“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Makayla says as we step into her stepfather’s building.

I stop, pulling her to the side of the busy lobby and meet her eyes. It has been two days since the premiere party and the cops haven’t been able to find anything concrete on Hubert. It’s already looking like he’s going to avoid jail time, and there’s no fucking way I’m letting that happen. I just have to make sure Makayla’s on board. He’s still her stepfather, so I need to be careful how I handle this.

“He was going to sacrifice your life for money, Kay,” I say as carefully as I can.

She forces a quick smile. “Yeah. No, I know. He deserves it.” She’s trying too hard to sound casual. Something’s wrong.

I frown at her. Whether she likes it or not, I’m not letting this bastard get away with what he did. I hate to admit it, but it’s just not happening. Still, it would be easier if she’s on my side with this. “He’s a danger to you. I can’t let him continue to be--”

“It’s just,” says Makayla, eyes distant. “I want to be the one to bring him down.”

Her words take a second to process. “You… what?” I ask.

“I actually cared about him. He made me feel like a total idiot,” she says, a sudden rush of anger entering her voice. “He lied to me and made a fool out of me. I want to get him back.”

I grin. Damn. She has no idea how much this fiery temper of hers is turning me on. I’m half-hard just from watching her intensity. “Hell yes,” I say.

She smiles a little guiltily. “I sound a little crazy, don’t I?”

“Not in the slightest. Do you have a plan?”

She nods, licking her lips in a ridiculously sexy way. “I think I do.”

“Good.”

“Hey,” she says slowly. “Are the police going to come after you for shooting your gun at the banquet? There must have been cameras or something, right?”

“There were four cameras in the lobby and a few scattered throughout employee areas. None in the alley. I have a license to carry and I also have connections that run pretty deep with the local police. A few guys I knew from the SEALs have worked their way up the food chain. It gives me a little freedom.”

“Freedom to hurt people?” asks Makayla.

“To protect them. We should get going before someone realizes we’re here and gives him a heads up.”

“Let’s go then,” she says.

We take the elevator to the top floor and blow past the secretary who calls for us to stop. We barge into Hubert’s office and find him standing beside his desk, face red as he yells into the phone.

“Find it then. I don’t care how you do it. Just make it happen.” He looks up at us and slams the phone down face etched with surprise. It lasts only a second before the anger returns. He snaps his fingers towards his bodyguards and then toward us.

The bodyguards are the same two clowns I dispatched a few weeks back when he tried to set a tail on Makayla. I realize now he wasn’t happy about me protecting her because he planned to have his own guys do the job to make setting her death up as easy as he could. Fucker.

The bigger of the two reaches me first and reaches for my shoulder. I catch his wrist, turning it until I hear a snap. I uppercut the bottom of his elbow and break his arm, too. He falls backward, gasping in pain and clutching his elbow. The other one reaches for a gun, but I pin his arm to his side and connect three quick jabs with his face. His eyes glaze after the third punch so I let his arm go and send him spinning to the ground with a cross hook to his jaw that leaves my hand throbbing.

“Go ahead, Kayla,” I say with a smirk.

She raises her eyebrows and then rounds on Hubert, all the amusement draining from her face in an instant. “You tried to have me killed.”

“I had no other choice, honey,” he says, stepping toward her with a simpering look of apology on his face, like he didn’t just try to have bodyguards kill us.

“Don’t even fucking dare call me that,” snaps Makayla.

At the same time, I step between him and her, putting up my hand in warning. “Keep your distance,” I growl.

Fear enters his eyes for the first time since we entered his office. He looks to his downed bodyguards and then back to me. “What do you want? Money? I don’t have any to give you.”

“I want you to get what you deserve,” says Makayla. “I think prison would be good.”

“I can’t go to prison,” he says, smiling nervously. “Besides. There’s no evidence against me. And don’t think you’re going to get me to make some admission of guilt out loud. I’ve seen the fucking movies. You’re probably recording this.” He looks toward me, eyes a little crazed. “I’m innocent. I had no part in any of this.”

“I trusted you,” says Makayla, the hurt in her voice tearing at my chest. I want to break this fucker on her behalf, but I know it’s important to her that she takes care of it herself.

Hubert spreads his palms. “You still can trust me, honey.”

I see it coming before Hubert does. Makayla steps forward, getting just close enough to slap the shit out of him. The sound is like a thunderclap in the office. His head jerks to the side like she just punched him and his small, meaty hand slowly rises to his already reddening cheek.

“You fucking--” he starts.

I feel his fleshy cheek against my fist before I realize I’ve punched him. “Oh shit,” I say. Hubert is squirming on the ground, clutching his face with both hands. “Sorry, Kay.”

She ignores me, standing over him. “Here’s how this is going to work,” she says, surprising me with the authority in her voice. “You’re going to turn yourself in by tomorrow morning, or we’re going to turn over the evidence we have to the police and watch you get dragged kicking and screaming to prison.”

His voice is a little slurred from his already swelling jaw. “You have no evidence,” he says.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” adds Makayla. “If, for some reason, you’re dumb enough to try to have me hurt again, Jesse knows where you sleep, and he has been begging me to let him kill you since he met you.”

Hubert’s face pales a little. “You’re full of shit,” he says.

“That’s up to you to decide. Maybe you’ll have a chance to avoid a life sentence if you come clean. You sure as hell won’t if we turn over what we have though.”

With that, Makayla turns and delicately steps over an unconscious bodyguard and signals for me to follow. I wait until she’s around the corner and kneel to punch Hubert one more time in the face just for posterity’s sake.

Makayla is standing just outside with a strange look on her face. She puffs out a long breath of air and looks to me nervously. “How was that?”

I laugh. “My favorite was the part about how I’d kill him.”

She blushes a little. “Was that too much?”

We start walking toward the elevator. “Not at all. Did I say I wanted to kill him, or did you just read my mind?”

She smirks.

“You don’t really have any evidence against him, do you?”

“No,” she says a little dejectedly. “But maybe if I testified against him the police could get warrants to search his records and things. There could be something there.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” I say. “Or I could give them Liam’s phone. I took his car when I escaped and there was enough evidence in there to send Hubert to prison for a long time.”

We ride the elevator in silence for a few moments before she speaks again. “It still doesn’t feel over.”

I put my arm around her shoulders and pull her to me, hugging her to my chest. “It will be soon. Nothing else is going to happen to you. I’m going to make sure of it.”