Page 113 of Vicious Little Princess

The doctor hadn’t been able to even approach Julian to take care of it, because Milo had blocked his path and insisted on tending to him personally.

He’d clearly jumped to the conclusion that Julian’s breakdown in the field would automatically mean him reverting back to being unable to be touched and he’d assumed that it would be easier for Julian to stomach it from him than somebody mostly unfamiliar in my doctor—he’d only been treated by him a couple of times over the years.

But that didn’t seem to be the case as I’d watched Julian tonight. He hadn’t shown any signs of being touch averse again.

Of course, it was possible that he was masking it.

Just like he’d obviously been masking his rage and obsessive need to exact vengeance on Angelo, something he’d played so well, he’d even managed to keep it offmyradar.

“That wasn’t my fault!” Julian basically screamed back at me. “Stover could’ve taken him out, but he didn’t. He wanted him for fucking interrogation! Like we even need that! It was absolute bullshit!”

“It wasn’t Stover’s job to put Angelo down. It was our mission. The fact that you headed up there caused a shitstorm of complications that Milo and my men had to improvise to overcome on the fly.”

“I didn’t know about the tracker surgically inserted into my fucking body, did I?”

“That’s beside the point. You went around us, Julian. The mission was dangerous enough as it was when we’d strategized everything down to the smallest detail. Yet, your interference screwed all that to hell. We’re fucking lucky that no one died tonight, that only a few of them walked away with only mild injuries.”

“I intervened with that RPG and saved—”

“With an RPG! A fucking rocket-propelled grenade! Exactly my point. The insanity of it all, J!”

Milo finished with his hand and in the very next moment, Julian smashed his bandaged fist down on the kitchen table, rattling Milo’s glass of brandy and Julian’s own bottle of expensive vodka. “Nothing less than absolutely anything it takes should be used to take that motherfucker out!”

“Not putting your life on the line. Not fucking up our overall mission. Which is what you nearly did tonight by running off half-cocked and behind our fucking backs!” I finally pushed off the wall. In a way, I’d been using it to ground me and to keep me at bay, while my rage at the entire situation was barely checked. I didn’t want to have to come down on him so hard, especially after the breakdown he’d had earlier, but with him continuing to push back, I had little choice. I needed to make him see reason. He fucking had to.

If he couldn’t, then he’d become a very real problem.

Worse. A threat to what we were trying to do here.

It was all on the line as it was and this… fractures within our foursome, within our core unit… they couldn’t be right now. They just fucking couldn’t.

“You left me no choice with doing it without me! I told you, I need to be there.Ineed to be the one to put him down, Nico!”

“You proved tonight that you’re not field-ready inanysense. You can’t be a part of the mission.”

“Butwe can bring him to Julian when we apprehend him,” Milo offered up. “Let him end the sick fuck’s miserable life.”

Normally, yes, it would be considered obvious justice by doing it that way, having the wronged in Julian finish the one who’d done him such despicable wrong.

But this was a dicey situation, especially because of Julian’s history.

Milo’s judgment was compromised when it came to this.

I walked to Julian and stood before him.

He was seething, clenching his fists at his sides, which really wasn’t doing his damaged knuckles any favors, but he clearly couldn’t check it. At the same time, he was looking up at me with a whole lot of need sparking through that rage.

“Killing your father wasn’t a magical cure-all. In fact, it further complicated matters, if you remember.”

“Of course I remember,” he snapped. “In vivid fucking detail.”

“Then you understand what I’m concerned about here.”

“Yeah, you think it will push me over the edge, that I’m too fragile to handle it, and when I make the kill, all the trauma of what was done to me by Angelo will breach the proverbial floodgates and overwhelm the fuck out of me, because you believe I’m holding it all at bay, kidding myself into thinking that killing him will take it away like some kind of magic.”

“And?” I pushed.

“Andthis isn’t the same. That was my father. Very fucking different. Things ran too deep there, obviously.” He shoved his bandaged hand through his hair. “Angelo succeeded in making me hislittle bitch, as he kept referring to it. I can’t live with that. I can’t have him out there, our last interaction being him dominating me, having power over me. And the only way to counter that is to end him, Nico.”

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