Page 103 of Where the Wicked Reign

What was going on?

I took a photo and sent it to Nico.

He was at Charon Manor right now, so he had immediate access to the facial recognition software on my desktop that I kept in my room.

Milo:Need an ID fast. Suspicious fuck meeting with Caterina.

Nico:Don’t need your software. That’s Nova Henderson’s ex-husband, Tommy Lowrey. Get in there now. They split up years back because of his abusive behavior. Why Caterina’s meeting with him, I have no fucking idea. But she fucking shouldn’t be.

Milo:Taking care of it.

By the time we finished the exchange, the situation had progressed all too fast, and they were exiting the coffee shop, Caterina leading the way.

Really?Talk about escalating in a bad way.

As if it wasn’t already bad enough, they turned down an alley, then disappeared around the corner of it out of sight.Hell fucking no.

I shoved my phone in the pocket of my brown suede jacket, then hightailed it across the street, following their path.

The darkness swallowed me as I stepped down the alley.

That adrenaline surge from earlier that had prepared me to act surged like a bitch of a thing as thuds and crashes sounded.

I was close to rounding the corner when a male scream rang out, followed by Caterina’s voice growling, “You had the fucking audacity to come here for a payoff? There’s nothing here for you but punishment!”

What the—

I made it around the corner to see the guy I now knew to be Lowrey pushing off the wall in a dazed state to take a run at her, only to be met by her swiping a metal garbage can lid straight at his face. It tore a vicious gash down his cheek and had him slamming back against the dirty brick wall with a grunt. As he went to grab onto it, I noticed his left arm was hanging at an abnormal angle. Dislocated. That accounted for the scream a moment ago.

“Your place in her life ended with your divorce. Thinking you could come here now that she’s supremely successful without anything to do with you was a pathetic move!”

“You think I’m gonna stop just because—”

Caterina wrenched on his hair and used it to slam the back of his skull against the wall, severely disorientating him, before thrusting her knee into his gut. The combo had him dropping to his knees with a hefty thud.

“I wasn’t done talking,” she spat at him.

As she reached into her blazer pocket and pulled her phone out, our gazes clashed.

There was a glint in her eye and a sly smile, letting me know she’d picked up my presence prior to acknowledging it.

“All good here, friend,” she told me with a devious little curl of her lips that had my fucking body reacting again. And, damn, it was a whole lot more intense now I was in her space instead of literally standing at a distance.

It was similar to how I got around Julian. And that was fucking rare for me.

The violence I was witnessing from her had to be upping the intensity for me. I didn’t like dealing it out in the sense that I didn’t get off on it like Nico did and to some extent Julian either, but it did give me a nice kick when I saw it being done in the name of justice or honor. The way it used to be done by the Marchetti Syndicate in the old days when my father had been alive and operated as Underboss. Things were different now, though, and it had made me lose my taste for it. Except when it came to violence with Nico and Julian—and now Caterina, as had just been made clear to me. All right, it might have been made clear before tonight—the night of our takedown, really.

I liked seeing people take their power and own it. I figured that was part of what I got off on when Julian brought his Dom side out all over me. Although, a lot of that was also because it enabled me to shut out all my worries and overactive mind and just be in the moment, just feel and enjoy.

Caterina’s voice jolted me back to the moment, and I watched as she spun her phone so Lowrey could see, then told him, “Just to be clear, this beating—mild by my standards—isn’t your punishment.Thisis.”

“Is that… you’re in my bank account?” he rasped, staring up at the phone with wide eyes. Wide glazed and reddened eyes because the fuck was definitely strung out.

“That I am. Watch that amount carefully.”

He was roaring in the next moment and lunging at her, but she thrust her sexy boot into his face, knocking him onto his back with the sheer brutality of it. Blood sprayed from his mouth and he spluttered.

“Twenty grand down. Oof, that’s a big hit, huh?” She pocketed her phone and stood over him. “You know what else it is? The exact amount you extorted out of Nova last time you came around for a payday.”

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