by M. Malone
Gemma was refusing to leave. She was trying to explain away that she could betray Matthias and betray them all. And then, of course, they had Ian to deal with.
Noah was going to kill him now. It was almost certain. And considering Ian had saved Noah, just like Andromeda had saved Gemma, that was going to be difficult and a problem. While Noah dealt with the girl, I turned to Matthias. “Listen kid, I know it feels like dirt right now, but this will straighten out. No one knows better than me that you can’t look to your past to define you. You can’t trust people from your past. Sometimes your past can be used against you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
The kid still didn’t respond. He was just staring that vacant and dead stare. Should we go ahead and call Dr. Breckner? Because this was terrifying.
And then it happened. In one split second, I took my eye off the ball. When I glanced at Noah, I said, “Listen, maybe you just give Matthias an eye—”
I never did finish what I was saying because pandemonium hit. In a sliver of a hair of a second, Matthias lunged after Gemma.
For the last ten minutes, the kid hadn’t moved, hadn’t budged, and hadn’t blinked. And then all of a sudden, he craned his neck and his gaze pinned on Gemma. Then he was out of that chair and lunging for her.
Motherfucker!
Noah and I sprang into action. No one went around the table. I didn’t have time to play that shit. I just went right over it. I tried to pull Matthias off of Gemma, but Gemma was no delicate flower and she was fighting back. Even though Matthias had his hands on her neck and was squeezing, Gemma had managed to wedge an arm between them.
But the kid was still on top of her with intent to do her harm. I tried to force an arm under Matthias’s body and then twirled to disconnect his hold. But it didn’t work. Matthias had braced himself.
Oh shit. He’s going to fucking kill her.
Gemma choked and fought against him, and finally, she managed to bring one arm down sharply, but nothing happened. Then she did a simple pluck motion with her fingertips against the fleshy part of his thumbs. He released her and she dragged in sharp breaths.
Matthias loosened his hold, but he jerked back with an elbow then went straight for my nose.
When it connected, I howled and stumbled backwards.
By that time, Noah had reached him, taken Gemma and shoved her behind him. But Gemma wasn’t going down easily. Even though she was still choking, she was fighting to stay on her feet and come after Matthias. She kept calling to him. “Matthias, it’s me. It’s me Gemma. Please, stop.”
Yeah lady, like that’s going to work. You just tripped his homicidal killer switch.
They needed to summon some sort of solution and quickly before Matthias killed them all.
Noah might love the kid, but he still wouldn’t hesitate to take all actions to put him down.
The punches and kicks I took made me grind my teeth, but then Noah was back on his feet, ready to fight more. I kept taking the supposedly easy shots: kidneys; side; right under the ribs; gut. The face was more difficult to avoid, but for that, Matthias just took it on his chin like a champ. Jesus Christ, the kid could have been a boxer.
Matthias managed to grab Noah and knock his head against the wall. That rang Noah’s bell for sure. And then Matthias was back to jumping on Gemma. This time though, he couldn’t get a good hold because she kicked and put some good distance between them, jumped back, and then her hands were up, ready to go.
For every move, there was an equal and an opposite move. Her hands were flying. She took one of his hits to her right ribs. And that one unsettled her, I could tell. Shit, she probably had a bone broken or something. But Matthias was going after her hard. The problem was this wasn’t an angry attack. He had that dead look on his face like he was playing a video game. He couldn’t even see her.
Things didn’t get really hairy until Matthias picked up Gemma against the glass wall and shoved, repeating the action until her head rolled forward and the glass behind her broke. Holy Mother of God!
She’d unleashed the monster, and now it was ready to play.
Matthias
Anger.
Hate.
Fear.
So much fear.
I didn’t even know what I was fighting. Why I was fighting. What was so important that I had to kill these people? For a brief moment, I glanced down at Gemma’s moaning, limp body, and a part of me wanted to reach out to her, to dust off the glass and tend to her cuts and hold her.
No, it wasn’t like that. It was more.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the memories of her taste, her touch, her smell.
I turned around. Rafe was coming for me, trying to stop me. Trying to kill me? I glanced back down at her and knew what I had to do. The best defense against someone like Rafe was offense. Before Rafe could get close, I lunged. I delivered one upper cut. Rafe’s head snapped back and he cursed loudly.
Noah was scrambling forward. But Noah was also the kind that talked to me. “Listen, kid, you don’t want to do this. You don’t want to go there. We’re family, remember?”
“I have no family.”
Noah frowned. “Fair enough, if that’s what you want to believe. But I think of you as family. You’re like that little brother I never had. I can take care of you. I helped you.”
“You called that help? I’m a fucking killer. I’m a murderer.”
I threw a punch. Noah deftly sidestepped it and adjusted his stance.
I made the same adjustments to my body. Noah had gone from a Krav Maga stance with his hands up, back foot slightly raised, ready to pounce and move forward to a more jujitsu stance with a lower center of gravity. Like he wanted to tackle me and take me to the ground for a good grapple.
I wasn’t going to be taken unaware. Noah had training, so right now, he knew everything I knew. The outlier was Rafe.
Rafe prowled around us, knowing that Noah needed to deliver a message, but also likely not wanting to hurt either one of us.
I watched Rafe warily. I remembered how the guy had almost killed me.
Noah’s gaze shifted ever so briefly to the door, and that was it. I was on him like flies on shit. With one elbow to the temple, Noah’s body was going down, and I jumped on him, raining punches on his face even as Noah tried haphazardly to stop them.
I was able to get a good four hits or so before Rafe launched at me, knocking me off his friend.
But not this time. I had pure rage, hatred, and fear on my side. Even though Rafe was better at blocking my punches, he didn’t have the leverage right now. I knocked him over, delivering whatever would land: punches, elbows, a head-butt, I even pushed myself up briefly, getting a little height on my body before dropping back down with my knee on Rafe’s gut.
Rafe wheezed, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Noah was snapping out of it and was starting to move.
Motherfucker. I’d be up in a minute. But I knew that Rafe was a larger danger. Noah, at least, didn’t want to hurt me. There was always a part of Rafe that wanted to hurt all of us. On the other side of the room lay Gemma. She was starting to come to, as well. Her hands were drifting over glass as she tried to find purchase. I would have to go. They weren’t going to let me kill her.
Do you want to kill her? No, I didn’t, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
When I had my hands around Rafe’s neck, I wedged a knee on one of his arms. That meant Rafe couldn’t push me off. He wheezed as he clawed with his hands, but I was not letting go. When Noah finally pushed himself to standing and ran over to us, I had to divert my attention, because in that moment my one objective was to kill Rafe and then get to Gemma and kill her. Finish the job.
But Noah wasn’t having that. He dragged me backward, kicking and screaming.
“Damn it, Matthias, enough. I don’t know what the fuck is going on with you, but if you cannot get it together, I will put you down.”
And that was the problem with Noah. My mentor, my friend
, would always choose to talk first before fighting. I was a different breed of animal altogether.
The blade was easy to reach, always at my fingertips. At any given time, I always had at least three or four of them. I liked knives. They were easy to conceal. And they were deadly.
I slid the knife from its sheath at the back of my belt and swiped in a wide arch going from right to left.
Noah hissed and then cursed, his hand going over his stomach and then pulling away as he stared at the blood. “Matthias, what have you done?”
I saw my mentor start to wobble and then fall. The problem was that little impromptu fight session had drawn attention. Lucia was running toward the conference room.
I wondered if I’d make it to Gemma. I had to kill her. Those were my orders. Would I have the time? Because right behind Lucia was Diana. And she was armed. Diana carried that gun around everywhere. The woman was one hell of a shot.
I didn’t want to, but after careful assessment, I knew I had to leave her. I would come back for her though.
I had to go, but it was Noah who stopped me, reaching for me, still on his knees, still trying to plant a foot, to get back up.
“Matthias, you don’t have to do this.”
I stared down at the man who had been like a second father to me in some ways. “Yes, I do. You all have to die.” And then I plunged my knife into Noah’s shoulder.
It was time to go.
THANK YOU for reading the first book of the SIN duet. The next book, Sinful, releases on 6/19/18. PREORDER NOW at malonesquared.com/sin
While you’re waiting, catch up on Jonas and JJ’s story, FORCE! Keep reading for an excerpt.
Excerpt of Force
For years I’ve existed on the edge of the dark, protecting innocents who can’t protect themselves. Until… her. Jessica JJ Jones. The bane of my existence. A bright light in the dark. The crack in my armor. A loud, argumentative beautiful crack in my armor.
But first, there’s a more immediate concern. JJ is running scared. And to protect her I might have to break the vow I made years ago.
Excerpt of Force © August 2017 M. Malone and Nana Malone
Jessica Jones closed her eyes, exhausted. Day after draining day of pulling double duty while her bestie and partner in crime was on maternity leave was starting to take its toll. Like hell was she going to start complaining, though. If anyone deserved happiness, it was Lucia. Her best friend had been to hell and back and deserved the time off.
JJ could deal. After all Lucia would do it for her. Besides, JJ wasn’t letting a prima donna fashion designer run her into the ground and call uncle. She’d rather burn her Jimmy Choos first. She could handle anything their boss Adriana could dish out.
It felt like she’d only shut her eyes for mere seconds before she frowned in her sleep.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
When she peeled her eyes open again, she was in hell.
“Oh my god,” she screamed.
But that scream was her first mistake. It meant emptying out her lungs, which meant she needed to breathe... and that meant lungs full of smoke.
It was so hot her hair plastered against her head and her sheets clung to her naked breasts from sweat. Yeah, she slept topless, so what? It had been so hot lately.
Frantic, she looked around the room trying to find the source of heat. It was so dark she couldn't see anything. But she could feel the smoke all around her, cloying and thick, wrapping around her and constricting her lungs.
“Don't panic.” The sound of her own voice out loud scared her out of her frozen state. Fear immobilizes. Anger motivates. That’s right, get pissed off!
If there was anything JJ was good at, it was being hot tempered. What the fuck was smoke doing in her room anyway? She’d just had a goddamned blowout. She needed to charge that color and cut to whatever or whoever was the source of this fire.
Move your ass girly.
She had to move because she was not dying in this room. She did not survive her past to die like this. Fuck that noise. Besides, if she died like this, Lucia would resurrect her ass and kill her all over again. After Lucia had survived being stalked and almost killed, JJ had a new appreciation for the meaning of life.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, letting out a sigh of relief when her toes met the carpet. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark somewhat, she could see the faint hint of an orange glow from down the hall. Which meant the fire hadn't reached her room... yet.
But the bedroom door stood open to the hall, which was probably why she could already smell the smoke.
It was weird that the door was open. She always closed the door before going to sleep. It was one of the things Lucia’s husband had drilled into her. Noah owned a security company, and his overprotectiveness toward Lucia had spilled over onto JJ. Now she always had one of the annoying, albeit sexy, guys who worked for him trailing her to and from work, and her apartment had been subjected to a thorough security ‘review’ by Noah’s resident IT wizard. Matthias had deemed her place ‘merely acceptable.’
JJ was pretty sure they'd have asked her to move if they hadn’t known from experience that she didn't take suggestions well. The last thing she needed was some man trying to tell her what to do. Maybe Lucia was okay with that, but she wasn't interested. JJ knew from experience that she didn't want any man having control over her life. Never again. That alpha-asshole shit didn't work for her, so they could shove their over protectiveness where the sun didn’t shine.
With a quick glance at the open door, she realized it was actually lucky she'd left it open, otherwise she might not have woken up until the flames were closer. What the hell had woken her? You can think through that shit after you’re safe. Yeah, good point. She grabbed up her comforter and wrapped herself in the thick fabric, bringing it up over her head as she stepped into a pair of slippers.
How far to the door? The window might be an option if the fire escape hadn’t been welded over some years ago. She looked up and then squinted in the darkness. And then she saw the shadow in the hall. The man-sized shadow.
Fuck me. She opened her mouth to scream then reached into her bedside drawer for the nearest weapon she could find. She’d been aiming for the retractable baton she kept in the top drawer. But instead she’d come up with a gag gift from a bachelorette party a couple of years ago. A giant purple vibrator.
What are you gonna do with that? Fuck him to death? Well that was a thought.
“Who the hell are you? And what the fuck are you doing in my apartment?”
He stepped forward slightly, his body still half-hidden outside the door, and JJ raised her makeshift weapon.
“I'm here for you, Jessica. I’m always here for you.”
JJ clutched the blanket closer, and her fingers curled around the vibrator as his voice washed over her. The low tone of his words sliced through her veins. That voice. It had been so long since she'd heard that voice. She'd hoped to never hear it again, except in her nightmares.
“How did you find me?”
His chuckle was almost as terrifying as the words that followed. “I never lost you.”
JJ screamed and backed up so fast that she stumbled and fell on the bed. The comforter tangled around her and she fought against it, certain the next touch she'd feel would be the last.
Strong hands wrapped around her flailing arms.
“Damn it, you crazy woman, I'm trying to help you!”
It took a few seconds before she recognized the voice, her terror distorting it into the one she feared most. When she finally spoke, her voice was tiny.
“Jonas? Is that you?”
The comforter was pulled back away from her eyes, and Jonas’s handsome face appeared. Jonas Castillo worked for Noah’s security company and was a regular fixture in her life. He was routinely assigned to protect Lucia, and by default JJ, during the workweek. She took great pleasure in giving him hell, and he was usually cursing her name or bickering with her.
<
br /> “Yes, of course it's me.”
Before she could question what he was doing there, she felt herself being lifted. She clutched his shoulders automatically, disoriented after her fall. Now she wasn't sure if that had actually happened. Had she been dreaming? It was so hard to tell.
“Jonas, did you see anyone else in the apartment?”
“Like who? Don't you live alone?”
Was that jealousy in his voice? Even under these circumstances, JJ couldn't resist the urge to screw with him a little.
“Actually I don't. We can't leave without my favorite guy.”
“Who? And if you have a boyfriend, where is he? Some help he is during an emergency.”
“Well, Fluffy has never been much help during emergencies, but he blows the best wet kisses.”
Jonas didn't pause. “I'll come back for your dog, I promise. But I have to get you to safety.”
It must have been the smoke affecting her brain, because at first JJ didn't realize what he’d said. It wasn't until they were at the front door that she understood he meant to leave.
“No! I have to get Fluffy!” JJ swatted at his massive chest. She must have surprised him because his arms loosened around her legs, giving her the room she needed to jump down.
“Damn it, JJ! This is serious. We don't have time to stop.”
“It'll just take a second.” JJ raced back to the guest bedroom and grabbed Fluffy, covering him with the comforter as she ran.
Jonas picked her up as soon as she hit the hallway and ran for the front door. They passed a crew of firefighters in the corridor outside her apartment. The smoke was thicker out here, so JJ buried her face in Jonas’s shoulder, making sure to keep Fluffy covered too.
When they got outside, Jonas set them down carefully on the grass, safely away from the building. An EMT approached, and Jonas pointed at JJ. She was going to protest, but dissolved into a coughing fit as soon as she opened her mouth. The young man frowned and knelt on the grass next to her. Then his eyes widened when her comforter slipped and she almost flashed an entire boob at him.
