Page 156 of Vicious Little Princess

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means,” he said, pulling out another smoke from his leather jacket and firing it up. “I need to take powernow.”

“To do that so quickly, we’ll have to take Marco’s stronghold. The mansion, Nico,” I pointed out. “The plan was to weaken them first. While tonight achieved a lot in that respect, it’s not enough. Not without a fucking bloodbath.”

He dragged hard on his smoke. “I’m aware.”

“N, I can manipulate the narrative a hell of a lot better than anyone, but as good as I am, I can’t rework a full-on massacre involving hundreds,” Julian warned him. “Even if you win out, you’ll put yourself on the Feds’ radar. Or worse.”

“Then we keep Milo’s hands clean and he takes power in my stead while I’m—”

“While you’re rotting away in jail?” I burst out with. “No way in hell is that happening.”

“If it will accomplish the mission and end this shitshow, I’ll pay that price.”

“The fuck you will,” Caterina told him, absolutely not having it.

“Agreed,” Julian said, right there with us.

“We end this and we’ll all be safe. It will be over. No more looking over our shoulders. No more putting your empires that you’ve worked so hard to build on the back burner, Caterina and Julian. And Milo, no more waiting on justice or feeling trapped. You’ll be free.”

“That doesn’t work withoutyou,”I told him.

“It doesn’t need to. You don’t need to pay any price,” Caterina announced, closing her laptop and rising to her feet as she pulled out her phone. “I’ll make arrangements to meet Levi off territory tonight. We’ll find these fuckers’ stronghold and cut them off at the knees. After all this effort and fight that it’s taken to turn the tables and have so many pledging their loyalty to you, we’re certainly not going to allowthisturn of events to fuck all over that accomplishment. We’ll stop it before it starts.”

“Leaving now and—” Nico started.

“You mean in the dead of night before shit really hits the fan as word fully spreads that Santino is dead?” Caterina challenged.

“Fine,” Nico agreed easily. Too easily.

I reasoned that he was all too eager to have her out of harm’s way.

He wouldn’t bench her, but this was her decision, so he’d found a loophole. After what she’d done tonight, I didn’t doubt that he was likely second-guessing his firm stance on the whole thing. For her to go off like that, to that extreme extent, it meant there were cracks there for her, something obviously extremely worrying.

“I’m coming with you,” Nico announced.

“You’re needed here,” I countered.

“I’ll get her down there, then when I’m sure she’s settled and safe, I’ll head back.” He eyed Caterina. “The drive there will give us some time to talk and analyze what happened tonight.”

He was definitely the best person to have that out with her. He could help her better than anyone where that monstrous side of hers was concerned.

When Julian moved to protest, Nico told him, “I need you here monitoring Caterina’s businesses and ensuring all is well with Carver Group. Resume work on the expansion from your end. It will be great to have that in place when all this is over.” Something to look forward to essentiallyandsomething to focus him and help to ground both him and Caterina. Damn, Nico was good.

“Yeah, all right,” Julian agreed.

Nico looked to me. “After the team is done here tonight with the repairs, bring Rocco here and work on ramping up security. He’s one of the best where that’s concerned. I want motion sensors that aren’t connected to the main system, that can operate independently, so what occurred tonight with those fuckers evading detection can’t happen again.”

“You’ve got it. I’ll see to it,” I assured him.

“An early-warning system too,” he added.

Yeah, tonight had freaked all of us out.

And the fact that we were about to be away from each other really didn’t sit well, especially in light of that.

We stared out at each other as the weight of it descended upon us.

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