Page 66 of Savage Love

Which is exactly what they’re doing. I know it the minute the world starts to go fuzzy, white around the edges, and I know that I’ve only been running away from the inevitable all this time.

I’ve been caught, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Levin

When Niall calls me, I already know something is wrong.

For one thing, if it had been fine—if my worries had been unfounded—he would have texted. But I can hear it in his voice from the moment I answer.

“They went out for the day,” he tells me, his voice taut and full of helpless anger. “Security went with them—it should have been fine. But they left the girls for a few minutes to get the car, and that’s all it took. Someone must have been watching them.”

It feels like my entire world is coming crashing down all at once. It’s like it takes me back in a single moment to the day I found Lidiya, walking into our apartment and knowing something was wrong before I even saw her body. I’d smelled the blood—a scent I knew so well, and known something terrible had happened.

For a moment, I feel frozen in place, the blood pounding in my ears, a sick sense of pending loss twisting my gut as I feel, for a brief second, as if I’m going to crumple from the inside out, like paper crushed in someone’s fist. That I can’t take this again.

And then I snap, the anger rushing outwards.

“What the fuck do you mean, they left them? What the fuck is their job, except tonotfucking leave them?” I shout the words, not at Niall, but at the security that I can’t shout at in person—which is for the best, because I’m not sure that I wouldn’t strangle them if they were in front of me right now.

“I know,” Niall says, anger lacing his tone. “They’ve been fired. Trust me, they won’t ever work a security gig again. But there’s nothing we can do about that now. Liam and Connor are calling a meeting. As soon as you get here—”

“I’m leaving now. Viktor will let me use his jet. I’ll come straight to the headquarters when I land.” I already know where they’ll be meeting, and I intend to make certain I’m there for every second of it. I want to know what the fuck is going to be done about this.

I want my wife back.

I’m shaking with rage when I get off the plane.

It’s everything I can do not to go hunt Diego down this minute, alone, and take Elena back. But I know better. I know going in alone, even if I knew exactly where he is—which I don’t—would be suicide. I’ve run a thousand missions alone, but this is different. This isn’t a target I can snipe, or sneak up on, or bait into a trap. This is a man with an army of other men at his behest, waiting for me to do something exactly that stupid. To treat this like a Syndicate mission and not what it is.

Not only that, but Isabella is gone, too. This is Niall’s fight as much as mine. He deserves to be with me when we rescue them.

I knew something was wrong. I knew it.The guilt hammers at me, for going to New York, for once again not being there, and it would be easy to let it take over. To let it swamp me, render me helpless. To see this only as the past repeating itself, exactly as I’d feared it would.

I refuse to let it this time.

I’d planned to come home and tell Elena what Viktor had told me. To tell her that I still have no idea if I can be the husband she wants and needs. That I don’t know if I can ever fully exorcise the ghosts of my past enough to move on fully with her, to not pull away when I get too close—but that I’m willing to try. That if she can be patient with me, I’m willing to take the first steps. To try to accept that I love her, and that doesn’t mean I have to punish myself for it.

The idea that I might never get a chance, that this all might be taken from me again before it has a chance to blossom, feels like the most horrifying purgatory, as if I’m doomed to repeat the same cycle, again and again. I refuse to believe it.

I go straight to the Kings’ headquarters, where I know they’ll be meeting.

I find Connor, Liam, Niall, and Jacob there, gathered around the table with a laptop open. “We’re calling Beth,” Liam says the moment the door opens, and he sees me stride in, Nico at my back. Viktor sent him with me, saying that if he couldn’t come himself, Nico was the next best choice. I couldn’t argue, nor did I have it in me to refuse. Not when Nico eagerly agreed, and I knew we’d need the backup. “No one better to try to track where they’ve gone.”

“Max is on his way,” Niall adds. “He said he wasn’t going to let us do this alone. Not with Isabella and Elena’s lives on the line.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I look at them. “Max?Out of the question. He can’t risk leaving Sasha a widow—”

“We’re all risking ourselves. Max is as much one of us as you are.” Connor’s voice is flat, anger burning at the edges of it. “Diego wants a war; he’ll get one. And we’ll end it with one fight.” He frowns, seeing Nico over my shoulder. “Who is this?”

I open my mouth, but Nico steps forward instead. “Nico Davis,” he says with an easy grin. “Viktor sent me with Levin as backup. A little help, since he couldn’t be here himself.”

Connor snorts. “More like he wasn’t willing to. Are you capable?”

It might offend anyone else. But Nico is an easygoing man, at least on the surface, and his grin doesn’t falter. “Sure,” he says, still casually. “I’ve been running Viktor’s operation with the Syndicate since Levin here got himself wife’d up, so I think I can manage. I’ve been running mercenary operations for a decade before I came to work for Andreyev.”

The screen comes to life, and Beth appears, already tapping away at a keyboard. Her pretty, heart-shaped face is set in lines of concentration, her black bob pulled back at the front in a small knot at the back of her head. She is, as always, dressed in jeans and a grey T-shirt. I’ve never seen her wear anything else. And I see Nico, who is at my shoulder now, looking at the screen with sudden interest.

“This someone who works for you?”

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