Page 20 of Road to Ruin
“What?”
“Alex. He’s not leaving her. He’s taking her with him into the cage. Christ, Tommy, open your goddamn eyes.”
Behind me, Alex has already jumped down from the dais. He’s reaching up, his hands on Genevieve’s hips, and he’s lifting her down into the crowd after him. Shit. He can’t seriously be planning on walking her through the crowd. Not when he can easily see what’s happening to Nikita? Then again, the guys here might be easily led, but they’re not stupid. They’re not suicidal. While Nikita’s not in Alex’s good books, it’s very clear that Genevieve is. Laying a hand on the head of the Bastien family’s wife? Yeah, that’s grounds for immediate execution in this world.
People make way for Alex and Gen as they pass unhindered toward the octagon. David twitches, taking a tiny step forward, and I grab him by the back of his shirt. “Don’t be fucking crazy.”
“I know, I know. This is just…it’s fucked. We’re never going to get to her now.”
“We will. When the time’s right.”
Alex and Genevieve both climb up into the cage, and Gen’s smile is blinding. She looks so fucking glamorous with her silk dress and elaborate hairstyle with the tiny flowers. She’s every bit the queen to Alex’s king. I want to charge up there and punch my entire fist through the motherfucker’s face, but I’m guessing Alex has already mapped out in great detail what his men should do if I show up unexpectedly at any point; all hell would break loose and Genevieve would be dead within seconds.
“This is the last time I’m going to tell you. Quit touching me, or I will fucking end you, asshole.” Junior’s prison shrink is really losing her temper. A fourth guy is standing on the peripheries of the altercation now, and he’s licking his lips like he’s real fucking hungry. I don’t like this. I don’t like it one little bit. I take a step forward when a fifth guy shows up and starts jeering at her. One of the guys reaches out and grabs Nikita’s left breast, and she wheels on him, face red, eyes wide. It looks for a second that she’s going to burst into tears, but then her fist rockets out and connects with the guy’s temple, and he crashes to the ground, his eyes rolling back in his head.
“What the fuck, bitch? You just hit him! You can’t just hit Mark.”
“I didn’t hit Mark,” she replies to the guys trying to scrape his friend off the ground. “I knocked Mark out. And if we’re going to have a conversation about what you can and can’t do, let’s talk about sexually assaulting a woman, shall we? He couldn’t just grab my breast. If he does, he gets his ass handed to him.”
“You caught him off guard,” the guy snarls.
“Obviously. That’s why he’s still out cold.”
“I’m not a fan of hitting women, but you’ve not left me much of a choice,” the third guy from the original party snarls. “You’ve disrespected my boy. Now you have to be taught a lesson.”
“I’d love to see you try,” Nikita says, laughing. “It’ll be fun to disrespect all three of you. Maybe then you’ll understand that when a girl says no, she seriously, actually means no.”
The guy runs at her. He charges, pissed off, riled and angry. He’s planning on hitting her square in the chest, with the obvious intent of sending her sprawling, but as I observed earlier, these guys aren’t fighters. They’re ’roid junkies who think that muscle mass is synonymous with technique and expertise. Unfortunately for him, it looks like the hit Nikita landed on his friend a second ago really wasn’t a lucky shot. She sidesteps casually out of his path and snaps her right arm out, striking him in the throat, and his forward momentum disappears in an instant. He collapses to the floor, gasping for breath, clawing at his throat. Looks like she may well have crushed his windpipe, or at least done it some serious damage.
Not gonna lie. I’m hard as fuck at this point. A woman that can handle herself is one thing, but a woman who can handle herself while barely losing her composure? Yeah, that’s seriously fucking hot. The bystanders that haven’t gotten involved until now finally decide enough is enough and both of them step forward. The last man standing from the original threesome gets to his feet, and then the men begin to close in on Nikita, dark expressions on their faces.
I take another step forward.
“You said you’d give me a heads-up,” David says.
“Okay, then.” I look back at him over my shoulder. “Fine. Heads-up.”
