Page 65 of Brutal Revenge

In a way I don’t like.

Again, Azra throws back her head and laughs at something one of the girls says. The sound doesn’t reach me over the music, but I hear it anyway. A warm and dangerous spark.

I don’t do warm. I also don’t do danger unless I’m the one causing it.

Yet she’s a threat I can’t put a bullet in.

Her hips sway with the beat, her hands in the air, women and men circling her like a pack. She’s glowing and alive, untouched by the shadows that cling to men like me.

A guy with a sleezy smile and a backward cap approaches her, his steps too confident and eager. When he leans into Azra’s side, she stiffens slightly but doesn’t pull away. She’s polite—too polite—and it tightens my jaw.

I’m out of the booth before I realize I’ve moved.

The crowd parts around me without me needing to ask. Theyalways do. The way I carry the Caruso name with the pride it deserves ensures they know better than to get in my way.

Azra hasn’t noticed me yet. She’s still smiling and being kind while striving to exist in a world that doesn’t deserve her softness.

The guy touches her arm, and something in me snaps.

I’m beside her in a breath, one hand closing around her wrist while the other circles the stranger’s throat. My hold on Azra’s arm isn’t firm. Only tight enough for her to look up at me. I can’t say the same about my clutch on the man’s throat. He’s pale, on the brink of passing out.

Azra’s eyes widen with confusion and something else I can’t name.

“Matteo?” Her nose crinkles as she silently pleads for me to free the man from my hold, her gaze as pleading as Boris’s.

I release him, but not without a push that sends him crashing into the empty DJ booth.

I ignore his disbelieving gawk. He’s irrelevant. A gnat buzzing too close to a flame. I keep my focus solely on the person rocketing my itch to kill to the outer sphere of space.

“You’re done here,” I say, voice low.

Azra’s brows knit. “I’m not done dancing yet.”

“I’m telling you you’re done.”

She pulls her hand away from my grasp, chin lifting. “You don’t get to decide when I’m done.”

If I were Giovanni or Dante, she’d be right.

Since I’m not, I gesture with my head toward the exit.

“It’s time to go.”

“Why?” she demands.

Because you look too alive. Because you look free. Because watching you dance makes my chest ache in a manner that is foreign to me.

I don’t have an answer I’m willing to say out loud, so I say the only thing that resembles some kind of normalcy.

“Because I said so.”

Her eyes flash with anger. “You don’t own me.”

“No, I don’t,” I snap out, unable to stop myself. “But I’m starting to think I want to.”

That’s the most dangerous thought I’ve ever had, but instead of filling Azra’s eyes with panic, they brighten like I handed her the keys to the castle.

With a smile that could summon an immortal to heaven’s gate, she cranes her head to the right and subtly nods.