Page 33 of Savage Saint (Empire of Secrets #2)

ANGELO

I stand at the living room window, staring out at the angry ocean waves crashing against the cliffs below.

The glass walls of the house offer a panoramic view of nature's fury tonight.

The wild forest, the stormy sea, and in the distance, the faint glow of Blackwood's lights flickering like dying stars.

The device sits heavy in my palm, its red light no longer blinking. I turn it over and over, my thumb running across the wolf symbol engraved on its surface. The same symbol that made Kasia's blood run cold.

Her face when she saw it… That wasn't just fear. That was terror in its purest form. Raw. Instinctive. The kind that's burned into your nervous system by past trauma.

The kind I know too fucking well.

She's finally sleeping upstairs after hours of nightmares and cold sweats. I'd stayed with her until her breathing evened out, my hand on her back, feeling each inhale and exhale like it was keeping me alive too.

I grab my phone from the coffee table and scroll to a familiar name. Three rings later, a distracted voice filters through the speaker.

"What's up? I'm about to drop a drone on a meth lab in Hayward."

I exhale sharply through my nose. "Tell me you're talking about gaming."

"Mostly." Arrow pauses. A distant explosion echoes through the speaker. "So. What's shaking in Santoroland?"

"Need info on a symbol. A wolf." I pause, letting the weight of the request sink in. "Connected to the name 'Jerzy', maybe 'Little Wolf.' Could be something like that in Polish."

The line goes quiet. So quiet, I check to make sure the call hasn't dropped.

"Give me a sec," Arrow finally says, their voice uncharacteristically serious.

I hear the rapid clicking of fingers against a keyboard, punctuated by short, frustrated huffs. Whatever Arrow's looking for, it's not coming up easily. That's unusual. And concerning.

I move away from the window, unable to stay still. The house feels too big tonight, too empty except for the sleeping woman upstairs, who's somehow become my responsibility.

No. Not responsibility.

She's become something I can't name yet. Something I'm not ready to name.

"I'll call you back," Arrow says abruptly, and the line goes dead before I can respond.

I toss my phone onto the couch and run a hand over my face. The wait is going to fuck with my head. I need to keep busy to keep my thoughts from spiralling into dark places I can't afford to visit right now.

I move to my desk in the corner of the living room and wake up my laptop. The security system activates with a few quick keystrokes, and I pull up the feed from my bedroom. Where Kasia sleeps.

Watching her feels invasive, but necessary. I need to know she's safe. I need to see her breathing.

She's tangled in my sheets, her strawberry blonde hair splayed across my pillow. Even through the grainy feed, I can see she's restless. She mumbles something I can't make out, her head turning sharply to the side. A nightmare. Another one.

"Nie," she whimpers. No . Her accent thicker in sleep. "Prosz?..."

I quickly open a browser tab, typing the unfamiliar word into the search bar. Polish to English translation. Prosz?. Please . The simple word carries a weight that settles in my chest like a stone. Not just a plea. A desperate one.

My fingers grip the edge of the desk until my knuckles turn white, the old scar tissue stretching painfully across them.

Every instinct screams at me to go upstairs, to wake her from whatever hell she's revisiting in the darkness of her mind.

The urge to protect her is almost overwhelming, a visceral pull that threatens to override my better judgment.

But I force myself to stay put, rooted to the spot.

Waking her might make it worse, might drag her deeper into the nightmare rather than freeing her from it.

I've seen that happen too many times with soldiers fresh from combat zones, their eyes wild and unseeing, their bodies reacting to threats only they could perceive.

Besides, what the fuck would I even say to her? I'm not built for comfort. Never have been.

The small device sits on my desk, mocking me with its silence. I pick it up, turning it over in my palm, searching for any detail I might have missed. Nothing but the wolf symbol and a serial number so faded and scratched it's illegible.

I drop it back on the desk with a soft thud and move to the bar cart. The crystal decanter catches the dim light as I pour two fingers of whiskey into a glass. No ice. I don't need any dilution tonight.

The rim of the glass touches my lips just as my phone buzzes on the coffee table. I'm across the room in three strides, abandoning the untouched drink.

Arrow.

I swipe to answer. "Tell me."

"Check the encrypted drive," Arrow says without preamble, their voice tight. "The one I gave you for emergencies. Password is RED75WolfRising24. Red in all caps, no spaces."

I pull out the small titanium box from the floor safe beneath my desk, thumbing open the biometric lock and extracting Arrow's emergency hard drive.

When it connects to my laptop, a single folder appears on the screen. It's labelled simply: "Kowalczyk." The password takes me a minute to enter correctly, my fingers feeling strangely numb.

The first document that loads hits me like a bullet to the chest:

"Katarzyna 'Kasia' Kowalczyk, age: 23, daughter of Jerzy Kowalczyk, head of the Kowalczyk crime family in Chicago known as Wilki or Chicago Wolves ."

A second note follows immediately, stark black letters against white:

"Dangerous. Gun for hire, killed several high-profile targets across the world. Code name: UNKNOWN."

I click through to the attached images, my mouth going dry.

The first photo shows a young Kasia, can't be more than sixteen, handling a sniper rifle with practiced ease.

What strikes me isn't her youth but her expression.

There isn't one. Her eyes are dead, her face a blank mask as she adjusts the scope with slender fingers.

The second image loads. A man with steel-grey eyes and a smile that doesn't reach them. Jerzy Kowalczyk. Even through a photograph, the cruelty radiates off him.

The third photo makes me pause. Kasia, at around eighteen, dressed in black tactical gear, fresh blood splattered across her face.

She stands over a body, partly visible in the frame.

Her expression is still empty, but there's something in her eyes now, a hollow exhaustion that's painfully familiar.

None of this matches the woman sleeping in my bed. The woman who flinched when I moved too quickly. Who curls into herself during nightmares. Who watches exits and keeps her back to walls.

Or maybe it matches perfectly.

At the bottom of the folder sits a video file. I hesitate before clicking it, some instinct warning me I won't like what I'm about to see.

The footage is grainy security camera material. Kasia moves through a dimly lit corridor, her movements fluid and precise. She can't be more than fourteen or fifteen. Two guards appear. Two guards die. Fast, efficient, merciless.

A third guard rounds the corner. Huge guy, built like a tank. They engage. Kasia fights dirty, biting, clawing, going for his eyes and throat. But the guard gets the upper hand, knocks her down hard.

Then something happens. Something that makes my stomach roll.

She stops fighting.

It's not a tactical choice. It's not playing possum. Something in her just... shuts off. The guard hits her, and she doesn't defend herself. Another blow. Another. She curls into a fetal position, taking the punishment without resistance.

A red dot appears on the guard's forehead. Then a spray of blood as he drops.

From behind the fallen guard, an older man steps into frame. Jerzy. He says something to Kasia, his face twisted with disgust. She's bleeding from her nose, her lip, but she struggles to her feet.

He hits her across the face, a casual backhand that snaps her head to the side.

She takes it. Like she's used to it. Like it's just another fucking Monday at the office.

Jerzy hands her a gun, gestures off-camera toward something we can't see. Despite her injuries, despite the blood dripping down her chin, she straightens her spine and limps forward, raising the weapon.

The feed cuts out.

"Fuck."

"Did you watch the video?" Arrow's voice sounds grim.

"Fucking bastard." My knuckles turn white as I grip the edge of my desk.

Red-hot rage burns through my veins, not directed at the woman sleeping in my bed, but at the monster who calls himself her father. The man who turned his own daughter into a weapon, who beat her when she couldn't fight anymore, who—

I slam my laptop shut, unable to watch another second. My breath comes in short, harsh pants as I struggle to contain the fury threatening to tear me apart from the inside.

I know what I just watched. I recognise it with bone-deep familiarity. The blank stare, the automatic responses, the way she just... Stopped. Took the punishment like it was expected. Like it was deserved.

Trauma response. Conditioning. The systematic breaking and rebuilding of a human being into something useful.

I reopen the laptop, forcing myself to look through more files.

Each photo feels like another knife twisting in my gut.

Kasia at different ages, always with weapons, always with that empty look.

One image makes me physically ill. Kasia, couldn't be more than seven or eight, fighting a grown man in some kind of ring. Blood on her face. A crowd watching.

My stomach heaves. Even I wasn't put through that kind of hell that young.

"Fuck," I mutter, running a hand through my hair.

I know exactly what her father was trying to create. A perfect weapon. A soldier who follows orders without question. A killer who doesn't flinch.

Just like me.