Page 4 of Crave Me

Luke: Team six minutes out from Caleb’s last known location.

King: Received.

My pulse picked up, even the few minutes left remaining now until I’d get word on Caleb seeming like an age with the worry spearing through me. And Bastian… shit.

I clenched my fingers around my phone as I reached Dante’s room, needing to take a beat again, fighting like hell to get a grip.

Hell.

I could barely manage it.

My control was crumbling.

So far, two of the people I cared about most in the world had been hit.

Bastian had been taken.

Skylar was injured.

And now Caleb… fuck, Caleb was missing, and in all likelihood to become another one of the taken.

Elijah had come after my heart.

For the second time in my life.

But I wasn’t that helpless child anymore, not the powerless boy I had been when he’d taken my parents from me.

He’d made a grave mistake.

One he’d never recover from.

“Mr. King?”

I started and spun around to see one of the hospital staff walking up to me with a plastic bag in hand. She smiled kindly, her brown ponytail bobbing as she came to a sudden stop in front of me. “We were told these belonged in your care.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“Mr. Mancini’s belongings that were found on his person, Sir.”

“Thank you,” I said, as she handed them to me.

“Of course,” she returned politely, before hurrying off back down the corridor.

I stared at Dante’s things. A tactical watch, his phone that was cracked in two places from the impact of those explosions, and also a golden oval locket. It had taken a hit too, dented and open, revealing two photos within. I peered closer, something nagging at me.

The photo on the left was of a young woman in her twenties with long caramel hair and beautiful hazel eyes. She was smiling widely wearing a veil, and I could make out the top of what was certainly a wedding dress, before the picture cut off halfway down her shoulders. It had to be his fiancé, Bianca Greco, the woman who’d been killed years ago. There were absolutely no files or photos of her anywhere. Dante had wiped away every trace of her existence, it likely being a painful reminder for him, I supposed was his reasoning. A rather extreme reaction, but everybody grieved in their own way. I knew that better than most, unfortunately.

I angled the bag a little and peered at the other photo.

My breath hitched. It looked oddly familiar.

I just… I couldn’t place it.

My head was elsewhere on a hundred other things.

I committed it to memory and made a mental note to return to it once I had a moment to focus on it.

I was about to walk into Dante’s room, when the door flew open and he staggered out, fighting to pull on his jacket.

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