Page 51 of Savage Hunter

Last as in not die?

Tears well behind my lashes. My chest burns, incinerating my soul.

“We will see. No one tells me what to do with my merchandise.”

Cold, black eyes consider me from all angles signaling for me to turn in place. I have no choice but to comply. I feel like a robot moving with jerky movements.

“Will this man be a problem?”

He’s not talking to me, but I already know the answer. There’s no way Wolfe survived my mother’s guards. There were simply too many of them.

“No.”

My worst fears are confirmed. My eyes shutter closed against the pain burrowing deep inside my chest.

“Good.”

The one closest to me with the cigar in his mouth fists the front of my dress and rips it from my shivering body. He uses the ends of the trashed garment to clean something off the side of my face. Lipstick, I see when he steps back, wickedness gleaming in his eyes.

Considering the shade of red I had on, he speaks without looking up. “Seven you said?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Put a bullet in the ones who didn’t sell. We don’t need merchandise eating into our profits.”

Following his boss’ orders, the third guy speaks into a radio. Only seconds pass and the door these guys entered through swings open and more men file in wearing the same distant look in their eyes with death on their heels.

Cell doors are unlocked and they line us all up in a straight.

The horror of what is coming next shoots ice through my veins.

“No!” I scream but only get the back of knuckles across my face for my efforts. I absorb the pain and welcome the distraction. “Don’t do this. Don’t please.”

Another slap.

One by one, the screams are snuffed out. The sound of bodies dropping to the floor is all my brain registers.

When they get to me, a man the size of a tank and the word killer written in Latin around his neck steps into my line of sight. Evil slithers across behind his eyes.

Volkov fingers the ends of my hair, drawing my eyes to him. “Wait. Not this one. Get her in the training room. I want her as a house sample by week’s end, after all. Let the new queenpin know I will call in my favor soon.”

“Harmonia! Come on, now. We have little time. Come back to me, Harmonia.”

I grip the hands on my face and focus on the warmth.

This isn’t real. This isn’t real.

Warm hands and arms pulling me against a hard chest break through the past’s spell.

“You’re breaking my heart, baby. Come back to me. Don’t go back there. Stay here with me.”

My eyes flicker open and my gaze connects with Wolfe’s.

“There you are beautiful.”

My body freezes while my brain tries to come up with a reasonable answer for why Wolfe would talk sweetly to me. And why myenemyis looking at me like he loves me?

When my brain comes up empty, my heart takes over and lets all the fear I have bottled up of my mother finding me and kicks it over.

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