Page 55 of Savage Saint (Empire of Secrets #2)

ANGELO

I race through empty corridors, heart pounding in my ears like fucking war drums. The scream—Kasia's scream—still reverberates through my skull, raw and terrified in a way I've never heard from her before.

My boots splash through pools of blood, the metallic stench filling my nostrils as I follow the trail of bodies she's left behind.

My Butterfly has been busy.

Pride mingles with fear as I count the corpses.

Seven so far, each one a masterpiece of efficient violence.

Clean kills, professional work, she's slipped back into the Red Widow like putting on an old coat.

A guard slumped against the wall, throat opened in a precise slash.

Another tucked into an alcove, single bullet hole between his eyes.

Each body positioned to avoid immediate detection, buying her time to reach her target.

My girl is thorough. Always has been.

The motherfucker better not have touched her. My grip tightens on my Beretta as I round another corner, nearly tripping over body number eight, a massive bastard who probably thought his size made him invincible. The angle of his broken neck tells a different story. Kasia's handiwork, no doubt.

Another corridor, another corpse. This one's still warm, blood pooling beneath him in an expanding crimson mirror. Can't be more than five minutes dead. I'm close.

That scream plays on repeat in my head, driving me faster. Through all the nightmares and panic attacks, I've never heard her sound like that. Pure, primal terror. The kind that comes from facing your worst nightmare in the flesh.

My footsteps echo off the marble floors as I approach Jerzy's study. The massive oak door is ajar, a sliver of light cutting through the darkness. I can hear voices inside. His cultured Polish accent, dripping with condescension.

I slip inside, gun raised, ready to paint the walls with his brains.

The scene that greets me stops me cold.

Kasia stands frozen in place, her eyes squeezed shut, face contorted in anticipation of agony.

Every muscle in her body is tensed, braced for pain that should be tearing through her nervous system.

Jerzy stands behind his mahogany desk like a king holding court, finger pressed on a small device with a wolf symbol etched into its surface.

The overhead light catches on the metal, making it gleam like a promise of torment.

He looks up at my entrance, surprise flickering across his features before morphing into a cold smile that makes my trigger finger itch. "Ah, good. You're here too."

Fucking bastard. Acting like he's been expecting me, like this was all part of some grand plan. I aim my gun at his head, the red dot of my laser sight painting a target between his eyes. One squeeze and his brains would decorate that expensive wallpaper behind him.

But something stops me.

Kasia's eyes snap open. Her gaze finds mine across the room, her eyes are soft, and her mouth twitches with a barely there smile.

Yes, Butterfly. We got it. You're free.

"Kill him," Jerzy commands, gesturing toward me with the device like he's conducting a fucking orchestra. "Now, Kasia." His voice carries absolute certainty, the voice of a man who's never been disobeyed, never been denied, never had his power questioned.

The arrogant bastard doesn't even realise his toy is broken.

I hold my breath, muscles coiled tight as a spring. We removed the chip, I know we did. I can still feel the weight of it in my palm, slick with her blood. But what if we missed something? What if there's another failsafe buried deeper, some secondary system we didn't detect? What if—

Kasia moves slowly, deliberately, her hand reaching behind her back. For a moment—one horrible, suspended moment—even I wonder if some programming remains, some deep conditioning carved into her psyche that no surgery could remove.

She pulls out her gun in one smooth motion, the movement so fluid it's like watching water flow. Raises it with the steady hands of someone who's done this a thousand times before.

And aims directly at Jerzy.

"No," she says, her voice steady as steel despite the slight tremor in her hand, not from fear, I realise, but from barely contained rage.

Jerzy's eyes widen, genuine shock replacing his smug confidence. It's beautiful, watching his control shatter like glass. For the first time in probably decades, someone has told him no and meant it.

The sight of his arrogance crumbling makes my fingers itch to pull the trigger, to end him right here, to splatter his brains across his pristine office.

But this isn't my kill. It's hers. Has to be hers.

This bastard stole her childhood, her innocence, her agency.

She deserves to take it back with interest.

"I remember everything," Kasia continues, taking a step closer to me.

Her free hand finds mine, and I squeeze gently, grounding her, letting her know I'm here.

Her skin is cold, clammy with fear-sweat, but her grip is strong.

"How you killed my father, your own brother.

How you murdered my mother while I watched.

Made me watch." Her voice cracks slightly, twenty years of suppressed grief bleeding through.

"Your own niece. Your brother's daughter. How could you?"

Jerzy's face contorts with rage, the mask of civility finally slipping completely.

"Your mother was a whore, and your father, my weak, pathetic brother," he spits the words like venom, "was an idiot who couldn't see the bigger picture.

" His hand moves back to the device, pressing the button repeatedly now, desperation making his movements jerky.

Click-click-click-click. "Work, damn you! "

The pathetic display almost makes me laugh. He's lost control of his favourite puppet, and he can't fucking handle it. This is what power looks like when it crumbles. Desperate, ugly, small.

"You can press that button all you want," Kasia says, and there's a hint of dark satisfaction in her voice that sends heat through my veins. "It won't work. Not anymore."

She glances at me, and I'm thrown back to yesterday afternoon.

The memory hits with crystal clarity. Her lying on Dante's dining table, the dark wood stained with disinfectant.

Arrow's medical team standing by with equipment that looked more suited to a hospital than a dining room.

My hands, steady despite the years since medical school, making the first incision. ..

"You sure about this?" Lucas's voice crackles through the speaker phone. "It's been years since you've done any surgery, Angelo. And the C1-C2 junction..."

"I know." My scalpel parts the skin at the base of her neck with surgical precision. "I'm not letting anyone else touch her."

"Romantic and stupid," my old college roommate, turned brain surgeon, mutters, but continues guiding me. "Remember—the chip is embedded at the atlantoaxial joint, where the skull meets the spine. One wrong move and she's dead. The brainstem is millimetres away."

I've been preparing for this for hours, studying the scans, but knowing doesn't make it easier.

The C1-C2 junction is where the spinal cord is most vulnerable, where all the signals from brain to body pass through.

The slightest tremor, the tiniest slip, and I could sever her brainstem connection.

Instant death. Or worse, locked-in syndrome, aware but unable to move or speak.

"Still want to do this?" Lucas asks, reading my silence.

"Yes." I force my hand steady, fighting the tremor that wants to creep in. "Just... keep talking me through it."

"The device will be nestled against the odontoid process. You'll need to navigate around the vertebral arteries—nick one of those and she'll stroke out on the table. And watch for the spinal accessory nerves."

Sweat drips down my forehead as I work, each movement precise and terrifying. Kasia's unconscious form is so still, so vulnerable. Alessa holds her hand while Dante and Luca pace the room like caged tigers. They don't understand how close to death she is with every second that passes.

"I see it," I breathe, catching sight of something foreign amongst the delicate anatomy.

Black polymer, no bigger than a pill, with hair-thin wires spreading into her nervous system like a malignant spider web.

It's wedged right against the atlas vertebra, the filaments disappearing into the spinal cord itself.

"Careful," Lucas warns. "Those filaments are integrated with her neural pathways. They're designed to interface with the ascending and descending tracts. You need to—"

"I know what I need to do." But knowing and doing are different things when you're millimetres from killing the woman you love.

My hands remember the training, the years of precision work before I traded healing for killing.

Carefully, so fucking carefully, I trace each wire, cutting the connections one by one.

The moment we extract it—bloody but intact—Kasia's body shudders on the table. Her vitals spike wildly. For a terrifying second, I think I've severed something critical.

"Breathe," Lucas commands. "Check her reflexes."

I do. They're intact. She's alive. The monster's leash is cut.

"It's done," I say, holding the device up to the light. Such a small thing to have caused so much suffering, positioned in the deadliest possible place. "She's free."

I look at the neat row of stitches on her neck now, partially hidden under the flesh-coloured dressing I'd applied with shaking hands.

Twelve hours of surgery, of careful work, of praying to a God I don't believe in, that I wouldn't fuck this up.

The flesh is still pink around the edges, healing but tender, a physical reminder of her liberation.

"Impossibile," Jerzy mutters, still clicking the useless device. "The signal is perfect. The battery is charged. You couldn't have—" Understanding dawns on his face like a horrible sunrise. "You removed it."

"Every last piece," I confirm, allowing myself a savage grin. "Cut it out like the cancer it was."

Jerzy's face goes purple with rage. He throws the device against the wall, where it shatters into plastic fragments, the wolf symbol breaking apart. "You fucking—"

He reaches for his desk drawer, movements too slow, too predictable. Twenty years of sitting behind a desk giving orders has made him soft, sluggish.

Pop!

Kasia's shot is perfect, hitting his hand just as his fingers brush the gun handle. The bullet tears through flesh and bone, sending a spray of blood across his precious mahogany desk. His gun clatters to the floor as he roars in pain, clutching his mangled hand to his chest.

"You fucking bitch!" he screams, blood seeping between his fingers. "I made you! Everything you are is because of me!"

He looks pathetic now, nothing like the monster of her nightmares. Just an old man bleeding on expensive carpet, his tailored suit splattered with his own blood.

I step forward, ready to end this, to put a bullet in his brain and be done with it. But Kasia's hand on my arm stops me, her touch gentle but firm.

"No," she says, her eyes never leaving Jerzy. "He dies on my terms. My way."