No bodyguards standing in front of him.
No way for him to slip away unharmed.
He was terrified, and I fed off it, raising my chin proudly as I stared back at him.
“You’re all going to die for this,” Walsh whispered, more to himself than anyone around him. “And if you don’t die, you’ll rot in prison for the rest of your lives.”
Travis stood, too, and with a sigh of impatience, he pushed Walsh in the back, sending him stumbling forward and into the makeshift ring.
Walsh took one last look around, sensing his fate, and then he leaped forward, his footing off as he lunged the knife right at me like a damn musketeer. Hopping to the left, I dodged his feeble attempt and reacted quickly, my fist landing on the edge of his jaw, sending his head back and his teeth practically rattling in his mouth.
He groaned and found his feet, shaking off the punch and blinking wildly to try and refocus on me. He moved again, this time aiming for the other side where I couldn’t see so well. The tip of the knife grazed across my left bicep, right at the same time as I landed another uppercut under his chin, sending him crashing back until he was sprawled out on the concrete.
I straddled his chest, reached over for the knife in his hand and spun it around in mine, wiping at my face with my forearm to clear more blood away. It was trickling down faster now, spots of red landing on the mayor beneath me, making me dizzy.
Walsh’s eyes were wide. But the mayor was a coward, and cowards were only able to win a fight when someone else was doing the dirty work for them. Now he had to use his own fists, the fear of what would happen if he did had taken over, and every ounce of arrogance Mayor Walsh had ever owned was officially as dead as he was about to be.
Leaning forward, I gripped his throat tight in my hand, and I held the knife horizontal above my fingers, pressing the edge of the blade against his throat as I looked down at him.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” I whispered.
“Drew, I beg of you.” His panic sent a shiver of icy coolness up my spine. I’d seen many a man cower before me this way, and I’d never felt the way I felt holding Walsh’s life in myhands, knowing I could be the one to make him take his last breath.
“Would you have mercy if this fight had gone the other way?”
“Kill him… Drew,” my father croaked, his cough rough and dirty, making me glance his way. The relief I felt from hearing those three words had my hand loosening around Walsh’s throat. I was too lost in the visual in front of me. Eric and Ayda, both of them alive.
Walsh buckled under me, bringing my attention back to him. I pinned him back in place, lifting him and smacking his head down onto the hard concrete beneath us with a sharp crack. His body sagged, and he released a groan.
“Don’t,” he cried weakly. “Don’t kill me. T-think of Rubin. Think of him. Think of how he’ll hate you. I’m his father, Drew. I’m his dad. His only dad. You end my life, and he’ll never forgive you. Rubin deserves so much mor—”
“Fuckyou,” Eric spat, venom tainting his every word.
“Drew,” Walsh croaked up at me, his eyes getting wider. I could feel the panic in the pulse around his neck, and I watched as the veins in his head became more prominent, and his skin turned a deeper shade of red. “If you care for Rubin at all, you won’t kill me. You won’t kill his father.”
“You’renot his fucking father!” Eric roared, his raspy voice, painful and distressed. When I glanced back at him, he was on all fours, coughing up more blood, staring up at Walsh and me through narrowed, desperate, pleading eyes. “You’re not Rubin’s father and you know it. We both know it,” he breathed.
I frowned hard, staring at Eric. When he looked up at me, I saw a million apologies and a single request staring back at me.
“What?” I frowned, my whisper strangled.
Eric sucked in a breath, and on his exhale, my whole world shifted. “I’m Rubin’s father, Drew. He’smyson—the reason I had to leave Babylon. The Navs, Walsh… they forced me out. Walsh didn’t want me around Rubin. I had to get away from him and Walsh’s wife, Carolyn. I had to do it to save you. If I didn’t, they were going to kill you and every Hound we knew.” Eric coughed again, his body swaying into Ayda who was wide-eyed and trying to hold him up. Blood fell from Eric’s mouth and he fell, but his pleading eyes never strayed from mine. “Do what I should have done ten years ago. End that son of a bitch. End Walsh. Do it for me. Do it for you. Do it forRubin.”