Page 57 of Vicious Savage

“She didn’t pull that trigger unnecessarily,” I point out. “The man tried to kidnap her. He would’ve raped her, possibly killed her. Luna was in a kill or be killed situation.” I don’t see the need to tell him that Nestor was hanging upside down by his legs when she put a bullet in him. There’s no need for him to have that image in his head.

“His point is she had the guts to do what we were never capable of doing,” Enzo speaks up. “Luna has spirit, but she’s a humanitarian before anything else. She’d never take a life without reason. We know that.”

Enzo fixes his brother with a hard stare, willing him to stay quiet. They’re all different, the brothers. Each unique in his own way. But the one similarity they all share is their love for Luna. Their unwavering support for her. They love her more than they loved their father. And that’s all we need to know to be satisfied that she is safe. Every threat to her that we knew of has been eliminated. Even the dumbass at the bar that night is long gone.

“When can we see her?” Coyin Junior asks. There’s barely two years between his sister and him, but they might as well be twins for all the physical similarities they share. He has the same color hair and the same amber eyes as Luna, and they are so similar in age and height, you could easily mistake them for twins.

“I’ve arranged for her to come here,” Attila says, and this is news to me. But that’s what he promised her; that once he could be sure she was safe, she would be free to leave. It’s not necessarily what he wanted, but he won’t hold her back when she has brothers to consider.

“Gabriel’s staying behind,” Attila tells me, as we leave the men and walk toward the edge of the cliff. “He wants to give her time with her brothers.”

“You think she’ll be okay?”

“Hard to tell. But the brothers are glad to be rid of Coyin, so they have that in common. And they seem very fond of her.”

He turns to look back at the men, watches them quietly as they laugh and chat and Danielo reaches over and messes up Coyin Junior’s hair. They’re more like boys than men, and I realize that could be because in our world, boys have to grow up quickly. They don’t have time to be boys. They don’t have the pleasure of living out their childhood.

“Someone else I know seems very fond of her, too.”

Attila whips his head back and settles his thoughtful gaze on me for the longest time, saying nothing.

“I think we’re past the point of pretending you don’t have feelings for her, Attila. This is the same exact thing I did with my wife Sisely before I married her.”

58

ATTILA

Luna squeals as she disembarks from the jet and flies into me, almost knocking me over. Her excitement sends a wave of trepidation through me. She’s excited to be seeing her brothers, but where does that leave us?

“Where are they?” she asks, jumping on the balls of her feet in barely contained excitement. Nadia joins us, looking better than she did when we left her in Arizona.

“They’re waiting for you,” I tell her, as we walk toward the waiting car. I don’t tell her that I left a watchful eye on them in the form of Cesar.

We drive the short distance to the house, with Luna animated the entire way as she tells me she met Dante’s wife Kingsley and Caleph’s fiancé Ariadne.

“They are… amaaaazing,” she croons. “I can’t describe to you how well we got along.”

“I heard,” I snicker. “You guys stayed up all night watching old movies. Caleph and Dante were fuming.”

“Why?” she whips her head in my direction curiously. “We were right there in the building.”

I shake my head and laugh. “They’re not used to sleeping without their women beside them. They don’t like it one bit.”

Luna lifts her shoulders in a shrug and tells me the girls had fun and that my friends would survive one night on their own.

“They weren’t really angry, were they?” she asks, a worried frown creasing between her eyebrows.

“They had a bit of a bitch, but like you said, they’ll survive.”

“Their partners are lovely — no wonder they don’t want to spend a moment away from them.”

I look at Luna thoughtfully. I don’t know howI’mgoing to spend a moment without her after all this is over. She’ll probably decide to stay in Mexico, although I don’t miss the absence of a bag. She’ll want to be with her brothers. She’ll want to be in the comfort of family, not strangers.

I turn away from her and glide my eyes toward the window as we near the house. I don’t miss Nadia’s gaze as our eyes cross and she gives me a little shake of her head and rolls her eyes.

* * *

I sit with Enzo,watching Luna as she frolics on the grass with her brothers. They’re like little kids seeing each other after an extended absence, their laughter echoing off the cliff side as they play tip. Nadia and Cesar are sharing a coffee at the other end of the patio; Cesar listens to Nadia, nodding and grunting at certain intervals as he hangs on every word the woman says.

---