Page 6 of The Piece You Stole

“There were six of them. All shifters. They were waiting for her, which means they knew where to find her.Exactlywhere to find her.” Aden sighs, lowering his gaze to the floor. “I shouldn’t have let that stop me.”

A little of my fury burns out when I see something I missed before. Guilt.

I punch him lightly in the arm, and he rocks back a couple of steps. “You’re supposed to be the smart one here. Don’t be fucking stupid. They’d have ripped your throat out. This wasn’t your fault.”

A powerful blow rattles the office door, and something downstairs thumps to the floor.

I angle my head to peer over my shoulder. “Dariel, I love you like a brother, but keep interrupting, I will set this building on fire with you in it and not think twice about doing it.”

Silence.

My threat buys two seconds of quiet before Dariel gets right back to head-butting the door.

Maybe he’ll knock himself out. Or it’ll knock some sense into him.

Shaking my head, I move around Aden. I’ve heard enough. Time to hunt. “I’ll be back.”

Aden’s lips tighten with determination. “If you go after her like this, you won’t come back.”

If I hadn’t read the panic in Aden’s eyes, I’d have believed he couldn’t give a shit. He’s cool. Always has been. Me? Not so much. “And by that, you mean…?”

“I mean, you’re smart when you want to be, but when you don’t want to be…” his voice trails off.

I stare at Aden, the once skinny, rat-like street boy who Dariel and I saved from a hard life on the streets. It would have eventually killed him if he’d stayed on them any longer. “You’re a real fucking prick when you want to be. Have I told you that before?” I growl.

A hint of a smile touches one corner of his lips. “Once or twice.” The smile fades. “You’ll walk into a trap trying to save her.”

If it gets Saige back, it’ll be worth it.

“And you know this how?”

He rakes a hand through his hair with a defeated sigh. “Because I’d do the same. And we can’t risk fucking this up.”

No. We can’t.

I hold back my need to shift and chase cars down the street like some rabid, abandoned dog. At least for now.

“Did you recognize them?” I ask, though I can guess who one of them would have been. The dark-haired shifter who terrified Saige so badly, he had her crawling nearly into my lap to get away from him.

“Just one,” Aden says. “So would you. You remember throwing a table at a guy’s head?”

As if I could fucking forget. Sure, we nearly destroyed the bar in the process, but the only thing I regret is not ripping the fucker’s head off when I had the chance.

Saige ran from an alpha who scarred not just her body, but her mind. And her throat… Fuck. When I think of the way he savaged her throat, I’m ready to shove Aden down the stairs and go chase after her anyway.

People heading to work on a weekday morning are going to notice a white wolf running down the middle of the road, but I almost don’t care. Those shifters came and took her back to that life. Back to suffering.

My wolf snarls, his fury echoing in my head.

They have to die. But before they die, they have to suffer. The longer, the fucking better.

A frown creases Aden’s brow. “There was something else. I watched them from my apartment lobby, and I could smell the money from behind the glass.”

I cock my head. “Explain.”

“One was driving a Ferrari, another a Lexus, and the other an Aston Martin. When have you ever seen cars like that around here?”

Never, that’s when. We bought this building south of the city because the area was so rundown, we couldn’t have afforded better. A few more clubs and restaurants have popped up over the years, but the buildings tucked down the side streets are still mostly factories. “You have a plan.”

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