Unshackle (Deliver #7) - Pam Godwin Page 0,17

this young girl and hung her by a hook.

But no, that didn’t make sense at all.

The blood on Marco’s shirt, the shackles on the fighter’s arms and legs, and the fact that she couldn’t stand after the fight… She was as much a victim as the others. Perhaps more so. She’d been thrown into the dark with a dying girl, forced to listen to her shallow cries for help.

“End this.” The blonde’s fractured voice pulled him back. “Kill…me.”

His blood shivered, and denial banged in his skull. Again, he took inventory of her injuries, searching for a sign of hope, anything that might save her.

Rust and dirt coated the hook through her leg. Infection would set in soon. The amount of blood on the floor beneath her was more than a human could lose. She wouldn’t survive this, and every minute she lived was a cruelty she didn’t deserve.

“Why is she in here with you?” He glanced at the fighter.

She glared back, a hostile, rancorous glare that promised death to him and everyone if she broke free.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She slowly raised a hand, dragging the chain across her lap, and extended her middle finger.

The blonde moaned, choking out another plea for death. Her cries thickened with distress, producing a change in the fighter’s expression.

For a fleeting moment, those savage eyes softened. Grief, compassion, whatever it was sank into the grooves of her battered, swollen face, blurring her gaze in a sheen of moisture.

Then she blinked, and the tenderness vanished, replaced with red-hot fury.

Do it. Her eyes demanded.

A camera hung in the doorway. Would they try to stop him? Shoot him for interfering?

Fuck it.

Fuck the cartel. Fuck his dead parents. Fuck Van Quiso. Fuck every injustice he’d ever gone up against. None of it owned him.

But this? This he couldn’t walk away from.

As the blonde continued to cry, he blocked everything out—Tomas, the fighter, the mission. He put one foot before the other and did the only thing he could do.

He stood behind her inverted body, wrapped a large hand over her nose and mouth, and smothered her air.

She struggled, an involuntary reaction as her mutilated body fought to breathe. His other hand held the crown of her head, his fingers hidden by her crusty hair, discreetly massaging, stroking her scalp. The only comfort he could offer.

As interminable seconds passed, he felt chunks of his soul rip away. He was breaking inside. Battling hardwired convictions. Roaring on his knees. Dying with this girl.

Dying.

Dying.

Make it end. God almighty, I can’t do this.

But he did. He finished it, holding her against him as she fell limp.

Lifeless.

Gone.

Fucking God, help me. What have I done?

He’d killed men before. Vile men. But never with his bare hands. Never a woman.

Never an innocent.

His chest squeezed so tightly he thought his heart stopped working. But no, it was still beating, pulsing strenuously, yet… Altered. Twisted into something nastier. Stiffer. Thorny. No longer human.

Raising his head, his gaze caught on the fighter. She watched him, motionless, her expression iced over with suspicion and horror, but deeper, closer, he glimpsed gratitude.

He hadn’t done it for her. He hadn’t done it for himself, either, and he would live with the cold, stricken guilt for the rest of his life.

She and Tomas hadn’t been the only witnesses to his heinous crime. Marco and Vera stood in the doorway, clotting the room with displeasure.

Pure scum of the earth. Neither of them deserved to breathe, let alone stand there in a snit of condemnation. Marco had butchered a young girl, strung her up like slaughtered meat, and left her to die.

Luke’s vision turned red. Adrenaline charged, and wrath fired on all cylinders.

Kill him.

Gut him.

Make him pay.

He would. Goddammit, he would exterminate all of them. But to do that, he had to become a man that no one fucked with.

Make them cower.

Earn their horror and respect.

Beat them at their own game.

With his hands still wrapped around the dead girl’s head, he showed them a monster that all monsters feared.

“Look what you made me do.” He hauled the corpse upward so that he could stare into the dead eyes. “Sniveling little cunt. We could’ve played so well together, but you just…wouldn’t…shut up.” He shook the body, punctuating every word before shoving it away. “What a waste.”

His stomach cramped. Saliva gathered around his gums. He was going to puke.

“This is unexpected.” Marco lumbered into the room, head tilted. “You killed her… Because she was crying? That will cost you—”

“She was half-dead.” He wiped off his hands