Page 36 of Vicious Little Princess

“Huh. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You were laser-focused. You have been for the last thirty-six hours since we started the search for Julian. You’ve only left the living room couch to pee. And, worryingly, that was only twice. Not including this time.”

“Right,” I said, flushing the toilet, then pushing back to my feet. “And I need to get back to it.”

He rose with me, shaking his head. “You just hurled. You need to take a beat, rest.”

“I can’t. Not until we find him.”

“You’ve put everything in place possible. Your system is searching. We’ve got the Leones and the Marchettis hunting down Angelo as we speak too.”

“Yeah, they’ve been searching for ages, but turned up nothing at any of the locations. I need to do more. I need to—”

The pain all over his face pulled me up short.Shit.I reached out and stroked his arm. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I know how much you’re hurting. And the longer this goes on—”

“Shh,” he said, stroking my hair again with one hand, the other grasping my fingers on his bicep. “You’re doing everything you can. We all are. We’re closing in around that motherfucker, ruled out a ton of locations now. Nico is going through his wealth of financial transactions, backtracking the money Angelo has laundered the shit out of through several financial institutions.”

“It’s a fucking web. Worse, a maze.”

“And Nico’s great at this sort of thing. He’ll crack it. We’re just looking at five years’ worth of data and movement, so it’s a lot to go through.” He dropped his hands to my hips. “While he does that, everything else is set up with your many alerts should we find anything of substance. Until then, you need to get some sleep. And you need to see a doctor.”

“We have other priorities right now, rather than me throwing up.”

“I also saw you stagger in here. You were dizzy.”

“Yeah, probably a side effect from that shit Angelo shot me up with to knock me out.”

“A doctor will be able to determine that. And maybe it’s not just physical either.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“Nico mentioned that you might be feeling some guilt over putting those guys down in that garage?”

I pulled away. “I… this isn’t the time to get into that.”

“I get like that too.”

“You do?”

He nodded. “After a brutal takedown, some of the nastier aspects of my work with the Marchetti Syndicate, yeah. I’m not actually a huge fan of the violence of it all. I can bring it when necessary, of course. To protect you, Nico and Julian. And, before things got so bad, also as part of my duty to the Family. But I don’t relish it like Nico and Julian.”

“Julian? The night we worked together on that takedown, I saw him enjoying the adrenaline rush, but I didn’t think he was getting off on the actual brutality of it.”

“It’s a long story. And it’s partly my fault. And Nico’s.”

“What are you talking about?”

He held up his hand. “Let’s just focus on what’s going onhere,” he said, gesturing the length of me. “Whenever things have gone further than a beat down and I’ve actually had to take a life, it’s stayed with me. Even when they’ve deserved it, when it’s been justice, or necessary. Even a kill or be killed situation. Even then, it’s still had me feeling that way, being haunted by it for a while, by the guilt of it all, remorse creeping up.”

“And you think this vomiting could be a reaction to that?”

“It’s a possibility. Especially when you haven’t had time to process it.”

“Nico told you this because he wanted you to come to me about it?”

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