Page 5 of Savage Reign

Silas had worn the same face since—desperation mixed with despair. I wasn’t surprised, considering how obsessed he had been with her since the beginning. Had that obsession morphed into something else? Something deeper?

My heart pinched from the thought. I had already admitted to myself that I had fallen… was it love?

What the fuck did my brothers and I know about love?

My eyes slipped over Silas and took in Killian. He was a little harder to read than Silas, but it wasn’t difficult to see that he was a little morevolatilethan usual.

I didn’t know what to do about them. For years, it had been me, barely trying to hold us together. When did it start to tear at the seams? Why the hell couldn’t I have seen just how weak it was? And Mila had so effortlessly put us back together.

And we fucking lost her?—

No, not fucking lost. She ran. But once we get her back, I will do whatever it takes to ensure she can’t run anymore—more than that, never give her another fucking reason to run.

But right now, we had to find her first. Before the fucking MC did.

The bell to the pawnshop dinged as we passed through the door. A rough-looking man, probably in his late forties, looked up at us when we entered, his eyes set in wariness.

“What can I do for ya?” he asked.

Killian stepped forward and set down a picture of Mila in front of him. It was her driver’s license photo, taken probably two years before. She wasn’t smiling, and there was something almost… dead about her eyes that I fucking hated.

Almost as if she had given up on life living with that fucker Hayes.

The man briefly glanced down at the photo before looking back up at us, not saying anything.

“Have you seen her?” Killian asked.

The man crossed his arms over his chest and shot us a nasty smile, his gold tooth glinting in the light. “Depends.”

Silas mimicked the man by crossing his arms, but there was nothing relaxed about the stance of my little brother. Silas was getting ready to pounce. “On?”

“On how badly you want to find the girl.”

Silas pulled out a wad of cash and threw it on the glass counter before the man.

We waited as the fucker grabbed the money and slowly counted it. “She was here. About three, four days ago. Sold her jewelry.”

“How much did you give her for them?” I asked.

“Hey, I’m a fair man. I quoted her seven grand, which was more than enough.”

My fists clenched. The prices of her jewelry ranged in the six figures, and he gave her a measly seven grand.

I leaned forward, and the man backed up a little before he thought better of it and held his ground. I smiled at the fucker. “Did she say where she’s going?”

He swallowed, looking around his shop. The fucker was alone in here with us. Seemed he finally caught on that he was in the room with three predators.

“I’m just here to do business. I don’t make it a habit of getting into anyone else’s business.”

And the fucker decided to extort money from us with little information.

The man shook his head when he got a good look at my face and backed up even more, only stopping when he hit the wall behind him. He threw the money at us, hitting Silas on the chest. My brother looked down at the crumpled bills as they fell to the floor, then back up at the man.

“We’re going to need the security footage from that day, got me?” Silas said. The man nodded. “And all the jewelry she sold you.”

“Are you, uh, are you buying it back?” the stupid fucker asked.

I shook my head as Killian pulled out his card. “Seven grand, yeah?”

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