Page 36 of One Savage Union (Crimson Bonds #1)
ROCCO
T he G-Wagon screeches to a halt in front of Matteo Ricci’s Manhattan fortress, and I’m out before the engine finishes dying.
We had eyes and ears inside through a small, remote drone that Enzo managed together. The last thing I heard before we arrived was that cartel bastard calling my world a whore.
He’s dying first.
There are guards at Matteo’s door. We expected that, and immediately, gunfire erupts like thunder around me.
The sharp, acrid scent of cordite and copper blood slams into my senses—metallic, thick, and familiar as breath. I inhale it like oxygen, like war. I push forward with a fury I don’t bother to contain.
Behind me, my army of one hundred fans is out, a black wave of death cresting against the manicured estate. Each man bears the Roman crest across his chest. Each man was forged by loyalty, hardened by loss, and baptized by the promise I made when they touched my ring.
They came for blood.
I came for her.
This isn’t a rescue.
It’s an eradication.
I lead the charge, eyes cold, heart burning. We breach the doors, and hell follows us in.
By the time I enter behind my men, the auction room is chaos incarnate—gilded chandeliers swinging wildly, smoke curling in tendrils across the velvet-draped ceiling, men screaming over the cacophony of bullets and death. Ricci’s men, the cartel muscle—they’re caught off guard. They die screaming.
A body charges me from the side. I barely glance before my knife finds his throat—a geyser of blood arcs through the air. I step over the twitching corpse like it’s nothing because it is.
None of them matter.
Only one face lives in my mind. Only one heartbeat calls to me through this madness.
Lucia.
I scan the chaos—firing, killing, moving—and then I see her.
On stage.
Spotlighted. Bound.
A gold bikini clings to her like sin. Her ankles are shackled. Her wrists were bruised. There’s a collar around her neck like she’s some fucking possession.
A guttural snarl tears from my chest.
She looks like a fucking offering.
Like prey.
Like bait for the highest bidder.
A man dares to place his hand on her thigh as she trembles.
Not my wife.
I raise my Glock and shoot him between the eyes. His blood paints the curtain behind her. Her scream chokes off, her eyes flaring wide—and they find me.
I guess he had to die first.
Even in the chaos. Even in the blood.
Lucia sees me.
Her breath stutters. Her lips part.
She sees what I’ve become for her.
What I’ve done.
What I will still do.
Every part of me is soaked in vengeance. Every heartbeat drums her name. My hands, my soul, my sins—they belong to her.
I motion sharply, and Mario breaks from my side.
“Get her,” I bark. “Now. Kill anyone who looks at her wrong.”
He nods, already moving, slicing his way through bodies like a blade through butter.
I head left, toward the cartel VIPs still seated, surrounded by my soldiers. Each one has a knife to his throat, a gun to his temple. They think we’ll negotiate.
They think wrong.
And then I see him—the bastard who spat her name with filth on his tongue. The cartel leader has too much money and not enough fear. The man who called my wife a whore.
He’s grinning. Grinning.
I cross the space in three strides, knock aside the soldier holding him, and drag the fucker to his knees by the back of his neck.
“No one calls her that,” I growl.
He tries to speak. I don’t let him.
I draw my machete from its sheath at my back and, in one smooth swing, take his head clean off.
Blood spurts high, a crimson fountain soaking the floor and the silk drapes.
Gasps ripple through the survivors.
No one speaks. No one moves.
Only Lucia. Her breath hitches. Her eyes—glassy, stunned, full of horror and relief and love—watch as I stand over the corpse of the man who defiled her with his words.
I’ve only just begun.