Page 111 of Vicious Little Princess

“What is it?”

“A gift.”

What the—

“I need to sanitize the area before the authorities are alerted. We don’t want your involvement being discovered. Well, not by the law. But Santino and Marco are another story. I realize you wantthemto know of this.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“For Caterina,” he answered simply.

“Why step in now?”

“Because it’s time.”

“Cryptic bullshit,” Julian ground out, pulling from us and throwing his hands in the air.

He started going off then, yelling out into the night, my soldiers looking on as he lost his shit and started wailing on one of the transport trucks, smashing his fists into it over and over.

I rushed over to him and snagged him in a bear hold, pulling him from it, and stopping him from damn near crushing his knuckles to shit in the process.

“Take a breath,” I breathed in his ear. “It’s all right. It’s all gonna be okay, Sunshine.”

“No!” he yelled. “He’s in the wind! Again! He… he tagged me like an animal! Like his fucking pet!”

“We’ll take care of it. We’ll take care of it all. I swear to you.”

He screamed out into the night, an absolutely awful pained scream that tore right through me.

And then he slumped in my hold and I eased him down as he sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands and sobbing.

I crouched down beside him and looked out to see Stover pulling his phone out and calling for aswift sanitization.

As I held Julian and he sank into me, shaking with his upset, my earpiece buzzed.

I tapped it and my soldier taking point on the hostages sounded down the line.

“Julian’s contact is here with a team to move the hostages and get them to safety.”

“Good. See to it, then meet us back at the lot. We’re moving out.”

I swung my head toward Tony, who was looking on in shock at the state of Julian.

“We’re done here,” I told him. “Have the team move out. I’ll be along shortly.”

“You’re sure?” he asked, clearly concerned.

“Yeah, I’ve got him. Head home, I’ll follow.”

He nodded and then guided the rest of the soldiers away.

Stover finished on the phone and turned to me. “Tell Caterina that I’ll see her soon.”

“I’m gonna need more than that.”

“Not yet.”

Without another word, he strode away, examining the scene and the many dead bodies, and he appeared to be making notes on his phone as he went, zoned out and ultra focused.

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