Page 126 of Brutal Crown

I grab one of his legs and pull. I see the barrel of a gun pointed at me a little bit too late. A groan slips past my lips as I feel a bullet graze my shoulder.

My blood roars as I climb over his back and tackle him to the ground. His gun skids across the ground.

We roll, fists swinging. He lands a punch to my jaw. I grunt, tasting copper. I slam my elbow into his ribs, grab a fistful of his hair, and smash his face into the curb. Once.

I resist the urge to do it again.

I need one man alive to answer my questions.

“Who sent you?” I growl, pulling his head back by his hair.

“Please,” he rasps, “please, I was just… just following orders, man. I was j-just driving.”

I drag his body up and slam him against the fence.

“Give me a name, and who knows?” I tip my head to the side. “I might leave you with your limbs still attached to your body.”

He pants, eyes wild. “It-it was them.”

My blood runs cold. The Elders. Of course, they never hesitate to send their petty thieves anonymously when they don’t want to get their hands dirty.

“They knew something was going on,” he stammers. “You and the girl, they have been watching the both of you. They had eyes in the house, always watching you. After the trial… after she walked… it was confirmed that she was compromised.”

Why should she be compromised if she?—

What did she do?

I slam his head against the fence again. “Where is she? What did they do?”

His voice drops into something quieter. Meaner. Almost smug.

“She’s gone.”

I slide my hand around his neck, and a dark, twisted smile spreads across his face.

“It doesn’t matter what you do to me now. You were too busy sulking and licking your wounds to notice. They took her immediately after the rite was completed. From the Romanohouse, where they sent her to wait for their verdict. From under your nose. She’s probably dead by now.”

My vision goes red.

My hand tightens around his neck, and slowly, his smug smile transforms into a grimace. His eyes pop open, his face turns blue as I clench my fingers around his neck, cutting off his air supply. His eyes dart back and forth uncontrollably as his hands come up to claw above my hands on his neck. But it’s useless.

I watch the life disappear from his wide-open eyes before his body slumps.

Then I stagger back. Hands shaking. Chest heaving.

Standing in the middle of a graveyard I just made with my own hands, blood on my face, pain buzzing like static in every limb, and her name beating in my skull like a heartbeat.

Lia.

They took her.

A scream tears out of my throat, raw and animal, my rage exploding from a place so deep I didn’t know it existed. I grab the nearest steel crate and hurl it at the fence, causing the impact to shudder through the yard.

I fall to my knees, fists pressed to the cold ground, my eyes burning and lungs heaving.

She can’t be gone. She’s not gone.

I swear to every god this cursed Society pretends to worship?—