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My arm burns like hell, blood running hot down my wrist, sliding over my knuckles, dripping from my fingers onto the pavement. Every pulse sends pain tearing up toward my shoulder, sharp enough it should slow me down, but it doesn’t. Not when Dante’s standing twenty feet away beneath the dock lights, watching me through the smoke and gunfire like he’s been waiting for this.

Bodies drop around us while the rest of the dock tears itself apart. Reaper’s still firing somewhere behind me, Knox is shouting from the other side of the SUVs, and Saint curses loud enough to cut through the chaos when another round hits the truck beside him. The whole place smells like gunpowder, seawater, burned rubber, and blood.

But Dante doesn’t move.

He just stands there in his dark coat, mouth curved faintly, blood streaked across one side of his face.

The sight of him alive pisses me off more than the bullet in my arm.

“You should’ve stayed the fuck away from her,” I call out.

Dante’s smile widens.

“Which one?”

That snaps whatever restraint I had left.

I lunge.

Dante moves faster than I expect, fist catching me across the jaw before I can get a clean shot. Pain bursts through my mouth, metallic and sharp, but I slam into him anyway. My shoulder clips the side of a parked SUV, denting the door beneath our weight as I drive him back.

He grabs my wounded arm and digs his fingers straight into the torn muscle.

White-hot pain explodes up my shoulder.

“Fuck.”

My gun slips in my grip for half a second, and Dante uses it. He twists my wrist, trying to force the barrel away while his other hand goes for the knife at his belt.

I drive my knee into his stomach once, then again, hard enough to feel the air punch out of him. He grunts, but he doesn’t fold.

Old bastard still has fight in him.

Good.

I want him to feel every fucking second of this.

I slam my forehead into his face hard enough his nose cracks. Blood sprays hot across my cheek, and Dante staggers back, laughing through it like pain is funny to him.

Like all of this is still a game.

“You always were predictable,” he spits.

I swing again.

He ducks and catches me in the ribs with a brutal punch that knocks air from my lungs. I stumble half a step, boots skidding across slick pavement, and he comes in fast with the knife flashing beneath the dock lights.

I catch his wrist before the blade hits my stomach.

For one second, we’re locked there, breathing hard, blood everywhere, gunfire ripping around us while his eyes stay fixed on mine.

Still poisoned with the kind of certainty that tells me he knows something I don’t.

That thought bothers me more than the knife.

I twist his wrist until something pops.

Dante snarls.