Page 35 of Savage Saint (Empire of Secrets #2)

KASIA

T he sound of slicing flesh cuts through my memory. Sharp. Precise. Final. Even as I wake, I can feel the weight of the knife in my small hand, the initial resistance of skin before the blade sinks deeper.

I bolt upright, sweat sticking to my forehead, my hair plastered to my neck. The sheets tangle around my legs like restraints. I kick them off and concentrate on my breathing. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Just like he taught me.

The memory lingers, refusing to be pushed away.

I was twelve. The training room was cold.

It was always cold. Grey concrete walls, grey floor, grey ceiling.

The huge wolf head graffitied in black on one of the walls.

No windows. Just harsh fluorescent lighting that left no shadows to hide in.

There was a steel table in the centre with a body strapped to it.

Not a practice dummy. Not a mannequin. A real person.

"Today, you become what you were born to be," Jerzy said, his Polish accent thick with pride as he handed me the knife. "A weapon."

I didn't hesitate. That's what makes me sick now. I didn't question. I didn't cry. I simply stepped forward, found the exact spot between the fourth and fifth ribs, and pushed the blade in at a forty-five-degree angle. Direct to the heart. Clean. Efficient. No wasted movement.

The man on the table hardly made a sound. Just a soft exhale as his life slipped away.

"Wspaniale." Magnificent . Jerzy said, squeezing my shoulder. His highest form of praise.

I bask in the dim morning light filtering through Angelo's bedroom window now, trying to ground myself in the present. The memory feels both distant and immediate, like it happened to someone else but also like I'm still that twelve-year-old girl with blood on her hands.

No child should know thirty ways to end a life with their bare hands. No child should know how to make death look like heart failure or an accident. No child should know how to cause maximum pain without leaving marks.

But I did.

I do.

The knowledge sits inside me like a stone, heavy and cold. I can't scrub it away any more than I can scrub away the brand on my hip. They're both part of me now.

I slip out of bed, careful not to make noise. Angelo isn't here, he must have left already.

I pause at the top of the stairs, hearing his low, rough voice drifting up from below. He's on the phone, his words clipped and tense.

"Another one? Where?"

I creep down a few steps, just enough to hear clearly without being seen. This isn't eavesdropping, it's intelligence gathering. A distinction Jerzy drilled into me.

"It's the sixth this week, Dante. These bastards are getting bolder."

There's a pause while Dante speaks on the other end. I strain to hear, but can only make out Angelo's side of the conversation.

"All of them branded? Shit." His voice drops lower, rougher. "We need to hit back harder. They're laughing at us."

Another pause.

"We need someone on the inside to talk, but no one wants to touch this with a ten-foot pole. They're all terrified of Nicolosi."

I suck in a breath at the mention of Nicolosi's name. My fingers dig into the bannister.

"The girls won't say anything. The ones still alive are too scared. And without information—"

I hear him pacing now, his footsteps heavy against the hardwood. Five steps one way, turn, five steps back.

"Fine. I'll be there in a couple of hours."

The call ends with a sharp beep. I wait a moment before descending the rest of the stairs, making it look like I've just woken up. Angelo stands in the kitchen, his bare back to me, knuckles white as he grips the counter. The muscles in his shoulder ripple with tension.

"More girls are dead," I say. Not a question.

He turns sharply, eyes narrowing. "How long were you listening?"

I don't bother denying it. "Long enough."

"It's not your concern." His jaw is tight, the muscles there jumping with tension.

"They're branded, like me. It is my concern."

Angelo runs a hand through his hair. "Those girls... they're not like you."

"No," I agree quietly. "They weren't trained to be weapons."

A look passes over his face, something between surprise and understanding. He doesn't argue the point. He knows what I am now. What I've always been. We both have come to the same realisation.

"I can help." The words come out before I've fully formed the thought, but as soon as they're in the air, I know they're true. "I'm not just another traumatised girl. I'm not just a victim. I can get inside. I can get them to talk to me."

"No." His response is immediate, firm. "Absolutely not."

"I'm not asking for permission."

"You'd be walking into a trap."

"I'd be walking in with eyes wide open," I counter. "Which is more than those girls had. Nico has been looking for me anyway, I'll just turn up. Tell him I escaped."

He steps closer, towering over me, using his size to intimidate. But I don't back down. Can't back down. "You don't understand what these men do to women."

"I understand better than most." My voice doesn't waver.

"It's suicide."

"It's purpose," I whisper. "For the first time in my life, I could use what he made me for something good. Don't you see?" I was built for this.

Angelo's gaze locks with mine, searching. For what, I'm not sure. Fear? Doubt? Weakness? He won't find any. Not about this.

"You want revenge," he says finally.

"Don't you?"

His silence is answer enough.

"Let me help," I say again. "You need someone on the inside. Someone who can handle herself. Someone who can get close and not break." I take a deep breath. "That's me."

Angelo steps back, studying me. I can almost see the calculations happening behind his eyes, weighing risks against rewards, measuring my capabilities against the dangers.

"This isn't a game, Kasia."

"Has anything in my life ever been a game?" I ask quietly.

Those words hang between us, heavy with the weight of all he now knows about me. All he suspects. All the years of training, of being shaped into something lethal and unfeeling.

Angelo's face transforms before my eyes. The man who moments ago was calculating possibilities vanishes, replaced by something darker, more primal. His jaw tightens, the scar on his knuckle goes white as he clenches his fist.

"Absolutely fucking not."

The words crash between us like thunder. Three simple words that leave no room for argument, no space for compromise. But I've never been good at backing down.

"You need someone on the inside," I say, keeping my voice steady. "I'm offering to be that person."

"You think I'm going to feed you to the wolves?" His voice drops to a deadly whisper. "To Nico? To whomever is after you? Have you lost your goddamn mind?"

I step closer, refusing to be intimidated. "I'm not asking for permission."

"Well, I'm not giving it." His control is slipping. I can see it in the way his eyes flash, and in the rigid set of his shoulders. "This isn't a negotiation, Kasia."

"You're right. It's not." I match his tone, cold for cold. "Because I'm not your prisoner, and I'm not your property."

He moves so fast I barely see it, his hand slamming against the wall beside my head. I don't flinch. Don't blink. Don't give an inch.

"You have no idea what these men do," he growls, close enough now that I can feel his breath on my face.

"I have every idea." My voice doesn't waver. "I was brought up by one just like them," I confess.

Something flickers in his eyes, a recognition, perhaps, that I'm not just some broken girl he needs to protect. I press my advantage.

"Let me prove it."

"Prove what? That you can get yourself killed?" He pushes off the wall, creating distance between us.

"That I can handle myself." I follow him, refusing to let him retreat. "Three of your best men. I can take three of your best men at the same time."

A harsh laugh escapes him. "This isn't a fucking game, Kasia."

"No, it's not. It's life and death. My life. My choice."

He shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair. "I know you can fight, but this is different. It's not a controlled environment. These men… they'll hurt you in ways that can't be fixed."

"And you think I haven't been hurt before?" The question hangs between us.

"Not like this." His voice drops. "Not by them."

For a moment, I'm ready to fire back, to push and prod until he breaks. And then something shifts in my mind. A door unlocking, a memory flooding in.

I'm ten years old, standing in Jerzy's office. His desk is massive, dark wood polished to a shine. I'm small for my age, my strawberry blond hair tied back in a tight ponytail.

"Prosz?, tato." Please, Father . "Let me help. Let me do this job."

He doesn't look up from his papers. "You're not ready."

"I am!" My voice comes out too high, too eager. "I've been practising. I'm better with the knife now. I won't mess up again."

Still, he doesn't look at me. "When you're ready, I'll know."

"But how will you know if you don't let me try?"

Finally, he meets my eyes. His are cold, assessing. "When you stop begging, you'll be ready. A weapon doesn't beg to be used, Kasia. It waits."

The shame burns through me, hot and bitter. The desperation to please him, to make him proud. The nights spent practising with knives, with garrotes, with my bare hands. Anything to prove myself worthy of his attention.

And for what? To become the very thing I'm running from now?

I blink, and Angelo's face comes back into focus. He's watching me, the anger in his expression now mixed with concern.

"You went somewhere else," he says quietly.

I nod, not trusting my voice.

"Where?"

"My father's office," I whisper. "I used to beg him to let me do jobs for him. To prove myself."

Understanding crosses his face. "And now you want to do the same for me?"

"No." The word comes out stronger than I expected.

"For me. I need to do something. Something good with what I am.

With what he made me." I take a deep breath.

"I need to take this poison inside me and use it to help those girls.

Otherwise, what's the point of any of it? What's the point of surviving?"

The shame of my past floods through me, not just the killing, but the wanting. The desperate need to please a man who saw me only as a tool. But now I have a chance to choose. To use the same skills for something that matters.

"I need this," I say quietly. "I need to know that all of it, everything I went through, everything I did, wasn't for nothing."

Angelo steps forward, his eyes no longer the hard, calculating gaze of a killer but something softer, something I've only glimpsed in unguarded moments. His hand comes up to my throat, not with menace or threat, but with a gentle pressure that grounds me in the present.

"I wouldn't survive losing you," he says, his voice barely a whisper.

We stand suspended between breaths, his lips so close to mine I can feel the warmth of his words against my skin. The world narrows to just him, his hand on my throat, his eyes boring into mine, the slight tremble I feel in his fingers that betrays everything his words cannot.

I swallow hard against his palm, feeling the steady pressure and the way my pulse races beneath his touch.

It should scare me, having someone's hand at my throat.

It should trigger every defence mechanism I've ever built.

But it doesn't. Instead, it feels like an anchor, keeping me from drifting away into the storm of my own making.

"I'm not weak. You said so yourself," I remind him, refusing to back down even as my body yearns to lean into his touch.

His grip tightens slightly, not enough to restrict my breathing but enough to make me focus entirely on him, on this moment.

"No, Butterfly. You're not weak." His voice is rough with emotion, like gravel wrapped in velvet. "You're precious."

The word crashes through me like a bullet, shattering something deep inside. Precious? Me?

I've been many things in my life: a weapon forged in pain and discipline, a soldier following orders without question, a tool to be used and discarded. But precious? Never that.

Yet as the word hangs between us, it triggers something, a fragment of memory so brief I almost miss it. A woman's voice, warm and lilting with a Polish accent far softer than Jerzy's harsh tones. My precious girl . Her face is blurry, but her arms are around me, safe and warm.

And beside her, not Jerzy, but a man who resembles him—same jawline, similar build, but with kinder eyes. He's looking down at me with something I've never seen in Jerzy's gaze: pride without cruelty, love without condition.

The memory slips away as quickly as it came, leaving me gasping against Angelo's hand, my eyes wide with shock. Who were they? And if Jerzy isn't the man in my memory, then who is he to me?