Page 41 of Crave Me

Movement outside in the corridors of King Manor had me leaning in and lowering my voice to barely above a whisper, as I finally gave breath to that which I had kept buried for so long.

When I drew back, Matteo was more shocked than I’d ever seen him, through everything we’d endured together, all that we’d seen and done in the name of the Mancini Syndicate.

“Holy. Shit,” he only just managed to utter a few moments later.

“Now you see?”

“I do. It all makes sense.” He shifted his weight in the bed. “If you let this be known to the Syndicate, it would justify everything and absolutely lessen the pressure you’re bearing.”

“It’s not me who I’m concerned about.”

He went to speak more to it, but the door was suddenly thrown open and Luke Somers stood there in the doorway. His gaze flitted from me to Matteo. “Glad to see you’re wide awake now. Looking much better.”

Matteo gave him a polite chin lift, but I saw his natural suspicion there toward Caspian’s Head of Security. Not just given Luke’s military connections, but because Matteo automatically saw somebody in his similar position as a threat as it was coming from an outsider, somebody not working for the Mancini Syndicate. While I was all for developing an expansive network of allies, it was part of his job to be suspicious of those relationships and alliances from a security health standpoint.

Luke turned to me. “Sorry to interrupt, but Skylar just returned. I assumed you’d want to debrief her before King returns.”

I rose from my seat. “Thank you.”

On my way to the door, I laid a hand on Matteo’s arm. “Rest and eat. I’ll be back shortly. Don’t overexert yourself, Matteo, I need you strong.”

He smiled, reading the subtext to my words. I was worried about him—from a personal standpoint also.

I left the room with Luke falling into step beside me as we strode down the corridor toward the mansion entrance.

“I appreciate you assisting with this. I know it wasn’t easy to make such a decision given how loyal and dedicated you are to Caspian.”

“At the end of the day, I want the best for him.” He shook his head sadly. “Currently, he needs some help in that area. Besides, I could never allow Skylar to go out there unprotected. With you unable to deploy your own people after the hit they just took, it had to be our team out there.”

“Perhaps this will go some length to allay your suspicions of me.”

“Let’s not get crazy.”

Off my look, he held up his hand. “All right, yeah, I don’t think for a second that you actually mean King any harm, I can see you’re an ally through and through. I just don’t trust it all the way, because you’ve always evaded the why of it all whenever I’ve slipped the question into a conversation here and there.” He lifted his shoulder. “And Caleb is also suspicious, and he’s not generally like that with this sort of thing.”

Thankfully, before we could travel further down that minefield of a conversational path, the doors to the mansion flew open and Skylar rushed on in, urgency dancing in her eyes.

Damien came rushing down the stairs and made a beeline for her, looking her over. “Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? Did those bikers—”

“I’m fine,” she assured him. “It’s all good.”

“All good? It was a risk you going out there while Elijah is still loose. Could’ve been you getting taken next.”

“Yet you still didn’t stand in my way,” she said with a smile. “Which I appreciate.”

“I just wish I could’ve gone along to back you up.”

“Luke’s team was there covertly. And it was just a precaution. Besides, you do know that I can defend myself, right?”

He gestured at her left side. “You’re still recovering from that injury.”

“It’s barely an ache now.”

“All right, then how about last time you defended yourself, huh? You were hurt bad, and Seb was taken.”

She gritted her teeth. “We were both caught off guard. That was an anomaly.”

He sighed, then reached into his hoodie pocket and handed her back her necklace.

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