Free Lover Enshrined by J. R. Ward Page B

and he could have been a contralto. “I didn’t do noth—”
    Rehv cut the denial off. “Chrissy showed up with a busted lip and black-and-blues. Again.”
    “You think I did that? Come on, the girl whores out for you. It could have been any—”
    Trez raised an objection to the testimony, cranking the man’s hand into a ball and squeezing the forced fist like an orange.
    As the defendant’s bark of pain trailed off to a whimper, Rehv idly picked up a sterling-silver envelope opener. The thing was shaped like a sword, and he tested the point with his forefinger, quickly licking off the dot of blood it left behind.
    “When you applied for work here,” he said, “you gave an address of Thirteen-eleven Twenty-third Street. Which is Chrissy’s addy, too. You arrive and leave at the end of the night together.” As the guy popped open his piehole, Rehv held his hand up. “Yes, I’m aware that’s not dispositive. But you see that ring on your hand— Wait, why are you trying to put your arm behind your back? Trez, you mind helping him plant that palm of his on my real estate over here?”
    As Rehv tapped the tip of the opener on his desk, Trez muscled the beefy human over like the guy weighed nothing more than a laundry bag. With absolutely no effort at all, he flattened the bastard’s hand out in front of Rehv and held it in place.
    Rehv leaned forward and traced a Caldwell High School class ring with the opener. “Yeah, see, she’s got a funny mark on her cheek. When I first saw it, I wondered what it was. It’s this ring, isn’t it? You backhanded her, didn’t you. Caught her in her face with this.”
    As the guy sputtered like a bass boat, Rehv ran another little circle around the blue stone of the ring, then took the razor-sharp point and stroked the man’s fingers one by one, from the bony knuckles on the hand to the flat nail beds at the ends.
    The two biggest knuckles were bruised, the pale skin purple and swollen.
    “Looks like you didn’t just backhand her,” Rehv murmured, still petting the man’s fingers with the opener.
    “She asked for—”
    Rehv’s fist pounded into his desk so hard, his multiline office phone did a jump and scramble, the receiver bouncing free of the cradle.
    “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.” Rehv fought not to bare his fangs as they punched out into his mouth. “Or so help me God I will feed you your own balls right now.”
    The ass-wipe went inanimate as a subtle beep-beep-beep replaced the phone’s dial tone. iAm, cool as always, calmly reached forward and replaced the receiver.
    As a bead of sweat dripped off the human’s nose and landed on the back of his hand, Rehv smoothed out his anger.
    “Right. Where were we before you almost got yourself castrated? Oh, yeah. Hands . . . we were talking about hands. Funny, I don’t know what we would do without two. I mean, you couldn’t drive a stick-shift car, for example. And you have a stick, don’t you? Yeah, I’ve seen that tripped-out Acura you tool around in. Nice car.”
    Rehv laid his own hand down on the glossy wood, right next to the guy’s, and as he made comparisons, he pointed to the salient distinctions with the envelope opener.
    “My hand’s bigger than yours in length . . . and width. Fingers are longer. My veins stand out more. You have a tattoo of . . . what is that at the base of your thumb? Some kind of . . . ah, the Chinese symbol for strength. Yeah, my tats are elsewhere. What else, now . . . your skin’s lighter. Damn, you white boys really need to think about tanning. You look like death without some UVs.”
    As Rehv glanced up, he thought of the past, of his mother and her collections of bruises. It had taken him far, far too long to do right by her.
    “You know the biggest diff between you and me?” he said. “See . . . my knuckles aren’t bruised from beating a woman.”
    In a quick move, he drew the envelope opener up and slashed it down so hard the tip didn’t just go