Page 123 of Savior

Pain riddles his face, and Brynne turns away to hide hers.

“I’m so sorry. Things got out of hand back home, and I tried to get here as fast as I could once I got word…”

“Word? Did you know he was coming?”

“We had a feeling. He captured one of Brynne’s men, a capo. Even though we’d like to believe our men’s loyalty runs deep and true, there’s always a chance they can spill intel to save their hide.”

A numbness is stretching and winding through me like a thick fog clotting in the air of a frosty morning. “How do we get her back? We have to move.” I stand, freezing, when they share a look I can’t quite decipher.

“Listen,” Brynne says softly, stepping towards me and placing her hand on my arm. I don’t like it one bit. It’s how I’ve laid my own on those suffering before I read their last rites.

I hold my tongue in respect for her, even when I want to lash out.

“We can’t barrel in there, guns blazing this time. It’s gotten…complicated,” she finishes, motioning for me to sit back down.

I do, reluctantly.

“How has it gottenmorecomplicated?”

How the hell has a twenty-one-year-old caused this much upheaval?

Though looking at her, you’d assume chaos follows her.

She’s the definition of anarchy-made flesh, and it’s what called me to her in the first damned place.

“Matteo has aligned with the remaining three families,” Ardesia says, taking over as Brynne looks at a loss of how to console me while still telling me the truth.

The truth is what I seek, however. Ardesia knows that.

I swallow.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “And they’re all working in the flesh trade?”

Ardesia nods. “I don’t think he wants her for the trade, though. He seemed to want her for himself. He likes stubborn, fiery women.”

Well, she’s damn sure that. But it gains her all the wrong intentions.

My obsession proves that.

“So, what’s our move?”

Ardesia leans forward, biting his bottom lip before looking at Brynne. “We don’t have a move yet. This needs to be done right. Because if not...” He lifts his brows, sits back, and smacks his hand on the table.

“War,” I finish for him.

Brynne nods. “We can’t make the city unsafe for the innocent over the life of one girl, Father Russo. We have to operate for the good of the many, you know that.”

I hang my head, thinking of what he could do to her right this second, as I break down and sob.

“I understand. I don’t fucking like it, but I understand.”

I don’t have the connections or the manpower to get her, or I’d do it myself.

“I have a chopper waiting to take us back to the city,” Ardesia says, and I look around the cabin.

Only days ago, Sloane and I were in complete solitude—hiding away from the world that wanted to hurt her, from the religion that felt like a vise around my throat.

I chose her.

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