Page 112 of Finding Lexie
Knowing it was only a matter of time before the man got in a lucky strike, Midas struggled to keep hold of Magnus while trying to disarm him at the same time.
Magnus suddenly found his voice. “Fucking bitch should’ve died in that desert! They should’ve let my brother go and kept her! Let me go so I can fucking finish this! Dagmar deserves justice!”
Midas couldn’t even guess why Magnus had suddenly snapped and tried to kill Lexie, but with the man’s frantic, impassioned words, it all made sense.
Everything had been a ruse. The messages, the phone calls…befriending Lexie. The decision to take up where his brother had left off with Food For All.
He’d done it all to get to Lexie.
And if this wasn’t finished here and now, he’d try again. Midas could hear it in the other man’s voice. He wasn’t going to stop.
Theo hadn’t been the threat. All along, it had been Magnus.
“Put down the knife,” he ordered in a low, harsh tone, trying to get through to Magnus.
“Fuck you!”
Midas’s eyes went to Lexie. She hadn’t moved since he’d pulled Magnus off her. Every second he spent trying to subdue Magnus was one second she might not have. He needed to end this and get to his woman…
So Midas did what he’d been trained to do. He eliminated the threat.
It wasn’t easy to kill someone by snapping their neck. In fact, it was damn near impossible. But that didn’t mean Midas couldn’t do a hell of a lot of damage. Taking a deep breath, tuning out Magnus’s shouts, Midas forced the man’s chin up, then jerked his neck as hard as he could to one side, letting go of his body at the same time.
Predictably, Magnus’s body flew sideways, landing face first on the floor.
Midas staggered toward him. He’d pound the other man’s head on the floor to knock him out, or get an arm around his neck and cut off his air, making him lose consciousness. If he’d already paralyzed Magnus in the process of wrenching his neck, so be it. At least then he wouldn’t be able to hurt Lexie.
But Midas had forgotten about the knife the other man had been swinging wildly. When Magnus fell, he’d landed on his own hand.
And the knife.
Blood immediately began to pool under his body. Magnus twitched a few times, and gurgled, but he didn’t get up or come after Midas again.
Sparing two more precious seconds to make sure the man was no longer a threat, Midas rolled Magnus. The knife was sticking out of his chest. It was obvious from the vacant stare on his face that the threat was eliminated.
Midas didn’t spare another thought for the man. All his concentration shifted to Lexie.
He dropped to his knees beside her and felt for a pulse. “Come on,” he pleaded as he tried to control his shaking hands enough to see if she needed CPR.
Just when he was about to bend over to administer rescue breaths, her eyes popped open and her hands flew up. She fought. Fought for her life.
Midas tried to catch her wrists, but she was too frantic, clawing at his face, his arms, anything she could reach.
“It’s me, Lex! You’re okay. You’re okay!” he shouted, trying to break through the terror blanketing her features.
It took several moments, but finally her gaze cleared a fraction.
“It’s me, Midas. You’re okay. Take a deep breath, love.”
Her mouth opened, and she took the longest, most heartbreaking breath he’d ever heard someone take in his life. Then she did it again, and again. Until she was almost hyperventilating.
“Slow it down. You’re okay. You can breathe now. All the air you want. Easy, Lexie.”
“Magnus,” she croaked.
“I know. He won’t hurt you anymore.”
She frantically looked around, then picked up her head, wincing as the muscles in her throat protested the movement.
