I let myself linger over their handiwork a while longer before setting out to do my own.

Coming to the side of his bed, I covered my hand over his mouth and nose, not in an attempt to kill him, but to wake him. Lack of oxygen has a way of jerking the body awake.

Jerk awake he did. His Frankensteined face grimaced with the sharp movement, but then he noticed who was hovering above him and his eyes couldn’t have opened wider.

He tried to make a noise, but my hand caught his throat, trapping it and his airways between my thumb and index finger.

“Listen to me, you sick f’er, and listen to me good,” I growled, wanting to hit him so badly now that he was right in front of me. I wanted to hit him for hitting Emma. I knew it was twisted, I knew it didn’t seem right in the don’t repay evil with evil world we were raised in, but what society failed to calculate in forming this saying was that the evil doers didn’t stop spreading evil unless the good guys took a stand and stopped them however they had to.

Ty’s eyes were more swollen shut than Emma’s, but he was looking at me, he was paying attention. Holding a man’s windpipe at your mercy has a way of commanding attention.

“I’m not who you think I am,” I began, wishing I had the time to tell him everything about who I was, what I was, so he’d piss himself to sleep every night forward. “I’m not a twenty-year-old, impressionable, idealistic, jerk off boy. I’m the guy who holds slime like you accountable. I’m the guy who tells low lives like you there are ways you can treat a woman and ways you cannot. I’m the guy who takes monsters like you out of the equation if they don’t listen.” I was shaking from the anger boiling to the surface and from holding myself back from finishing him. “So tell me, Ty, are you really listening?” I pinched his windpipe tighter, feeling the pulse dim, his face rainbow through the right shades of colors, knowing my two fingers held him less than a minute away from death.

His head moved once. I took that as a yes.

“You feel that?” I asked, another pinch tighter. “That’s me holding you a toe away from death. That’s me holding your worthless life in my hands. Would you like to continue living your life? Or would you prefer if I just put you out of your misery now?”

Another next to imperceptible bob of the head.

I didn’t let go that moment, nor did I the next, but waited for the involuntary gasping to commence. I didn’t want him to doubt my sincerity in making death threats.

Releasing his throat, I pulled my hand back and wiped it clean.

“I just gave you a gift. Your life, which was mine, back. But now you owe me,” I said, arching a brow. “I don’t give gifts to filth like you without attaching expectations to them. So you’re going to have to earn that gift. You’ll be paying for it until the day you die—whether that’s sooner rather than later makes no difference to me. In fact, it would probably be a relief to know one of the boogeyman of this world was down for the count. Makes my job a helluva lot easier.” This was true on several levels: my job as a Guardian, my job as a boyfriend, and my job as a man who believed it was his job to protect women from the bad eggs of my gender.

Ty’s eyes never left mine as he coughed and gasped his way to filling his lungs back up. I’d never seen fear in his eyes until now. I wanted to take a picture so I could show Emma what a quivering, helpless, scared little boy he’d been reduced to. But again, pictures, no matter how well you hid them or erased them, had a way of always ending up on the table of the lawyer on the other side.

“First part of your payment plan is not mentioning the name Scarlett when you talk to the police. You are not to mention seeing them tonight, talking to them tonight, or the little fact that they f’ed you up. When they ask who did this to you,”—I leaned over him, making sure he knew this was one of the important things of all the important things I was “reviewing” with him—“you tell them I did this. I was alone, I was pissed, and paid you back for beating up my girlfriend by letting you feel the fat end of my bat. You will tell them what you did to Emma. You will tell them how long you did this to her.” The red was falling like a curtain over my eyes. “You will have them document every damn date, time, and detail of the abuse. You are not going to get the victim card when you get your jollies by creating them, you got me?”

I didn’t wait for a response. If he didn’t tell them the truth, I’d come to him in the middle of the night and snap his neck. But I’d wake him first so he knew what was coming.

“The second part of the life repayment plan is you are never—NEVER!”—I slapped him across his bandaged face to drill it home—“to come anywhere near Emma again. If I so much as hear of you walking in the same direction she is, I’m taking that gift I just gave you back,” I growled, lowering my face until my nose was a hair from his. “Capiche, mother-f’er?”

Standing tall, I sensed something as familiar as it was relieving.

“Emma’s brothers will be watching her, and if by some unlikely, statistical impossibility you get out of jail before I do, I’ve got brothers too.”

The door clicked open then, on cue, and two forms ghosted into the room, stacking themselves behind me. And then a third.

William nodded his head in acknowledgement as he took his place beside Joseph and Nathanial behind me.

“And they’ll be watching you,” I continued, turning my attention back on Ty, fighting through the emotion lumping in my throat. “And by the way, I’m the merciful one in the family,” I said, tilting my head behind me to fill in the blanks.

Angling myself their way, I winked at them. They stayed in character, looking like they broke men’s bones by day and hunted demons by night.

God I loved my brothers. They’d taken the intimidation thing seriously. Varying shades of black clung to them, their jaws clenched rabid tight, and their eyes flashed with the deaths they’d had hands in. Nathanial was the most terrifying of course, that was his natural inclination, but William was a close second, and every-day’s-a-great-one Joseph was a distant third. But I had to award him some serious props. It was the longest I’d seen his mouth curled downwards—ever.

Flicking the big toe of Ty’s splinted leg, I headed for the door. “Enjoy your pureed pop-tarts, sucker.”

Three sets of steps fell into formation behind me, saying nothing else, which jacked the room with another hit of intimidation before we left.

Down the hall, the elevator, and past the front desk, we didn’t exchange a single word. Silence was an easy conversation to have with my brothers. We said the most intimate things in silence and you never doubted the others were listening when you said something that needed saying.

Only when we were sliding into the Mustang did Joseph pipe up; he always was the first one. If it wasn’t me. Silence didn’t suit Joseph and me like it did William and Nathanial.

“So we made it,” he said, pushing on my shoulder as he slid into the seat behind me. “Mind telling me what we’re doing here?”

I turned the key over in the ignition, screeching out of the parking lot. “You know how you like hearing every nitty gritty detail in an explanation?” I asked, busting into second gear.

“Yee-ahh?” Joseph answered.

“You’re not going to get it. Sorry, no time and not enough energy for it right now,” I said, to which I received two sighs, one heavy and one short, and a soft chuckle from the dark-haired older brother riding bitch next to me.

I slid William a grin. “Let’s just say, like with most my stories, this is a long one, and you’re just going to have to make peace with the condensed version.”

“Hey, cranky-pants,” Joseph said, sounding as irritated as the class sweetheart, “don’t mind us, we’re just the three brothers who left what we were doing in the middle of the night to get our butts to a critical care unit in California. No questions asked, no thanks even required.”

“Your point?” I asked, looking at him in the rear view.

“Don’t you have something to say?” he asked. “Something along the lines of appreciation?”

“I thought you just said no thanks even required,” I snapped half-heartedly.

“I wasn’t serious.”

“Thank you,” I said like a smart-ass, attacking the asphalt leading up the on ramp. Something softened in me as the miles per hour ticked higher. Speed was my ultimate calming salve.

“No, really. All jokes, wisecracks, and sarcasm aside, thank you,” I said, glancing at each of them. “I needed you here tonight. Thanks for showing up.”

“We’ll always show up,” William said, clapping a hand over my shoulder.

“I didn’t expect you’d be here,” I said. “I thought you’d be swatting away cat-sized mosquitoes in the middle of some jungle god forgot about, immunizing orphans or something.”

“I was,” he answered. “We just got back earlier today. So your timing was impeccable for making a Hayward 911 call.”

“And do I want to know how the three of you got here so fast?” I didn’t care, but I guessed it was a good story.

I heard the grin in William’s voice. “You know that private jet you suspected I had?”

“That you never actually confirmed.” I slugged his arm—he’d been holding out on me.

“Yeah, well, let’s just say she’s fast and her pilot has this need for speed gene that runs in the family.”

“You bad-ass you,” I said, splitting through traffic like the man with a mission I was. I knew I had limited time with Emma, hours limited, and as much as I loved my brothers, I’d spent two centuries with them. I wanted to spend my last few hours with the girl I loved in my arms.

“How lovely for you two to be having a bonding moment up there,” Joseph said, hating nothing more than being left out, as his face popped in the space between William and me. “But I want to know who the banged up dude we were just playing The Punisher for is.”

“You’re a persistent little guy, you know that?” I said, pushing his face back. “I’m going to say this once and quickly. You can get the rest of the details out of the other parties involved if you’re so moved,” I began, swinging into the right hand lane as my exit seemed to pop out of nowhere. That had a tendency of happening when you were cruising at a hundred and twenty with three brothers that had a way of distracting you from your best intentions.

“The Frankenmummy used to be my girlfriend’s boyfriend.” I smiled at William from the side at the word girlfriend, wagging my brows. It was the first time I’d used the word in the possessive form. “He beat her for five years before almost killing her tonight when she broke up with him. Emma—that’s my girl’s name,” I explained proudly, “has three brothers, and they were the ones that created the masterpiece you had the privilege of viewing tonight. For reasons that are extensive and rather inconsequential, I’m going to be taking the heat for the manslaughter miss. Ty’s on board, Emma’s brothers are, and I’m assuming, based on the fact I’ll kick all your asses if you’re not, all of you are on board.” I pointed at each of them with my eyes. “I just have one woman to convince.”