Page 80 of The Pretty Savage

Cold.

Detached.

Removed from all the human emotions that could destroy me.

I thought I had a good life. I thought I was a good son, loved, revered, until it all fell apart when I destroyed the one person that actually really loved me—my brother. My need to be the best, to show everyone what I could do, to stop living in his shadow, ultimately destroyed the best fucking person I knew, and it was all my fault.

I had no idea how human I was until he disappeared, until my father made it seem as if he never existed.

But I thought I would never again feel that kind of pain, that kind of devastation, until a call from Dante, who told me Vega never came out of the main building and that she wasn't in her room. I told myself she was probably walking here, coming to me as I asked her to, or well, told her to, but when I saw her lifeless body covered with leaves, bleeding on that cold, unforgiving ground, I lost it.

I always laughed when people spoke of their heart breaking and feeling like it started bleeding out, until I dropped to my knees, trying to wake her up. Trying to see if she was still breathing.

And I knew then and there that I would burn the world for this girl, whether she wanted it or not. She was mine now, and I wasn't letting her go.

I thought I could run away from the feelings she had awakened in me. I thought I could erase her from my mind and go back to what I used to be. Just a hollow man, cruising through life with no real anchor.

Vega Konstantinova was my anchor, my reality, my future, and I was a fool to think she would disappear from my mind if I put enough distance between us.

Going back home was a mistake, but I needed to see my father. I needed to show my face, to make him believe I was still the same son he raised, even though I wanted nothing more than to kill him on the spot. What I didn't expect was the manila file he handed over filled with information on the girl I was obsessed with, telling me she needed to be gone.

Vega Konstantinova was an agent for The Schatten, and I had no idea if I wanted to yell or laugh, because I was right all along. What surprised me was the fact that my first thought wasn't that I needed to eradicate her and save myself.

It was that I needed to save her from them.

I’d been keeping an eye on her, and Dante and Jax did too, and for someone that was supposedly sent to destroy me, she didn't even try anything. She went to her classes and then back to her room, ignoring everyone and everything, except for her friend Yolanda.

My father observed me, and I knew he was looking for any kind of slipup, anything that would betray my emotions. But as I went through her file, I found another piece of information he unknowingly gave me.

Vega wasn't just an agent for The Schatten. She was Arseniy's lost sister. She was the girl he'd been searching for the last couple of years, and to think fate would play in this way and send her to me was uncanny, but I wasn't going to overthink it.

Whether Arseniy liked it or not, Vega was mine. Vega—Azra—whatever the fuck her real name was.

She was mine.

I wanted to stay away for an entire month, to fix my mind, to find a way to exist without needing her, but all that dissipated into thin air when Dante called me, informing me Andries had received a note similar to the ones we already found with the dead girls, clearly saying that Vega belonged to the maniac.

I already knew why my father shoved her file right underneath my nose. Andries was feeding him information, and I wasn't exactly subtle in the way I handled things with her. But I was done hiding the people I loved because my father would use them against me.

He thought he had the upper hand now, not knowing that a storm was coming his way.

I wanted to talk to her, to ask her about The Schatten, to tell her the truth about Arseniy and everything else, but instead, she was lying in my bed, mostly unconscious, only waking up a handful of times over the last two days, and I couldn't do anything to erase her pain.

Dante and Jax had to pull me away from her when the doctor had arrived, restraining me as she continued whimpering even unconsciously, while Dr. Jericho hooked her up to an IV, checking her over. He pumped her with pain meds, telling me she didn't have anything broken but was severely bruised.

Her stomach was black and blue, her back even worse, and once I found the fuckers that dared to do something like this to her, there would be hell to pay.

My phone started ringing on the table, and even without looking at it I knew who it was. My father was calling to check if the job was done, and I wasn't in the mood to talk to him and pretend like everything was okay. I’d thought of him being the one to order this hit, but no matter how much I wanted to blame him, I knew him better than that, and I knew he operated differently.

He wanted to teach me a lesson. He wanted me to destroy the one good thing that had happened to me in my life, and I wasn't going to do it.

Not again.

Instead of answering, I stood up from my permanent spot on the bed right next to her, and walked toward the table, switching it off. There were several missed calls and a couple of messages from him, but I didn't want to waste any time thinking about him. The man wasn't worthy of my time, and I had more important things to take care of.

I thought we would have more time to put The Brotherhood into action, but with Vega here and the threat on her life, I knew I had to act fast. My father would no doubt send his goons to try and bring me home, but the Academy didn't belong to him anymore. It was mine now, and Andries would soon figure that out as well.

"Adrian." Vega's raspy voice had me spinning around so fast I almost gave myself whiplash.

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