Page 22 of The Vigilant

“Well, you’re certainly not here to be made to look like a pussy in front of all of these people.” I never liked Jack, and he never liked me. I saw him for what he was, and he saw me as a threat to whatever hold he had over Mara. “Especially by a girl.”

I batted my eyelashes and smiled, looking like some pin-up anime character with my chunky black boots, short slinky dress, and long black hair that I’d pulled into a tight bun with what looked like two chopsticks. Only I knew they were knives—as sharp and as slender and as underestimated as I was.

“You wouldn’t touch me,” he sneered, stepping closer like it would make me feel threatened. Instead, all I could think was I felt more in danger from the much older, much more muscled former soldier—who would never actually harm a hair on my head—than I did from this piece of shit whose threats felt like toy guns.

“Wouldn’t I?” I bit my bottom lip coyly and then reached out and traced my pointed black nail down the center of his chest like it was a scalpel and I was slicing him open.

His eyes darted around, a sudden panic shattering his calm, before he grabbed my wrist painfully and pulled me to him. “Not here.”

I was so relieved, I let myself ignore the urge to maim him for how he wrenched my wrist as he led me through the crush of people. I didn’t care about the pain if it meant he’d tell me what the hell happened to Mara.

The flashing lights slashed through the faces of the crowd like sharp shards of reality, exposing glazed eyes and needle-stained arms. Men groped ragdoll-like women, too distanced from reality to realize how they were being preyed on.

Jack led me to a door at the back of the club, and it opened to the alley behind the building, the asphalt gnarled and pockmarked, the disease of disuse rampant in the strewn trash and heavy shadows.

He hauled me outside and then spun me until my back hit the old brick of the building. Thankfully, my leather jacket took the brunt of the blow.

“I’m warning you, Sutton. Drop it,” he said through his teeth. “Mara’s gone. She didn’t want to see you anymore, remember?”

“Bullshit.” My pulse thrummed. I wouldn’t believe him. I wouldn’t believethat.“What did you do to her?”

“Nothing,” he spat.

“You’re a horrible liar. No wonder the Wah Ching wants nothing to do with you.” Not all weapons were physical, but the damage my words rendered could be just as effective as any of my knives.

“You want to know what happened to her?” he growled and flattened himself to me. I silenced the warning flares going off in my brain and still the riotous anger in my blood. “I’ll tell you what happened to her.” His eyes lowered to my chest. “But you have to give me something first.”

Pig.

He maneuvered my wrists into one hand, and I let him. He stared at me, smiling, as he slid his free hand down my arm, and I let him.

Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.

My mental armor locked on Sun Tzu’s words of war.

“You don’t want to do that.” I gave Jack a warning not because he deserved one but because when this was all over, I wanted him to remember he had a choice…and that he’d made the wrong one.

His smile widened. “You’re the one who wants to know.”

The smugness on his face would’ve been sickening if I hadn’t seen the look before, and that was when I felt it—the rush ofcalm like cool fuel through my veins. And then his hand closed painfully over my breast.

“Pierced tits.” His brows rose. “How’d that feel?”

The cold fuel ignited into something charringly vicious.

“How about I show you?” I said so low that by the time he heard me—by the time his brow creased in confusion—I’d already started to move.

He thought I wouldn’t fight back because I was intimidated. Because I was some helpless woman he believed he could overpower and take advantage of. He was wrong.

I jerked my one arm down, connecting my elbow right into his nose, the crunch of broken bone and cartilage almost as satisfying as his shout of pain.

“Fuck!”Jack reached for his gushing, broken nose, and I used the moment of distraction to my advantage.

I pulled free one of the slender knives holding my hair and brought the tip under his chin. Instantly, his garbled string of curses silenced, and he glared at me.

“Let me go.” I made my first demand and happily watched him hesitate so I could dig the knife a little deeper.

“You’re a fucking cunt, you know that?” he ground out through carefully locked teeth. Too much emotion, and he’d impale his own chin on my blade.

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