Page 199 of The Nanny and the Beefcake
“Will you now?” he cooed, playing the game.
“I feel for you, mate,” Silas mused in a smarmy singsong tone. “I’ll let you get a few hits in during the fight. That is, if you actually make it to the ring.”
“I’ll be there, Silas,” he replied, his voice taking on a predatory tone.
Silas laughed. “After you cry a few tears for your dead wife, yeah? That’s what happened last time, isn’t it? Couldn’t get her out of your head, could ya? What was her name again? Mallory, Marjorie?”
“Her name was Meredith,” he spat as his stony facade chipped away.
Crack, crack, crack.
He locked in on Silas’s slippery smirk. His heart hammered, and the ice in his veins turned to fire, incinerating his last shreds of self-control.
But it wasn’t anger lighting him up.
It was fear.
Fear of losing the fight.
Fear of failing Meredith.
“Erasmus, Raz.”
He could hear Libby calling his name, but her voice was barely a murmur, hardly a blip in the red haze enveloping the room. Blood pounded in his ears. Adrenaline spiked as he balled his hands into fists. “You say another word about my wife, and you will bloody regret it.”
Silas lifted his chin defiantly. “I wonder, was Meredith as good in the sack as Libby Lamb?”
Crack.
The final fracture to his arrogant armor left his cocksure mask in a pile of dust on the ground. A ragged rush of palpable pain, raw and festering, flooded his system.
How dare this weasel of a man speak of Meredith or Libby.
He reared back, fists at the ready, prepared to deliver pain and send the Snake to the ground with a swift jab square to his smug face. But the slimy bastard dodged the punch. Skirting his fists, Silas sidestepped his advance. For a fraction of a second, the men’s eyes locked, and Raz recognized that glint in Silas’s eyes. It was the hunger to win and conquer and leave no man standing—an unabashed desire to succeed at all costs that had once burned white-hot in him.
Did he still have that drive, or had it died with Mere?
Confusion clouded his mind, and in that flicker of hesitation, the Snake landed a quick shot to his kidney. Raz doubled over, working to regain his balance, when Silas executed an uppercut and popped him clean in his left eye.
He should have bloody known the man would fight dirty. But he wasn’t thinking straight. He wasn’t thinking at all. A fight-or-flight reaction had taken hold, and alarm bells blared in his head as the world went topsy-turvy.
Do not succumb to a panic attack—not bloody here.
He stumbled back. Electric agony thrummed in his belly as his eye throbbed. Acute and razor-sharp, he leaned into the pain, praying it would ground him. He sucked in a gulp of air and steadied himself, prepared to hurl his body at his rival when Libby threw herself into his line of sight. Standing between the fighters, she raised her hands defensively.
“Erasmus, stop, please!”
He blinked, watching as tears trailed down her cheeks.
“Briggs is here,” she rasped, gasping like she was the one out of breath from brawling. “Our ride is here. It’s Sebastian’s birthday. We need to get to him, to your son,” she pleaded.
Punch-drunk, he scanned the lobby. Where was the healing blue-violet aura? Where was the peace and harmony? Where was his bloody balance? Had it all been a mirage? Had he been fooling himself?
He couldn’t meet Libby’s gaze, but he nodded. An eerie silence consumed the terminal. No one said a word as bystanders held out their mobiles, and Silas Scott puffed up like a peacock and crossed his arms.
The victor—for now.
The bloke had gotten exactly what he’d come for. He’d walked right into the Snake’s trap and served up this viral video on a gold platter like a bloody chump.
