Craving (Steel Brothers Saga Book 1)

Craving - Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty–Six

Talon

The boy didn't wear pants. They had been taken away from him the first day. He wore only his T-shirt. Even though it was summer, he was cold most of the time in the dank concrete basement. He spent most days and nights wrapped in the dirty blanket they'd given him.

Hot breath on the back of his neck—that's what the boy hated the most. The rank stench of stale cigars and liquor. They'd always been drinking when they came. Sometimes they drank during.

The pain, the humiliation—as much as he hated them, he had learned to detach himself. One day he would be so used up he would die on the hard floor. No one would notice or care.

But the hot breath...the demonic stench...that wind from hell wafting over him.

He never detached from that.

* * *

Hot breath...stench of alcohol, stale cigar smoke...

A blunt object poked me in the back. "Your wallet, asshole," the voice said.

I elbowed the assailant in the ribs, knocking him to the ground. I kicked his weapon down the alley and then booted him in the side a few times. "Who the fuck do you think you are? You think you can just take what you want? Life doesn't work that way, you dumb fuck."

I kicked the bum's face and walked away.

This wasn't the first time I had been mugged. I often walked through the seedy area on the outskirts of the city at night, just waiting for some dumb-ass to try to jump me. Two times before tonight I had been jumped, and two times before tonight I had disarmed the mugger and beat the shit out of him. No one had ever called the cops on me. I didn't care if they did. I was careful never to do any lasting damage. Plus, self-defense and all.

I wanted to go back to that one, though. I used my will not to go running back and pummel him to his death.

The sickly heat of his breath on my neck. The acrid stench.

I wanted to see him dead.

But I wasn't crazy. I knew killing was wrong, despite my time in the Marines and despite everything else I'd been through. I still had morals, and I knew how to exist in society. I knew right from wrong. I wasn't a sociopath. I knew this as well as I knew anything. I'd done my share of research.

I didn't beat people up indiscriminately. But hey, try to mug me, take what is mine, and I'll make you pay. Not too many would argue with that thought process.

The face of Jade's ex emerged in my mind. He was the exception. He hadn't tried to take anything from me.

Or had he?

I had become an animal when I saw him kissing her. All rational thought had fled, and I had lunged forward to protect...what was mine.

I had no right to think of her as mine. I had nothing to offer her.

She was the only thing I had ever truly wanted.

And I had no right to her.

I walked into a seedy little dive that served rotgut whiskey and catered to two-bit whores. I wasn't proud of it, but I had spent more than my share of time in the little alcove. There had been a time, after I turned twenty-one, when this place was my second home. I drank and fucked myself into oblivion, trying—and failing—to ease the pain that consumed me. I hadn't been here in years, but still it stood, a haven for the melancholy, the outcasts—the people like me.