Page 28 of His Stolen Princess

Cato

“Where is she?” My roar sends bats soaring off the hillside near the villa.

“What is it?” Santino rushes from the house, Carter and Flavia behind him.

“She’s gone. Find her!” I try to calm my tone for Carter but fail. I cut my gaze to Flavia. “Take him inside. Keep him safe until I return.”

“What is it?” Carter’s big eyes meet mine. “Is Appy going to leave me, too?”

I shake my head. “No. We won’t let her.”

“Come now, little boy,” Flavia chirps. “I have some cookies fresh from the oven.”

“Chocolate chip?” He turns to her.

Soldiers run around the house, my yell shaking them loose from their posts, and Flavia leads Carter back into the house.

“Find her. Now.” I glare at the empty pool. She was just here. I checked not twenty minutes ago, and then I got a feeling. A tingle in the back of my mind, as if some primal part of me knew something was going wrong. And when I came to find her again, she was gone, and the feeling intensified.

“I want her found. I want her returned to me untouched.” I glare at each man. “No one will lay a finger on Apollonia Simonetti. The penalty is death. Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir,” they all answer.

“Find her. Now.” I scan the hillside, then the vineyard. Nothing moves in the dusk.

“You six, that way.” Santino points toward the orchard. “The rest of you, with me.” He stalks off toward the vineyard as I rush to the barn garage.

I jump onto the first ATV I see and take off, clipping the door on the way out and opening the throttle until I’m hurtling past my soldiers and into the vineyard. I can’t hear over the rush of wind, can’t think for the howling in my heart, can’t feel anything except my need to keep my lioness safe.

Nico. The thought is like a shot through me. He wasn’t outside, wasn’t with the men. Where was he? My grip tightens on the handlebars as I crest the nearest vineyard hill and plunge down the other side. She has to be out here. She wouldn’t have been able to slip past the guards on the gate, and the patrol has been doubled on every other part of my estat—No.

I slow down as I spot a lump ahead of me and a few rows over. It’s a body. I can tell from here. My throat closes as I cut across the rows and jump off my still-moving four-wheeler. When I see it’s not her, I can breathe, but when I turn the body over and find a stranger, something lurches inside me.

Another intruder. I didn’t protect her.

The glint of a knife catches my eye, and I pull it from the man’s back. My knife. The one I’d given Apollonia.

“She stabbed you as you deserved.” I spit in his face, then jump back onto my ATV and tear off toward the far end of the vineyard, dread growing in my gut as I go. I spot two more bodies--my men, each of them killed while doing their duty for me. Rage rises in me as I jump the next hilltop and land with a jarring blow, then increase my speed.

The roar of the wind is still loud in my ears, but something finally cuts through the noise.

No. I push harder, trying to get to the old vineyard, the fallow patch of ground that needs to be reworked and re-seeded once it’s rested for another decade.

But when I see the blinking light rising in the sky, then the whir of rotors, and finally the body of a small helicopter, I yell into the night. She’s in there.

I jet up the hill and skid to a stop beneath the helicopter as it sends up a dust storm all around me. I can’t see her, but I can feel her, and I tear in half at the thought of failing her like this.

The chopper angles away from me, but before it turns, I see a face in the window. Nico.

“Apollonia!” I roar into the onslaught of wind, but just like that, she’s gone, the machine flying into the night and taking my lioness with it.

I stare into the dark, listening to each turn of the rotor until the sound dies away completely.

Another ATV skids to a halt beside me. “Nico. That motherfucker.”

“Yes.” I sit down, a heavy sort of anger settling into my bones. “Track him.”

Santino pulls out his phone as I wave my soldiers away. “Guard this villa like your lives depend on it. They do.”

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