Page 181 of Savage Empire

Nico growls. “You need better intel.”

“Not all of us are born with hacker twins,” Abramo snarks. “I take it by the sound of the engine, you’re already on your way?”

“A minute out.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

The call drops and I hit the steering wheel, fucking pissed at everything that’s just been said. How could she fall for this?

She lied to me again, only this time, she put her life in danger in the process. She put our baby’s life in danger, too.

I want to feel relieved that she’s safe, and I am, but I’m so fucking mad that I can’t focus on anything else.

“Breathe, Apollo,” Nico says, almost softly. Softer than he’s ever spoken to me directly. “You’ll give yourself an aneurysm.”

“I’m so fucking mad, it could kill me, Nico.”

“I know.” He nods slowly, and I catch it in the corner of my eye. “But she’s safe, and we’re going to get her home. Just focus on that until it’s over.”

I exhale long and slow, and then I see it. An abandoned building and cars, the one my wife took from the garage flashing from my headlights hitting it.

Abramo is smoking a cigarette, standing over six dead bodies when I finally pull in and get out of the SUV. Six of his own men, still bleeding even as their hearts have ceased beating. And just a few feet to the side of him, my wife sits atop his car’s hood, wrapped in a small blanket.

She looks tiny, smaller than she’s ever looked, as she caves in on herself, shoulders hunched and head hung low. I can’t digest the hit of empathy at her appearance, there’s too much anger still. Too much fucking rage at the scene surrounding us.

Too much fury for Rayna’s careless action. Driving off into the middle of the night, alerting no one to her whereabouts. Stupid, unreasonably stupid actions taken by an utterly unstupid woman.

How could she be so thoughtless? So blinded by such an obvious plot to endanger her life. To endanger the life of our child she carries?

My stomach burns with acid and emotion, so much so that I feel like I could be sick.

“Get in the car,” I say, barely concealing my bubbling temper.

I want to yell. I want to snap at her so fucking badly. And if she wasn’t my wife, if I couldn’t see the rain falling from the sky mixing with already shed tears on her face, I doubt I could control myself.

Without saying another word, I watch from the corner of my vision as Rayna obeys. She keeps her head down, shuffling to the passenger side door where Nico once occupied.

“Are there more?” I ask, approaching Abramo with a clipped tone and stiff shoulders.

“Not currently,” he reports shortly. “Could have been worse,wouldhave been worse if I wasn’t watching these fuckers.” He nudges the nearest dead body with his boot, sneering down at it. “You got a bullet in your car’s windshield, but that’s as close as they got to her.”

The glass breaking that I heard over the phone, no doubt.

I want to be mad at him for being here where I couldn’t or for alerting me too slowly. But I can’t. He called me as soon as he realized what his traitorous soldiers were plotting. And if he had found out twenty minutes sooner, Rayna would have never left the house. She would have never had the chance to.

“I owe you a debt.”

“You do,” he agrees. He’s too smart to be polite and deny it. This wasn’t a simple favor between friends. This was the kind of action that can only be repaid in an equally significant action.

“Or we could just kill you and pin it on the dead ones,” Nico drawls, approaching me from the back. He and Abramo share a lethal glare.

“Nico,” I warn. “Keep out of it.”

Abramo lets a cruel smirk paint his lips, staring down my brother. “Yeah, pretty boy, listen to your Capo.”

“Call me that again,” Nico dares, voice smooth with threat. He doesn’t correct the title Abramo assigns me, and neither do I. Right now, I may as well be the Capo. I’m fucking acting like it.

“Touched a nerve, have I?”