Page 7 of Savage

I slowly turned around and met King’s gaze. His commanding presence made him feel so much taller than his six-foot frame, and those dark eyes betrayed nothing, making him incredibly hard to read most of the time.

Not that it took a genius to know he wasn’t going to like what I was up to.

Oh fucking well.It wasn’t like I had regrets.

I crossed my arms and said, “I interfered in tonight’s reconnaissance. Things were about to get ugly, I intervened, and then I tried to buy off Alessio to wipe the cameras so you didn’t find out.”

King didn’t bat an eye. “Looks like I got here just in time, then.”

“Come on, I wasn’t gonna do it,” Alessio said from behind me, but every one of us knew that was a crock of bullshit.

King looked at Benoit. “And you? What’s your part in this deception taking place?”

Benoit held his hands up. “Moi?I’m just an innocent bystander. You know me, anything messy is a nonstarter.”

“Messy?” King’s jaw locked as his focus shifted back to me. “What does he mean bymessy?”

There was no point in lying, not when my actions were right there on screen. But before I could form an answer, King held a hand up and nodded to Alessio.

“Play it back.”

I knew there was no way in hell Alessio was about to take my side. With the chain of command, wealwaysdeferred to our leader—or as we’d recently started calling him thanks to his new boyfriends, our “King.”

“Yes, my King.”

I groaned inwardly as Alessio turned to his screens, his sarcasm not helping me out here. Especially with the way King’s jaw was keeping time like a damn metronome.

Everyone in the room was so still we could’ve been carved out of the stone surrounding us, then the screens lit up with the playback for yet another time and I took the lead role in my silent film.

Several agonizing minutes later, the feed ended and the screens went dark.

I could practically hear the wheels turning in King’s head as he continued to stare at the blank screens, and I knew the smart move would be to apologize. I should swallow my pride, admit my insubordination, and let him know it wouldn’t happen again. But we’d both know I was lying.

I didn’t do well following orders or hanging back in the shadows—it had always been the hardest part of this role for me. But I tried to curb my baser instincts out of respect for Libertine’s rules. I succeeded for the most part, too—usually.

But tonight I hadn’t cared whose orders I was following. The whole point of tracking down those dealers had been to stop more New Yorkers from ending up in the morgue. So how thehell had King expected me to allow one more—one who didn’t deserve it?

“You were supposed to stay under the radar. Remember the motto of ‘don’t get fucking caught.’”

Okay, that chafed. “I didn’t get caught.”

“No?” King slowly turned toward me and took a step into my space. “Then what thefuckam I looking at on that screen, Lachlan?”

King’s fierce stare held me in place. This wasn’t a man you dared mess with—not even me.

“Alessio doesn’t count.”

“And what if someone else had cameras? What about the driver? This was sloppy, unplanned, and reckless.”

“No one saw my face?—”

“But theycouldhave,” King growled, the sound ominous like thunder. “One fuck-up, that’s all it takes. One fuck-up and you risk us all. This was careless, and you’re better than that.”

I cursed under my breath, but didn’t argue, because he was right.

“Wipe it,” King said. “Then do a grid search and make sure there’s no city cameras we’re missing floating around. Send a message to the ground crew to look for any kind of home surveillance that might’ve spotted anything. As for you”—he spun back to me—“stay the hell away from me until I’ve calmed the fuck down. Is that clear?”

“As crystal.”

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