Page 3 of Savage Reckoning

“No, I do love—”

“Liar! Even now, you can’t help yourself. It’s every time you open your mouth.”

“Megan, you need to calm down…”

Could he have come up with anything worse? Could his arrogance, his towering ego have been any greater? Megan didn’t think so. Caught with his pants down, quite literally, he had the gall to suggest it was she who needed to calm down.

“I want you to get out.”

“No. You need to hear what I—” He got to his feet, reached for her.

Megan backed away. “I don’t need to hear any more of your lies. You’re leaving. Now.”

“Not until—”

She made to dart past him. If he wouldn’t go, then she would. But he was quicker. All those years dodging the Taliban hadn’t been wasted. He grabbed her around the waist, and they tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

Megan wriggled free and scrambled away from him. “Keep your fucking hands off me. You’re a man-whore just like they said. A liar who can’t keep his dick in his pants. I hate you.”

He grinned. The cocky bastard actually grinned. “You didn’t always have such a low opinion of my dick, darlin’.”

Too much. It was… Too. Fucking. Much. He’d destroyed her life, made a total fool of her, then thought he could crack jokes about it. No way. No fucking way.

Near blind with fury and grief, she reached under her bunk for the service firearm which she always kept there, primed and loaded. Her hand was steady when she took aim. “See how funny you find this, asshole.”

The shocked expression plastered across his handsome features was the last thing she recalled before the deafening roar of the gun exploded to bring every soldier within earshot running.

That’ll teach you to mess with me.

CHAPTER 1

Megan

“He’ll be all right. Please, tell me he’ll be all right…”

Tears stream down Cristina’s face. She turns from the inert figure in the bed, her husband, hooked up to countless machines by a spaghetti junction of wires and tubing. Whirring, beeping, lights flashing, vivid green lines flickering across screens, the paraphernalia of a life hanging in the balance.

I wish I could give her the assurance she craves. That’s all she wants from me, because I’m a doctor, I know about these things. Cristina trusts me, which is the reason why I can’t lie to her.

“They’re doing everything they can,” I murmur for want of a better platitude as I scan the gadgetry tracking Ethan Savage’s vital signs, looking for something to indicate improvement. Or even stability.

Blood pressure eighty-five over fifty-three. Heart rate fifty-five beats per minute. Pupils dilated and unresponsive. Not much comfort there. The massive contusion on his temple betrays the probable reason for his ongoing lack of consciousness, but we would have expected some sign of life by now. It’s been six hours since the helicopter crash which put him in this state, and still nothing.

We’re awaiting the results of the brain scans, and until then, there’s not much to say. Not that any of this will satisfy Cristina. She grabs my wrist.

“They won’t tell me anything…”

I wrap my arms around her. Ethan is my patient but also my friend. I owe him so much, Cristina, too. They gave me a home when I needed it, a purpose, a role as a doctor. I’m almost as emotionally involved as she is.

Well, that might be a stretch. The mutual adoration between Ethan Savage and his Bratva Queen is the stuff of legends. What I wouldn’t give to have someone love me like he loves her, and to be able to return that love. It’s a fairy tale, now turned into a nightmare dragged near-lifeless from a twisted tangle of bent metal.

“We need to wait,” I reply. “The test results…”

“How much longer, though?” She dissolves into another bout of wretched sobbing. “He has to survive. He has to. I can’t live without him.”

I suspect you’re not the only one…

There’s an entire criminal organisation depending on Ethan Savage. He heads up an international network of drugs barons, money laundering firms, arms dealers, counterfeiters, vice clubs… The list goes on. And yes, he has lieutenants who can step in, friends, allies, family, but for how long? Ethan is the heart of the Caraksay Brotherhood as we tend to think of it. He’s our leader, everything revolves around him.

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