Page 23 of Savage Hero

Nyx

My heart is pounding like a goddamn bongo drum. I’m walking a few steps in front of Savage, while he brings up the rear holding the baby. He said I look too ‘womanly’ when I’m holding Princess, so he took her from me.

He holds her in the crook of one arm like a fucking afterthought.I keep thinking he’s going to drop her.

Surprisingly, shockingly, Princess doesn’t get fussy when she’s in his arms. It’s downright creepy. He doesn’t pay her the slightest attention, but that baby girl can’t stop staring up at him and drooling.

Yeah, he probably gets that a lot.

Savage guides me down the hall. The windows we pass give me glimpses out to a T-shaped pool illuminated with bright green lights. Palm trees and tropical plants jut out from a rectangular island down the center, and there’s a circular section close to the house that looks like a hot tub.

We pass the elevator and then reach the two staircases leading down into a big entrance hall. But instead of going down the stairs, he takes me straight down the passage to a set of double doors. He pushes them open for me, and I step into a thickly carpeted sitting room almost twice the size of Savage’s room.

Everything is either beige or gold—even the furniture. Which makes the dark wood paneling on the walls seem so much darker and gloomier by comparison.

The man lying in the middle of the king-sized bed doesn’t look nearly as intimidating as he did all those times I was staking out La Buena Papa. His salt-and-pepper hair is slightly disarrayed, and he’s shirtless. There’s a thick bandage plastered over his shoulder, and oxygen tubes under his nose.

A heart rate monitor beeps quietly beside him—besides very dim lighting coming from the myriad little lights embedded in the ceiling, it’s the only illumination in the room.

“Father, this is Nick,” Savage says as he approaches the bed.

I hang back in case my heart is pounding so hard that Bryan can hear it.

The older man stirs, his eyes taking a second to find me in the near-gloom of the big suite. Then he smiles, and my stomach twists. He’s a handsome man, even though he’s thirty-some-years older than Savage. None of the photos on the internet show him smiling like this. He looks…harmless.

Which is shocking, because in several of those photos, especially the ones from about ten years ago, he was usually posing with a decapitated head, or beside a heap of bodies.

He was charged for hundreds of crimes back in Colombia, but he never stood trial. Whether he bribed his way out of court or what, I’m not sure. Some reports claimed they could never identify the victims in the photos. Could never find their actual bodies when they managed to get search warrants for any of the multitude of properties he owns in Colombia. There was no evidence that a crime had been committed, except a photo and a missing person’s report.

But everyone knows he’s the Capo of the Domingo Crime Family, the largest American-Colombian cartel in existence. He’s kept his nose so clean, he can walk into any police station in the States and they’d have no grounds to arrest him.

The people that work for him though? Three of them are on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

“Nick,” Bryan says. “Come closer, please. I do not bite.”

Savage steps back, and the baby in his arms murmurs baby-gibberish at the jolt of movement. Bryan’s attention diverts to the bundle in his son’s arms. “What’s this?”

“Eye witness to the drive-by,” Savage says dryly.

I almost burst out laughing. I can’t help it—I’m so fucking tense I could scream, and Savage is giving Bryan the kind of look only a son can give his father when he asks a dumb question.

Bryan gives me a long-suffering stare. “See what I have to put up with, Nick? Youngsters have no respect these days.” He gestures me closer. “Give me a hand with these pillows so we can talk face-to-face.”

“Let me,” Savage says, hurrying forward. Bryan has a thick Colombian accent, where Savage’s is just noticeable enough to be dead sexy.

His father waves Savage away. “I’m sure Nick knows how to fluff a pillow. You keep that snotty thing away from me,” he adds, pointing at the baby.

I go over reluctantly and use fully outstretched arms to position a few pillows behind Bryan’s back as he sits up in the bed. I must look like a psycho, but I don’t dare get too close. I could use my heart for a jackhammer right now.

Bryan’s black eyes study me intently. His lips move as if he’s working up spit in his mouth, and I half expect him to spit in my face.

Right before he strangles me with his bare hands.

“Nick…where are you from?”

“Family comes from Kansas. Came out here looking for work a few weeks back.” I do my best not to lay on my accent too thick, but there’s still a frown on Bryan’s face before I finish my story. “Tough out there.”

“I’ve seen you a few times in my restaurant.”

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