Page 7 of Vicious Little Princess

“Exactly.”

“Goddammit.”

Nico had his lighter out, flicking it on and off wildly. “All right, this is what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna access Julian’s footage of the ride from the Cloud, confirm what we suspect, and see if there’s anything to go off from there. License plates, other players involved, anything. Meanwhile, you try to track Caterina’s panic button.”

“Yeah, okay,” I uttered, fighting to move from freaking out about their wellbeing to action-mode and doing something to remedy it, to bring them the fuck back to us.

As we rushed back to the car, I said to Nico, “If this was Angelo, if he did this—”

“He can’t survive it.”

“No, he fucking can’t,” I growled. “But how are we gonna put him to ground, given that he’s Santino’s second? That’s an act of war. Big time, Nico.”

“Let me worry about that,” he said, as he slid into the driver’s seat.

I joined him on the passenger side, watching that dangerously dark look take him over.

“Focus on finding them, then we’ll handle the rest.”

The fucking disturbing thing was that if it was Angelo like we suspected, he was a true psychopath, a sick motherfucker through and through.

The things he could subject Julian and Caterina to in the meantime… it had me sick to my stomach.

What if we didn’t get there fast enough, and he’d already… started in on them?

What if—

“Milo.”

I jolted from my thoughts to see Nico shaking his head at me as we sped toward the manor.

“Focus on the task at hand. Nothing beyond that will help or enable us to get to them faster.” He laid his hand on mine. “All right, brother?”

“Yeah,” I said, squeezing it back. “I hear you. They need us and we’ll come through.”

“There’s no question.”

“We’ll bring them back to us ASAP.”

“I have no doubt whatsoever.”

I smiled out at him. He was a steadfast and levelheaded leader—outside of theferalstate thing, which only happened once in a while—and he knew how those close to him thought and operated, which he used to their advantage, wellbeing, and peace of mind. It was a great comfort, even in situations where finding comfort shouldn’t be possible.

It made him a step above the rest.

“You are Marco’s true successor, and you should never have been passed over. We’ll remedy that. We’ll remedy it all.”

That was what Carlo Benzino had told him earlier.

And as much as I didn’t trust the bastard yet and as much as I hated them for what they’d done to my parents, he’d been right on the money there.

Nico Marchetti was the leader that we’d all been denied, the leader we all needed more than ever.

He caught me staring out at him intensely and smiled. “I’ve got you, Milo.”

“I know. You always do.”

And I knew he always would.

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