Page 68 of The Saint

His eyes flicked back and forth between mine. “And if you’re wrong, not only will you pay the price, but so will that pretty fiancée of yours.”

I stilled at the threat, the line he never should have crossed.

“Too late, Butcher.” He smiled. “My offer has expired.”

When I got into the back seat of the car, Luca tried to hit me with questions.

But I cut to the chase first. “Fleur needs to go into hiding. Get a team together. Now.”

“I guess that tells me everything I need to know.” He started making calls and shooting off texts.

I started doing the same, calling in favors to allies near and far, one of them being the Skull King. I’d been taking his drugs through Paris to the Scandinavian countries. He didn’t have a lot of power in Paris, specifically, but he had a lot of power, nonetheless.

When I arrived at the house, I walked into the bedroom and saw Fleur was dead asleep.

It was three in the morning.

I didn’t want to wake her to this news, but I didn’t have the time to waste. Perhaps Ivan knew that was how the conversation would go, and he already had a plan to hit me and Fleur within minutes after the meeting.

“Sweetheart.” I stood at her side of the bed and gently rubbed her arm.

“Mmm?” She didn’t open her eyes. They were clenched shut, trying to hold on to sleep.

“Sweetheart, I need you to wake up.” I flipped the sheets off her.

Her legs immediately tightened toward her chest when she felt the cold.

I gave her a gentle shake.

She finally opened her eyes and looked at me, her eyes taking a moment to focus. “Babe?” She said it with a scratchy voice, a beautiful whisper.

I loved it when she called me that, and now I was afraid I would never hear her call me that again. “I need you to get up and pack a bag.”

“Pack a bag…?”

“Yes.”

She seemed to understand that this was serious, that I wasn’t waking her up because I missed her or I wanted to fuck, but because something had gone wrong. “What’s happened?” Nowshe was out of bed and on her feet, her breathing uneven once she understood the danger.

“Shit is about to go down, and I need you out of here. The guys are going to take you to a safe house until it’s over.”

She blinked like she didn’t understand a word of that. “But I want to stay with you?—”

“You can’t.”

“I’m not going to leave you.”

“You are.”

“You said you would always protect me.”

“And that’s exactly what I’m doing. Get dressed and pack a bag. Now.”

She breathed hard like she’d been on a run rather than sound asleep. She looked like she wanted to argue but didn’t. Instead, she rushed off to throw her shit into a bag.

I got a call and answered immediately.

“The guys are downstairs for Fleur.”

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