“Fine,” I said in as brittle a tone as I could make it. “When and where do you want the rest of your money?”
“You’ll get a text in the morning from my associate,” the man said. “You just better be sure you have the rest of it or else.” Then he hung up.
They thought they had the upper hand. I was okay with that, because I had gotten used to being the underdog. That was what my career was built on. Men underestimating me. Thinking I didn’t have it in me to fight back when I was down. These assholes were going to pay.
I let that anger start to simmer in my gut. It wasn’t unlike what I did as part of my pre-fight warm-up, except this time, everything I cared about as on the line. These assholes had messed with the wrong man and the wrong woman. I couldn’t let myself analyze the emotions that rolled through me as I thought about the abuse that they had placed on my woman.
My woman. That was what spun through my brain and sent my thoughts hurtling off into some unknown place that I had never ventured into before, but it felt right. Lex was mine. She belonged to me. It was too bad that a couple of assholes figured that out before me.
I had to get her back. No matter what.
I slipped across the street and made my way up the steps. Unless I missed my calculation, someone moved through the locked door at least every couple of minutes. It was an active building it seemed. I glanced at the names on the buzzer. There appeared to be only two apartments per floor. I had no way of knowing which was the one in the front on the second floor. I started to push the ones on the first and third floor. As I hoped, the door buzzed a moment later without anyone asking for any further identification for entry.
There were two people approaching me, an older couple, and I ducked my head even as I held the door open for them. I didn’t expect that there were cameras anywhere, not in a building like this, but I kept my head scrunched inside the hood of my sweatshirt nonetheless. I saw an elevator directly ahead of me, but I cut to my right and took the stairs upward two at a time.
Once on the landing of the second floor, I swept my eyes up and down the hallway. It was empty, and it smelled. There was carpeting that lined the middle of the hallway as if it was trying to dress up the place, but it was stained in several places. The door to my right at the back of the building I had no interest in but focused on the one to my left closer to the front. That was the one that led into the apartment at the front of the building.
I moved as quietly as I could toward that door. I slipped the switchblade out of my pocket. I wasn’t planning on using it unless I had to. After all, I got paid a lot of money on a regular basis to beat men senseless with my fists, and that was exactly what I planned to do tonight.
Moving to the side of the door, I reached over and knocked on the door before pulling my arm back. Then I waited. I heard footsteps inside. There wasn’t any further noise as I assumed the guy was looking through the peephole. When I heard the click of the door lock and the squeak of the hinge as it started to open, I made my move. I swung around and slammed all my weight into the narrowed opening.
Luck with on my side. My movement caught the man inside unaware, and he was shoved backward by my momentum. My brain registered several things at once as I took in the scene in front of me. Lex, wide-eyed and tearful, sitting in a chair with duct tape on her mouth. The man who retrieved the backpack from the hotel, regaining his balance and roaring at the intrusion. He lifted his arm at me.
Lex ripped the duct tape off her mouth and shouted, “He’s got a gun!”
I ducked and ran forward hitting the man squarely in the gut as I wrapped my arms around his waist and hauled him up off his feet. My mind had already mentally calculated that he had at least fifty pounds on me, but that didn’t matter. I had blind rage on my side.
The gun flew out of the man’s hand and went scattering across the floor. As soon as his body landed on the floor with a heavy thud, I snaked my arm around his neck and started to squeeze. I had my knife under his chin, and I knew that it was probably drawing blood. I wrapped my legs around his chest and tightened my grip. His arms and legs flailed around me landing random punches against my body, but my mind had gone cold.
That was when the last thing registered in my mind from my hurried entrance into the room. Lex’s shirt had been ripped open in the front exposing her bra underneath, and the man wasn’t wearing a mask. Lex had been crying. The man had a gun. It hit me like a ton of bricks what he had been about to do to her, and that’s when something else unleashed in my mind.