Page 51 of Savage Knights (Princes of Devil's Creek 3)

Him and Luca would work together.

They both needed this, especially Luca, who had planned his revenge for the past fifteen years. She had killed his mother for no reason other than jealousy.

A life for a life.

She owed him.

Luca bent down, ripped off the gag, and squeezed my mother’s throat. “Who hired you to kidnap Alex?”

She gasped for air, her eyes wide as she looked up at him. When she didn’t answer him, he tightened his grip. Swatting at his hand, she begged him with her eyes to let her go.

Not so tough now, Mother.

For the first eighteen years of my life, she bullied me. Treated me as disposable. We looked so much alike that at one point I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. It was another reminder of her. My mother was beautiful, flawless, and she had given me most of her best features. I’d always wondered if that was why she hated me so much.

Did she see me as a better version of herself?

Luca lifted her off the chair, squeezing her throat so tight her eyes closed. “Answer me, bitch. Or I will make this a slow, painful death. We’ll drag it out for weeks. Make you wish you’d chosen the easy way.”

As his one hand dropped from her throat, she coughed, struggling to catch her breath. “No, please.” She wheezed, her chest rising and falling with each breath. “Don’t… Kill… Me.”

“Then answer my fucking question,” Luca shot back.

“A man approached me,” she choked out. “He said he would give me five million dollars if I kidnapped Alex from your estate.”

“What’s his name?”

She shrugged. “He used a nickname. Mr. Fitz.”

He folded his arms over his chest, glaring at her. “What did he look like?”

“Older but not quite his age,” she muttered. “Wealthy. He dressed like my father. Even wore the same brand of aftershave.”

Luca turned to look over his shoulder at Bastian. “Pull up a picture of your grandfather on your phone.”

Bastian removed the phone from his pocket, shaking his head. He couldn’t believe his grandfather had anything to do with my kidnapping. But when he showed my mother the image, she nodded.

“That’s him,” she confirmed.

“Fucking Fitzy.” Bastian crushed the phone in his palm. “That motherfucker.”

“I told you not to trust him,” Damian added with a sneer. “He’s a fucking snake.”

Luca pushed out his palm between them. “We’ll deal with him later.” Then he turned back to my mother, his face as expressionless as marble. “If Fitzy paid you to take Alex, how did you end up on Lorenzo Basile’s boat?”

“Because that old bastard double crossed me. He only used me to get into the catacombs. He had no intention of paying me.”

Luca smirked at her response. “Do you know why he wanted to trade Alex?”

She bobbed her head. “For the Wellington black book. My father has something on him. And he wanted to burn the book.”

Rich people.

My life was worth more than a stupid book.

Luca hovered over her with a frightening expression on his face. “Let me get this straight, Lorenzo was going to marry Alex to get the black book and hand it over to Fitzy?”

“Yes.” She rubbed her lips together. “That would be my guess. He didn’t exactly share his plan with me. But he was desperate to get the book. He initially tracked me down, thinking I could get it from Wellington Manor.”

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