Page 43 of Heartbreak Hero

Levi pulled his weapon from his holster and checked the clip. When he slammed it home, he gazed at King across the distance.

“Let’s move,” King said with a nod.

Hell yeah.

Levi was itching for some payback.

The two men cowered on their knees in the dirty abandoned warehouse.

Neither of them dared to make any further moves in the face of the five large men who’d come for them.

“We didn’t know she was your girl! I swear,” Benjamin Carter said through swollen lips, and he regretted not leaving town like he’d been told to. “It wasn’t personal.”

“It was personal to me,” Levi snarled, looking over his handiwork. Blood dripped from Carter’s mouth down his chin and darkly soiled the front of the fucker’s gold colored shirt.

The other guy, Mike Roberts, was barely conscious and had sagged on the ground beneath Levi’s fists.

“Here, use these.” King handed Levi a pair of brass knuckles. Better late than never.

Carter’s eyes widened with fear when Levi slid the brass over his reddened fingers and made a fist.

“The thing with these?” Levi said almost conversationally. “I don’t need to hit you in the face to have you pissing blood.”

When the man remained silent, Levi moved in and delivered a blow to Carter’s kidneys.

Not one fucking ounce of remorse filled him. They had tried to rape Sara. They were already dead men walking, they just didn’t know it.

“Tell me who hired you and all this can be over,” Levi said, keeping their hope of escaping alive.

“I…can’t, he’ll kill me.”

“I don’t thinkhe’sthe bigger threat right now,” Levi said, running the brass knuckles over Carter’s cheek and beneath his jaw, forcing the fucker’s head up and back, arching his neck.

Carter closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and spat. Blood covered Levi’s face, and he wiped it away. King handed him a sharpened blade.

Levi was thankful that the guys hadn’t interfered. This was something he needed to do alone.

“The cops are going to arrest you fucks!” Carter screamed with fury.

“Newsflash, asshole, we don’t answer to the law,” King growled.

Which was true in a sense. They answered to the SecDef. And Will had a whole other set of rules for Aries to follow. Number one was to take care of their own.

And to Levi, Sara became one of their own the minute he had laid his hands on her. Actually, it had been even before that. It had started way back in her Seattle kitchen before he had walked out the door and she had run to California.

He just hadn’t realized it then.

He walked over to Roberts, lifted the man from the ground, and sliced open the guy’s throat. The man fell dead to the floor.

Carter gasped and when Levi turned with the knife, the perp fell backward off his knees, trying to scramble away.

“No! Please,” Carter begged, his eyes on his dead partner in crime.

“Tell me who ordered the attack,” Levi said.

“Chester…Miller,” the man choked out.

“The cleaners have arrived and taken care of everything,” West announced, glancing up from his phone and shifting in a spot on the couch.