part of me wished she hadn’t forgiven him for hiding his identity from her, because he wouldn’t have been there to stand in my way if not.
“It’s over, Jagger.” Barrick’s deep voice was full of regret, but he didn’t move so much as an inch. “He’s going to be feeling that beating for a hell of a long time. Go home, and I’ll clean this up. Maybe Emmie won’t lose her mind too bad when she sees him if you go now.”
“No.” I flexed my fingers, grimacing when I felt blood dripping from my knuckles. “I’ll take whatever she throws at me. I’m not a pussy like that piece of shit in there. I won’t run away and hide when I know I did something wrong. Call Ma. I’ll stay right here and let her see exactly what I did.”
“Whatever he did, you shouldn’t have gone all vigilante—” he started to scold.
“He hurt Violet,” I cut him off.
His shoulders tensed, and his dark eyes narrowed. “Hurt her…how?”
“Her mouth was torn all to hell,” I told him. The memory of that picture on Ma’s phone had my rage spiking higher again. “Just let me finish him off so he can’t do that to anyone else. It was just her mouth this time. Next time, it could be even worse. I won’t give him the chance to hurt anyone else.”
For all of two seconds, I saw the indecision in Barrick’s eyes before his shoulders tensed again and he shook his head. “I can’t let you do that, Jags. Not because I don’t want to let you, because I really fucking want to let you kill that little fucker right now, but because Mia wouldn’t want his blood on your hands.”
“Leave, and you won’t have to know what I do to him.”
He thrust his hands into his thick hair, pulling it from the man bun it was tied into. “As tempting as that