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Not moving fast.

Not grabbing a criminal by the shirt and sliding him up the wall and ripping out his intestines. There were tidier ways. He was a trained sniper, so a simple bullet to the forehead would do the job.

Far less enjoyable, however.

The reality was, they couldn’t just go around killing humans. Frankly, the speed with which they bred meant another one would just step in and take over.

And they did.

It appeared crime families were an accepted dark side of humanity.

If it wasn’t them, then something else would take its place, Ari once told him when he was having a hard time after a job.

“Simple history, Logan. Just look back a few hundred years. Once upon a time there were outlaws, then train robbers, now mafia. A very simplified summary, but you get my drift,” Ari had said.

He was right.

Now the world was dealing with terrorists along with the less influential crime families.

Less influential, as long as they stopped this mega-mafia strategy. Because if they didn’t, and somehow the serum was mass produced and released along with an announcement about their race, then it would cause absolute mayhem.

As the leader, Logan believed taking down Nikolay would be like cutting the head off the snake.

Finding him was the problem.

“Warriors. Quiet,” Craig called out.

Huge muscular bodies, clad in black, shuffled into a spot and went quiet, focusing on the directions they were about to be given.

All eager to get the members of the royal family back.

“The king has asked me to step into Brayden’s shoes as captain.” Ari shared, his hands resting on his hips. “Until he returns.”

Logan had no doubt that Craig would have stepped up to do the job should Ari have not been here. But he was, so the king’s decision made sense, given it was a role he’d done for hundreds of years when the two princes were young. Well before Vincent had become king.

Logan had been a young vampire when Vincent had finally been crowned upon the death of his father. He’d gone to work for Ari at The Institute not knowing he was a Moretti and a member of the royal family.

Technically, he wasn’t.

The bloodline of all the vampires on the planet— all ten million of them—came from Ari’s twin brother, King Gio.

Fucking confusing.

But essentially Gio had mated and had children. Ari hadn’t. He figured.

How else would it work?

The mystery of the origin of their race was unknown.

Still, to vampires around the world, Ari was a Moretti and a member of the royal family but took no royal title. Nor did his mate, Sage.

But the king trusted him to place him in Brayden’s shoes, and there was no time for family drama. They needed to get Brayden and the princesses back home safely.

“The Russians have Willow and Isabella,” Craig growled. “Brayden, as any mated male in this room would understand, has gone after her.”

Heads nodded and a few let out a few fuck yeahs.

“But it was fucking stupid of him.” Craig lifted his hand in protest when a few voices began to disagree. “Yeah, yeah, I know he could destroy them in seconds, but remember, they have that fucking serum. We live in a different world now and the rules have changed.”