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He doesn't know my name anymore. He doesn’t know me.

His free hand goes to the front of my jeans and my mind flips.

No. No. Not this. Not me. Not this.

I try to break free from his grip and hit him. But … oh my God … I can’t.

I can’t.

I’m letting loose in my head, where I can do whatever I want. But here, in my physical body, I am helpless. Rage fills me. Something escapes my mouth, the closest I can make it to an ear-splitting yell. But the building is empty and no one on this earth knows I am in it.

I close my eyes. Some cold part of me, the part that never switches off, starts calculating whether I'm going to survive this.

Then the door makes a rasping sound, and stops with a flat clack against the wall. And the weight is gone off me so completely and so fast that all the air arrives at once and I go down on my side, coughing, holding my chest.

I get up on one elbow with my hair across my face and my sweater rucked under my arms to find Laszlo Novak standing in the middle of that locker room in a white shirt and suspenders, holding my ex up off the floor by a fistful of T-shirt.

He isn't looking at Charles though. He's looking at me. At my mouth. At my wrist. At the coat, and the buttons on the floor, and the marks already coming up red on my skin. Then I see his face change, slowly, so slowly, and the warmth drains out of it.

Charles gets a hand around Laszlo’s forearm but can't move it so much as an inch. The man’s like solid brick. "Who the fuck⁠—"

"We haven't met," Laszlo says pleasantly. "Name’s Novak. I'm the groom."

Then he smiles at me. That’s the most terrifying thing I have ever seen on a human face.

"Wait in the car for me, would you, sweetheart? I won’t be long." His jaw twitches. “Pity.”

CHAPTER 14

Laszlo

I never thought I'd have to kill a man myself.

Before I left the house, I was expecting a wedding to be the only excitement of the day. Then Rafe told me her car had stopped off of Halstead, and I spent the whole drive fuming, wondering why Manon would break the one promise I asked of her, today of all days. One request I’d given her: Get to the church and marry me. Apparently that was too much.

The tracker put her two blocks from the rink, tucked in where she probably thought no one would look. Clever girl. She just has no clue about the tracker in her car.

I come in through the staff entrance, past the empty desk, which I’d bet is what she did. Then I hear it—a scrape, a thud, a scuffle? And muffled moans. No words that I can make out.

My feet are already moving. Ice forms around my chest, around the most acute dread I’ve ever felt. I follow the sounds to the locker room, and every thought about broken promises dies where I stand.

She's on her feet, backed against a bare wall past a row of lockers, her clothing ripped, her face red and streaked with tears. His hands are on her. On what’s mine. He’s holding her wrist too tight—there’ll be marks on her skin. My blood rings in my ears.

I have him off her and up by the shirt, and the cold fear that drove me in here burns off into pure violence. I want him slashed to pieces and dead. I want his mutilated body in a landfill somewhere. I want to take my time, but I already know I won't get to do that, which makes me madder.

"Laszlo—"

"Wait in the car for me, would you, sweetheart. I won't be long." My face feels so tight, like it’s going to explode. "Pity."

Of course she doesn't move. This woman has never once done what she’s asked in her life, which is part of the reason I'm marrying her.

So I take him with me. Out of the locker room and up the ramp into the garage, because I have a place in mind for this—after all I promised her how it was going to go that night at her house. With this, at least, I can stick to the script. Level two. His weekly space, under the camera that’s out of order. My men will take care of the rest afterward.

She follows us up, because of course she does.

He's only got one skate on, the motherfucker. I don’t know how I manage to hold him—the bloodlust is giving me strength I had no clue I possessed. I’m no scrawny guy but this is a big man and I’m handling him like he’s a puppet. Good thing he’s under the influence. I can smell the alcohol off him. The second I set him down he wobbles like a newborn deer and slips to the ground.

"So you're the fucker forcing Manon to get married," he spits, hauling himself upright against a concrete pillar. He's breathing hard, and now I see the cuts across his face that must be Manon's work. Good girl.