Page 31 of Possessive

"That was fucking hot," Gianni said softly.

I grunted my agreement. I was aware that Mina had some steel in her, but I hadn't expected her to use it to kill a woman. When she insisted Damon and I back off, I thought she was going to threaten her.

I should have known better. At the end of the day, she was a DiMarco. She was as much a part of this life as I was. And she was fucking angry at what they did to her.

Right now though, she looked small, her expression blank. She still had blood on her hand and up her arm. After killing the woman, she'd staggered back, the knife falling from her fingers. Her face was white, like she might faint. Instead, she sat in a chair and barely moved since.

I took the washcloth Parker handed me and crouched down in front of Mina to wipe away the blood from her fingers.

"I should have realised there was a chance someone like that might be here."

"I'm glad she was," Mina whispered. "She let me live down there for years, and didn't raise a finger. She probably didn't even think about me and what he was doing to me."

A frown crossed her brow. "Or maybe she did, and she didn't speak out because he might have put her down there instead. She'd rather let someone else suffer through that than go through it herself."

"She could have told me and no one would have gone through it." I turned her hand to wipe her palm clean. "She chose not to do that."

Mina looked down at me. "I had my doubts at first. That it was her. It could have been someone else's voice."

"Until she confirmed that she knew what happened to you," I said.

Mina nodded. "Until then. Before that, I wanted to kill her for working with him. I would have let one of you shoot her."

"And we would have," I said. "I would have ordered one of them to put a bullet in her brain."

"What if I was wrong?" Mina asked. "What if it wasn't her upstairs? You could have had an innocent woman killed."

I wiped Mina's wrist. "There are many adjectives for a woman like her. Innocent isn't amongst them. Whether or not she knew about you, she was still working with him. Any chance of her walking out of here alive were slim. Less than slim. I always intended to make an example out of the people here. I won't tolerate people working for Kurt or anyone like him. I won't tolerate rival operations, especially ones as big as his."

"Right," she whispered. "But what if you planned to let them walk away and I asked you to kill her, and then I was wrong?"

"Why are you asking this?" I asked. "If you asked me to kill her, you would have had good reason to do it." And if she didn't, I didn't give a shit. If she wanted someone dead, they were dead. Innocent or not.

"I just…" She glanced down at the floor. "I don't want to make a mistake." She looked like she was going to say 'again,' but didn't.

"What they did to you wasn't your fault," I stated. "It was your father's fault. Him and Kurt. And hers." I didn't so much as jerk my head towards the woman's corpse. She didn't deserve that much attention or recognition.

"And others. You mentioned several people carried you down there. Would you recognise any of them?"

She breathed in slowly through her nose and blew out through pursed lips. "I don't know. Maybe."

I finished wiping away the blood and tossed the washcloth aside. "How are you feeling?"

"About killing someone?" she asked. "If I'm supposed to say I regret it, I can't. I…" In a whisper she said, "I enjoyed it. They say violence isn't the answer, but…"

"Sometimes it's the only answer," I said. I noticed the way her eyes got darker when she talked about what she did. She more than enjoyed killing, she got off on it. She wasn't the first person to feel that way. Or the last.

I looked back over my shoulder. "Kill the rest of them," I said calmly. Even if they weren't working for Kurt, they saw Mina and Hunter kill. I wasn't leaving any witnesses behind.

I turned back to her, ignoring the pleas for me to change my mind. They were cut off by three gunshots. Quickly and efficiently, my people did as they were asked, before dragging the bodies out into the back of the building to be disposed of.

We'd done this so many times before, everyone knew their role and carried it out without hesitation.

"All of this death shouldn't be, I don't know…" Mina frowned.

"Loud?" I suggested. I was as uncomfortable with the sound of gunshots as I was with screaming. Not because I cared about the implications; because of the noise.

"I was going to say exciting," she said tentatively. "We got to decide who lived and died here today. We did that."