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I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t believe this was happening. All I could do was blink through my tears as he jerked my head and pressed his cock against my seething, bared teeth.
Then, with a flash of movement and a blast so loud that it sounded as if it had come from inside my own head, one of the blue eyes I’d been glaring up at exploded.
CHAPTER 18
DAMIEN
Iwas no stranger to rage.
Some days, it was so consuming that it felt as if it had its own heartbeat, like a parasite living inside of me, eating away at my soul.
That rage had been craving an outlet since the moment I’d watched the life drain out of my mother’s eyes, but there was only ever one man deserving of my wrath, and laying a finger on him was an immediate death sentence.
Even for his own son.
My father had taken everything from me—my mother, my home, my freedom, my identity—not the Bratva goons he’d sent to kidnap me, not the trainers in the Kletka or the sailors I’d enlisted with. They were all just following orders, a fact that I’d fought hard to remember every time I found my fist buried in one of their faces on the sparring mat.
These men weren’t my enemies.
Not until that morning, when I’d followed Clover’s muddy footprints up the cliff.
I could still see the impression of her body in the field—deep, as if there’d been a massive weight on top of her. The V of her spread legs, the profile of her face, the signs of her struggle were embedded in my mind just as deeply as they had been gouged into the wet earth.
And so were the boot prints that had led her away.
I’d been in agony when I left the cave to search for her—empty stomach, dehydration headache, stabbing pain with every step—but the moment I realized what had happened, where they were taking her …
My pain didn’t just disappear; I disappeared, completely. Consumed by a blackout rage so intense that I didn’t remember following their footprints back to base camp. I didn’t remember feeling another second of pain from my injuries. I didn’t remember buttoning my jacket and throwing open the door. But I would never forget the seething, writhing need to kill that exploded through my veins when a dozen men turned to salute me with their cocks in their hands. Because behind them, lashed to a metal counter and covered in bruises, was a naked, squealing redhead with a cock in her mouth and a gun pressed against her temple.
I’d known rage.
This was wrath.
It filled the room, swallowing every shadow as it sharpened my vision. It sucked the air from their lungs and pumped it into mine. It identified the exact location of every weapon and exit in the room within seconds, all while fluent Russian poured from my lips. And it deduced immediately that these men didn’t know that I’d defected. They wore camouflage instead of sailor stripes, meaning that they were part of the Naval Infantry battalion that had come to shore in the amphibious tanks. They had no idea that I’d jumped overboard before the ship exploded. To them, I looked like a battle survivor. But more importantly, I looked like their superior.
And superiors got first dibs on the spoils of war.
A plan formed instantly—one that would keep the entire room distracted while I got close enough to the fucker with the gun pressed to Clover’s head to take his weapon—but the reality of what I’d have to do was almost worse than the carnage that would follow. But my wrath didn’t give a fuck. It wouldn’t be satisfied until my boot prints were the ones leading Clover away—through a river of rapist blood.
As I stalked across the room, I poured all my concentration into keeping my movements fluid and my eyes focused. Every motion and sound made me want to attack. Adrenaline flooded my muscles, soaked my brain, and honed my reflexes to the point that I became a walking, talking hair trigger. But on the outside, I was exactly who my father had trained me to be.
Bratva royalty.
Power personified.
Death incarnate.
I refused to look at Clover as I unbuckled my belt, but I could feel her eyes on me. Her pain, terror, and betrayal threatened to penetrate the numbness of my wrath, but those emotions quickly vanished when my gaze landed on an electric cattle prod the size of a billy club in the hand of a man standing directly behind her.
He hadn’t used it on her yet—she wouldn’t have been conscious if he had—but my seething gaze still darted to her body, taking inventory of every single injury marring her freckled skin.
The ground was smeared with blood where her feet had slid across the floor, lacerated from days of walking barefoot over rocks.
Guilt gnawed at my stomach.
I should have given her my boots.
Her long, toned legs were still slashed and bruised from her fall down the cliff, but now, her arse was stained pink from their handprints as well.
