Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last

woman, breaking his own wrist to get free. Then the two of them went nose-to-nose, screaming obscenities, their bodies arching in.
    Clearly, they’d had practice at this.
    Trez looked around. There was no one in the parking lot, and nobody walking by on the sidewalk, but he didn’t need a domestic dispute rolling out in the back of his club. Inevitably, someone would see it and do a 911—or worse, that hundred-pound chippie was going to push her big, dumb boyfriend just one inch too far, and get good and trampled.
    If he only had a bucket of water or, like, a garden hose to get them to disengage.
    “Listen, you guys need to take this—”
    “I love you!” the woman said, turning on Trez and grabbing the front of her bustier. “Don’t you get it? I love you!”
    Given the sheen of sweat on her skin—in spite of the fact that it was thirty degrees—it was pretty clear she was on something. Coke or meth, if he had to guess. X was generally not associated with this kind of aggression.
    Great. Another bene.
    Trez shook his head. “Baby girl, you don’t know me.”
    “I do!”
    “No, you don’t—”
    “Don’t you fucking talk to her!”
    The guy went for Trez, but the female got in the way, putting herself in front of a speeding train.
    Fuck, now it was time to get involved: No violence against women around him.
Ever
—even if it was collateral.
    Trez moved so fast, it was close to turning back time. He shifted his “protector” out of the line of fire, and threw out a shot that caught the charging animal right in the jaw.
    Made little or no impression. Like hitting a cow with a wad of paper.
    Trez got a fist in the eye, a light show exploding in half of his vision, but it was a lucky hit more than anything coordinated. His payback, however, was all that and so much more: with quick coordination, he unleashed knuckles in rapid succesion, working that gut, turning the guy’s cirrhotic liver into a living, breathing punching bag—until the BF was doubled over, and listing heavily to port.
    Trez finished things off by kicking that moaning deadweight onto the ground.
    Whereupon he outted his gun and shoved the muzzle right in tight to the guy’s carotid.
    “You have one shot at walking away from this,” Trez said calmly. “And here’s how it’s going to go. You’re going to get up and you’re not going to look at her or talk to her. You’re going to go out around to the front of the club and get the fuck into a cab and go the fuck home.”
    Unlike Trez, the man didn’t have a well-developed and maintained cardio system—he was breathing like a freight train. And yet, given the way his bloodshot, watery eyes were staring upward in alarm, he’d managed to focus in spite of the hypoxia, and had gotten the goddamn message.
    “If you aggress on her in any way, if she’s got so much as a split end thanks to you, if any of her property is compromised by anyone?” Trez leaned in close. “I’m going to come at you from behind. You won’t know I’m there, and you won’t live through what I’m going to do to you. I
promise
you this.”
    Yup, Shadows had special ways of disposing of their enemies, andthough he preferred low-fat meat like chicken or fish, he was willing to make exceptions.
    The thing was, in both his personal and his professional lives, he’d seen how domestic violence escalated. In a lot of cases, something big had to intervene in order to break the cycle—and what do you know? He fit that bill.
    “Nod if you understand the terms.” When the nod came, he jabbed the weapon even harder into that fleshy neck. “Now look into my eyes and know I speak the truth.”
    As Trez stared down, he inserted a thought directly into that cerebral cortex, implanting it as surely as if it were a microchip he’d installed in and among the curling lobes. Its trigger would be any kind of bright idea about the woman; its effect would be the absolute conviction that the man’s own death would be inevitable and quick if he followed through.
    Best kind of cognitive behavioral therapy there was.
    One hundred percent success rate.
    Trez jumped off and gave the fatty a chance to be a good little boy. And yup, the SOB dragged himself off the pavement, and then shook like a dog with his legs planted far apart and his loose shirt flapping around.
    When he left, it was with a limp.
    And that was when the sniffling registered.
    Trez turned around. The woman was shivering in the cold, her look-at-me