Page 58 of Empire of Savages

Stumbling back a step, I let reality sink in. Someone had fucking killed the president’s old lady, and there was only one person stupid enough to do it. Only one person who knew what this would do to Rixon. Talon La Croix had just misstepped, and it would cost himandhis men their fucking lives.

I blinked at the scene in front of me, unable to look away. My president clutched Molly to his chest, holding her slack head against his shoulder with one hand while he wrapped the other around her body, hugging her to him. Rixon was calling her name over and over, rocking her in his arms, while blood spilled between them. His once clean plaid overshirt was soaked.

“Stay with me, Mol,” Rixon wailed. “Don’t leave me.” His words were hollow. She was already gone.

Pulling out my phone, I called for an ambulance. After giving them the address, they assured me they would have first responders there in the next ten minutes.

Rixon had stopped rocking Molly’s body but kept her close. He looked up at me, blood smeared on his face and neck, and said, “La Croix is going to pay for killing my Molly.”

Holding his eyes, I let him see my anger. My rage. If Rixon was like a father to me, Molly was like a mother. I felt her death like it was a ripple in time and space. “I’ll pull the fucking trigger myself,” I vowed.

Five minutes later, there were multiple ambulances and cop cars up and down the street. Medics ran toward us, dropping their jump bags beside them as they crouched to look at Molly’s injuries. But Rixon refused to let go of Molly’s body.

“Don’t fucking touch her,” he snarled at the closest medic—a woman who only looked to be in her early twenties.

“Sir, we need to check her vitals,” she replied, unfazed by the venom in his tone.

“She’s already gone. He shot her. He took her life away from me.”

“Sir—” she tried again.

Rixon straightened and bared his teeth. “Touch her and you die.”

I watched as the responding cops took a step forward. One was reaching for his Taser, while the other unclipped the leather snap on his baton. Sensing how this was going to go, I threaded my arms under Rixon’s armpits and hauled him backward—pulling him away. He struggled against my hold, swearing and threatening to kill me for taking him away from Molly, too, but I let all his threats roll off my back. He wasn’t in his right mind.

“Rixon,” I said, trying to get him to focus. “Rixon, you’re going to get fucking tased, or worse, if you don’t calm down.”

“Fucking tase me then!” he yelled. Despite weighing thirty pounds less than me, he slipped out of my grip, grabbed the gun at the small of his back and turned it on me. The medics that were rolling out the body bag froze on the spot, while the cops each pulled out their own weapons and aimed them at Rixon.

Gesturing for the cops to wait, I spoke to Rixon. “Man, you have to let them take her. You don’t want her body left on your front porch.”

Rixon’s brown eyes were wild. “They will not touch her.”

“Sir,” one of the cops said in a firm voice. “Drop the weapon.”

Rixon turned his whole body toward the interloper, bringing the muzzle of his gun around with him and pointing it at the cop.

“Put the weapon down now!” both cops barked in unison, but Rixon wasn’t listening. He wasn’t there. He was staring at Molly’s body surrounded by a bloody halo. I had to diffuse the situation before Rixon was arrested for something more serious than temporary insanity. Or worse: shot.

“This isn’t what Molly would want,” I told him, trying to appease his rabid grief. Slowly, I eased my hand on top of Rixon’s tattooed knuckles and lowered his weapon, taking it from him. I laid it on the ground for the cops to see and backed up a step. One cop charged forward, spinning Rixon around and shoving him to the ground, while the other rushed to kick the gun away.

Rixon’s face was pressed to the boards not more than six inches from Molly’s head. He stared at her slack face, tears beginning to leak from his eyes.

The paramedics began to move again, rolling out the thick black body bag, then carefully picking up Molly and placing her inside. I watched as the zipper was slowly drawn up, covering her knees, her hips, her chest, until finally, it slipped over the crest of her chin and nose.

A detective approached then—a young woman who looked like she’d not seen a dead body yet. She wasn’t in uniform, rather she was wearing a pair of black jeans and a floral blouse, a badge around her neck.

“My name’s Detective Díaz. I need to take your statement,” she said in a soft-spoken voice.

I told her everything that had gone down, leaving my theories and plots for revenge out of it.

“Did she have any enemies?”

“No. Molly wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“What about you?”

I turned to look at her. “What?”

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