Page 6 of Vicious Little Princess

I knew we were. I was watching the map on my phone every second. But it helped to hear him utter that out loud, and he’d known that it would.

“Neither of them are helpless,” he reminded me. “Far from it, in fact. Keep that in mind with whatever we find here.”

Judging by the iron grip he had on the steering wheel and him grinding his jaw, he was trying to remind himself of that fact as much as me.

We were almost upon the designated location when his headlights caught on something in the brush.

“Pull over,” I told him.

“What are you—” he caught sight of what I had, chrome in amongst the heavy brush.

He came to a jarring stop; the tires screeching and burning rubber and giving both of us one hell of a jolt.

And then the both of us were rushing out of the car and heading toward the sight.

I barreled into the brush, removing torn branches here and there that had clearly been used to hide what was beneath. Whoever had been responsible hadn’t done a very thorough job, though, which was why I’d been able to catch sight of something.

As I threw more and more out of the way, Nico helping me, I was finally able to make out the twisted chrome monstrosity of what had once been a Harley.

“Julian’s,” Nico choked, recognizing it as I had, even in this state, with all the work Julian had had done on it to make it unique—just like my Sunshine.

The state of it… they’d had one hell of a crash.

“Goddammit,” I rasped, staring at it in horror.

Nico was gone from my side then, inspecting the immediate area and even rushing up the last few feet to the actual location where the panic button signal had come from.

As I was caught there frozen with my hands trembling at the awful implications, I zeroed in on the camera Julian had fitted onto the bike because he liked to record his stunts for posterity. Footage that automatically uploaded to the Cloud.Yes!

“Nico!” I called out. “The camera footage from the bike!”

I spun around just as he was already coming back to me.

My gut twisted when I saw him carrying two smashed phones in his hands, the cobalt-blue glittering case of Julian’s taking my attention.

His haunting gaze met mine as he reported, “There’s blood along the road. Scuff marks too.”

“They were dragged,” I ground out. “Somebody did this. Caused the crash, then took them.”

“Yes. The evidence is speaking for itself.”

“Who the fuck would do this? The Lone Gunners have gone to ground. The Benzinos made it clear they’re with us. And the Marchettis and Leones have no reason to do anything like this, seeing as though they believe you and Caterina are following their orders. I don’t… I don’t understand,” I said, shoving my hand through my hair.

I saw Nico’s sapphire eyes flicking back and forth, the sign that his mind was going a million miles a minute, trying to sort through the data available, to figure out all possibilities.

“Someone who has an unhinged hatred for both Julian and Caterina in equal measure,” he finally spoke. “Only one person comes to mind.”

Our gazes clashed.

“Angelo,” I breathed. “Do you really think he’d stoop to this and riskthis?He’d be going against Santino to carry this out.”

“Would he? Santino wants Caterina punished.”

“Which he believes is already happening by her marrying you. You’re being paranoid because of what happened earlier with Carlo.”

“Perhaps. Either way, even if he’s acting alone, that makes this worse.”

“Because there are no boundaries or restrictions involved,” I realized.

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