Ami shook off the ridiculous curiosity with his male features and focused on the poor man in the chair. If she made her presence known, could she somehow prevent further harm to him? Or would she only call Michal’s rage down on her. Her gaze went back to the man. Before she could decide if he was worth the risk, Michal had his gun in his hand and had pressed the tip of the barrel against the man’s forehead. Her eyes went wide with disbelief.
“It is my favorite shirt,” Michal explained. “I can see that this is going to get very messy.”
The man blinked rapidly. The sudden slump of his shoulders told Ami he’d admitted defeat on some level.
“You think you are invincible,” he said to Michal, sneering in spite of his obvious no-win situation.
“Enough games,” Michal said wearily. “Give me the information I need and I will make this as swift and painless as possible. Who was behind the Bellatti hit?”
The man laughed for a moment, then his expression turned somber. “Your old friend Lofgren, for the good that information will do you. He will bring you down yet. My only regret is that I will not be there to see it.”
The weapon abruptly fired. Fine droplets of crimson spewed from the neat round hole that appeared in the man’s forehead. But the spray of blood and matter across the wall behind him was what startled Ami from the shock that had paralyzed her with the first echo of the blast. She braced to run. She couldn’t let him catch her spying on him like this.
MICHAL LOWERED his weapon.
It was done.
One more name to scratch off the endless list. One more piece of the intelligence puzzle.
Would it never be enough?
The empty abyss that was his soul felt suddenly even more hollow than before. There was nothing left that set him apart from those he executed for the good of the world. He was no better than the dead man now taking up space in his cellar. He was a killer.
He stared at the gun in his hand and then at the spray of blood staining his skin before unconsciously tucking the weapon back into the waistband of his trousers. He had done what he’d had to…what he’d been ordered to do.
A creak on the stairs jerked his attention in that direction. His gaze locked with Amira’s wide blue one. The fear in her eyes told him that she’d witnessed everything. She looked ready to bolt.
His last thought evolved into action at the same time that she scrambled to her feet. Michal was charging up the steps before she could reach the door. He grabbed her by the waist and quickly twisted as they went down on the treads, allowing his body to take the brunt of the impact.
“Let me go!” She flailed her arms, banging her fists against him anywhere she could.
He jerked his head first left then right to avoid her panicked attack. Before she could get in a proper blow he’d manacled her wrists.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, his fury mounting at the idea that she’d not only given her guard the slip, but that no one had come looking for her.
She swallowed convulsively, the movement of delicate muscles along the slender length of her throat distracting him for one long moment. “You killed that man.”
The disgust in her voice stabbed deep into his gut. He looked away from her accusing eyes and got to his feet, dragging her upward with him. “This is none of your concern.” He tugged her after him as he headed toward the door.
She stalled, tried to jerk away from his hold. When he glared a warning at her she muttered thinly, “You are a murderer.”
In that instant several emotions coalesced at once. The realization that she truly had no memory of their former time together absorbed fully; the depth of her absolute fear of him slammed into his gut with all the force of a physical blow; the undeniable hurt he suffered as a result.
He yanked her up hard against him. “Unless you want to be the next to die, I would suggest that you obey me.” He snarled the words like a wounded animal. The rage at his own vulnerability-a vulnerability only she had the power to effect-mushroomed inside him with each passing second. The heart of stone that beat in his chest felt strangely fragile.
“Your wish is my command,” she muttered disdainfully, yet her eyes gave her away. She blinked rapidly, but not quickly enough to hide the brightness that glimmered there. However fearless she wanted to appear at the moment, he knew she was terrified.
Terrified of him.
Of what he was.
He burst into the kitchen with her in tow. She tried to wrench away from him, which only fueled his anger. He didn’t stop, though he knew she could hardly keep up with him, as he passed through the main room where his obviously inept men loitered like the fools they were.
With his savage glare, a hush fell over the room. He said nothing. No words were necessary. All six of those present understood their error.
Once in his room he slammed and locked his door. She fought his hold, a new kind of fear apparently taking root. As it should. He clenched his jaw against the rage building, but it did no good.
He glowered down at her, stilling her struggles in an instant. But his own inner battle would not so easily be subdued. He longed to shake her until she admitted the rightness of his ways. He wanted to make her see the truth. But to what end? What did it matter? “You would call me a murderer,” he roared, arguing the point in spite of the stupidity and uselessness of the effort. He slapped his chest with his palm, as angry with himself as he was with her. “The man in the cellar is a victim of my murderous ways, is that it?”
She trembled visibly, but did not turn away as he’d expected. Instead she lifted her chin and countered, “I’ve heard your men talking. You’re not just a murderer,” she threw back at him. “You’re a monster.”
White-hot fury blindsided him, obliterating all other emotion, all other thought. He pulled back his hand but caught himself, shaking with the effort of suppressing the reaction that was far too automatic in this tainted world in which he lived.
She cowered in anticipation of the blow, but she did not run from him.
He blinked and dragged in a ragged breath. It took a full ten seconds to master the beast inside him and lower the hand with which he’d intended to punish her. Never once had he laid a hand on her in that manner. Even though she had betrayed him, sentencing herself to death from more sources than one, he could not bring himself to do this.
He leaned closer to her, using his size and physical strength to intimidate her instead. “You call me a monster,” he growled back at her. “That rotting bastard in the cellar was instrumental in the deaths of dozens of women and children. He cared not who got in his way.” He pressed her with the fiercest glare he could summon. “He will harm no more innocents. His reign of terror is over.”
Still she didn’t back down. “What about yours?” she snapped right back at him. “When will your reign end?”
Something shattered inside him…some protective mental barrier that allowed him to ignore what the world thought of him. That made him oblivious to it all. He snagged her wrist and jerked her close…close enough to feel the heat of his breath on those luscious lips parted by her abrupt, fear-inspired gasp.
“I am fighting a war,” he murmured harshly. “You will treat me with the respect of a warrior or suffer the consequences.”
She tugged at his hold, his threatening words only making her more visibly determined, infuriating him beyond all reason. “What’re you going to do, Michal?” she demanded consciously, or perhaps not, putting emphasis on his name the way she had before. In a single heartbeat his fury morphed into need, pooling in his loins like a sea of fire.
“Are you going to kill me, too?” she taunted. “You’ve been tiptoeing around it all week. Why don’t you just get it over with?” She moved in on him, eliminating the few centimeters between them. “Just go ahead and kill me and give your men a new subject to speculate about.” She glanced at his chest and then his hands. “You already have blood on your hands, what’s a little more?”