His Virgin Stripper

21- The Beautiful Illusion

Marcello

I looked down at my side, my vision narrowing as the cold air of the reception office rushed into the tear in my clothes.

For a single fraction of a second, the sensation of a deep abdominal puncture had threatened to lock my lungs. But as the layout of the strike registered in my mind, the truth became clear.

The blade hadn't sunk into my gut. My split-second torso twist had altered the trajectory of his thrust. Instead of piercing my flesh, the heavy hunting knife had sliced cleanly and deeply across the palm of my left hand, which I had thrown up as a desperate shield to catch the weapon before it could reach my center.

A small, ragged breath of relief left my lips, the tension draining out of my shoulders in a quiet hiss.

It was just a flesh wound on my palm. I could handle a sliced hand; I had fought through far worse with bone exposed to the air.

As I stared at the dark blood beginning to well up in the creases of my skin, a strange, uncharacteristic thought flashed through my mind, centering around Sienna.

I couldn't imagine trying to nurse a major, debilitating abdominal wound right now—not after everything that had just happened in that bedroom.

Not after I had finally grown to tolerate someone to the point of actually pinning her against the wall and kissing her. And wanting to do much more.

Navigating the brutal politics of a multi-generational mafia rivalry was exhausting enough on a good day, but doing it while bleeding out from a punctured stomach would have made it impossible to keep her safe.

And right now, keeping her intact was the only thing that mattered to me.

The fake clerk, however, didn't realize he had missed his primary mark. He was still pressing his weight forward over the wooden counter, a triumphant, sickening smile stretching across his face.

He truly believed he had struck his target, thinking the resistance he felt was his blade buried deep within my vital organs. He was gloating in his mind, already celebrating the kill of a mafia don.

I didn't give him the chance to correct his mistake. Using his brief, arrogant distraction as leverage, I tightened my unharmed right hand into a solid, fist.

Before he could register that I wasn't dropping to my knees in agony, I drove my right knuckles straight into the guy's left eye with everything I had.

The impact was loud and clean—the brutal, hollow crack of bone meeting force. The momentum of the punch shattered the delicate structure around his socket, temporarily blinding him in a flash of white-hot agony.

The triumphant smile vanished from his face instantly, replaced by a sharp gasp of shock as his head snapped backward from the concussive force of the blow.

He staggered, his balance fracturing as he tried to blink through the sudden rush of blood and darkness obscuring his vision.

But I wasn't done with him. My left hand was still wrapped tightly around the sharp side of the hunting knife, the cold steel biting deeper into my bleeding palm as he instinctively tried to yank the weapon back.

Ignoring the slicing pain in my own skin, I anchored his arm in place. I raised my right fist again, raining a series of heavy, systematic punches down onto the back of the hand the clerk still had wrapped around the knife's handle.

I hit him repeatedly, targeting the fragile network of joints and small bones in his wrist and knuckles.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

I didn't stop until I felt the structural integrity of his wrist completely give way beneath my knuckles. The joints shifted unnaturally, the bones dislocating completely under the relentless pressure of my fists.

The sudden, agonizing deformity made it impossible for his fingers to hold their grip, forcing him to leave the knife behind as a blood-curdling scream tore from his throat. The sound echoed off the cheap walls of the front office, a raw, high-pitched wail of pure, unadulterated torment.

He stumbled backward against the filing cabinets, clutching his ruined, dangling wrist against his chest.

I stood calmly on the opposite side of the counter, the room completely silent save for his frantic, ragged breathing. I slowly opened my left palm, uncurling my bloodied fingers from around the blade.

With a steady, unhurried motion, I grabbed the hilt of the hunting knife and removed it from my hand, pulling the metal away from the fresh laceration.

As the blade slid free, it gave me a sharp, familiar sting—a burning sensation that traveled up my arm. I didn't flinch. In fact, I found a strange, grounding comfort in that pain.

It was a familiar sting I had known since childhood, a reminder that I was still alive, breathing, and still in control of the room. It cleared the remaining fog from my brain, leaving me perfectly sharp.

The fake clerk, desperate and hyperventilating, realized he was completely outmatched in a standard fistfight.

Watching me handle the blade, a wild look entered his eye. Driven by survival instinct, he lunged across the counter to attack me once again.

This time around, he didn't try to reclaim his knife. His gaze dropped to my waist, his good hand reaching down, trying to take the heavy black gun hung loosely in the leather holster around my waist.

I noticed his trajectory long before his trembling fingers even cleared the counter. I could have stepped back; I could have broken his remaining arm before he even touched the leather.

But I didn't. Instead, I stood perfectly still, letting his hand close around the grip of my firearm. I refused to move a muscle, just so I could watch the brilliant look of hope explode in his expression. He thought he had flipped the script.

I let him enjoy that beautiful, fragile illusion for a single heartbeat.

Then, before he could pull the weapon from the leather, I slammed my right hand down over his wrist, locking his arm against my hip with an unbreakable, iron grip.

The hope in his eye instantly shattered into terror as he realized the gun wasn't moving an inch.

Holding the clerk's trapped hand firmly against the counter, I brought the hunting knife up in my left hand. I tilted the blade, angling the sharp edge against the exposed skin of his forearm.

With a tiny, dark tilt to my lips, I pressed down. I was thoroughly enjoying the shift in dynamics, the quiet thrill of total dominance filling my chest as I watched him squirm.

I administered a very precise, shallow cut directly into one of his major arteries. I didn't slice deep enough to sever it completely; I knew exactly how much pressure to apply to ensure the wound would behave exactly how I wanted it to.

It was a calculated strike that would make him bleed just enough to rapidly weaken his muscles from blood loss, but not enough to actually kill him before I got the information I needed.

"You will tell me who gave you our coordinates," I murmured, the dark tilt of my lips widening into a cold smile as his blood began to pump rhythmically over the wood, his strength visibly draining by the second.

"And you will do it very quickly.”