4

I hadn’t expected this beautiful man at the bar to have so much depth, to be more than a pretty face with a stiff drink in his hand.

“He tells you there was no one else, but because his word is invalid, you don’t know if you can believe him. A man should treat a woman with the same respect he treats his boys. If anything, she should be his number one guy.”

“You make it sound like you’ve been in a relationship before.”

“No.” His hand rested on the top of his glass. “And that’s why I haven’t been in one. I know what it takes—and I haven’t found a woman worth the effort. Probably never will. Not that I’m looking anyway.” He stared at me as he took a drink from his glass. “So what are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure if I have much of a choice.” Adrien would never stop, constantly blocking any motion to legally separate, showing up at my work and my apartment, as if I would find his persistence charming when fidelity was far more romantic.

“You always have a choice.”

“You don’t know my husband.”

“But I know men.” He gave me a hard stare. “And I know how to get rid of yours.”

“How?”

He shifted his position on the stool, his shirt gripping his muscles with the movement, cords visible up his neck despite the ink that covered his skin. He had a skull right at the center of his throat, a dagger up the right side of his neck, the edge of the blade right at his jawline. “Fuck someone.”

Heat from a roaring fire burst inside me, picturing him as the one doing all the fucking. Buck naked and deep inside me, his fat dick making me come with minimal effort. I knew he had a big dick because of the big dick energy he’d brought into the bar when he’d first walked in.

“No man can see past his ego, and he seems no different to me.”

“What about you? Do you have a big ego?”

He smirked. “I wouldn’t be a man if I didn’t.” He took another drink, making the glass empty with the exception of the ice cubes that hadn’t melted yet. “I’ll take the tab, sweetheart.”

It was the time for him to make his move, but I suspected the offer would never come. He was the magnet that drew everyone in. He didn’t need to chase anyone. Just sit there and wait for all the pretty girls to come to him.

I moved down the bar to the computer and generated his tab, putting in all the drinks that would have put a normal man flat on the floor. But before I could print the tab, I glanced to the other side of the room and instinctively knew something wasn’t right.

Three men entered the bar, moving far too fast if all they wanted was a drink. And they had handkerchiefs tied over the bottom half of their faces to hide their identities from the cameras in all the corners.

Frozen to the spot, all I could do was stand there and watch one of them come at me—with a fucking machete.

He held up the machete at eye level. “Cash in the bag.” He tossed a burlap sack on the counter. The other two men also had their machetes out, watching everyone else in the bar to make sure no one came to my rescue.

I stilled on the spot, struggling to breathe through the sheer panic.

“Bitch, fill the bag.”

I didn’t gasp or scream, but I was frozen to the spot in sheer terror.

“You picked the wrong bar, man.”

My eyes glanced at Bastien, who remained on the stool. Everyone else at the bar had scurried to the wall. The other people in the seating area had tried to crawl under their tables or put their shaking arms in the air. Bastien was the only one who regarded the situation with an insane level of calm.

The man turned his attention to Bastien, taking the heat and the knife off me. “What’d you say, asshole?”

“I’m not the one threatening a girl with a knife, asshole.” He left the stool and stood upright, and he seemed to grow several inches taller from when he had walked inside. He brandished no weapon other than his words, but he was still armed to the teeth with invisible power. “Homines ex codice.”

My eyes flicked back and forth between them, having no idea what was transpiring.

The words were in Latin, but the meaning was unclear. I couldn’t tell if my assailant understood what that meant or if he was just as bewildered as I was.

There was a silent standoff between them, a tension that rose like flames from a newly lit bonfire. The bar was normally loud and boisterous with chatter and laughter, but now it’d gone deadly quiet—like a graveyard.

The asshole with the machete moved, slashing his weapon down like he would hack Bastien to pieces.

I screamed in terror and moved for one of the empty bottles behind the counter.

It happened so fast that I wasn’t sure exactly what transpired, but Bastien made the other man’s face bloody and wrested the machete free. He slammed the guy’s face down on the counter, not once but twice—and broke his nose. He pinned his head to the top of the counter and looked at me. “Your turn, sweetheart.”

I slammed the bottle down on his head, and it shattered into pieces.

“Nice swing.” Bastien let go, and the man dropped to the floor in a pile of broken glass and blood.

The other two rushed to the door to split when shit got real, but Bastien got there first and punched one so hard in the face he slammed into the wall and collapsed on the floor. He made a series of moves on the other guy, blocking the arm holding the machete before slamming his elbow straight into his head and knocking him out cold.

When he was done, a strained silence enveloped the bar, everyone still too afraid to move or speak.

Bastien walked across the hardwood floor and the broken glass, back to the counter where I stood. He pulled out his wallet and rifled through the euros that were stuffed into it, and as if nothing serious had just happened, he asked, “What do I owe you?”