Page 45 of Savage Enemy

“Fuck,” I breathed.

Lying on my bed, I bent my arm and flung it over my face to cover my eyes and block the sunlight streaming in through the open draperies. Bella’s usual morning routine to wake me.

Only I hadn’t slept. I wasn’t sure I’d slept in ten years.

“Get out, Bella. Consider yourself promoted to my son’s nanny and stay out of my room from now on.”

Val’s room. Our room.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered. “Thank you, sir. Should I?—”

“Close the curtains and go.”

After she whipped the velvet panels shut and hurried out of the room, I opened my eyes again and stared at the ceiling.

Rage burned inside me, steadily rising closer to the surface, hour by the hour. Getting caught up in Val’s scent as it clung to the sheets didn’t help. It should have brought me peace. It only pissed me off more.

She should have been lying next to me.

Her father had infiltrated my house and taken her. He’d taken what belonged to me, the fat old fuck, and he would pay for it. He would pay for every mark on her body, every tear she cried, and every moment my son didn’t have his mother.

But Moscatelli hadn’t done it on his own. Someone in my organization had betrayed me to help him.

With every inhale, as her scent overwhelmed my senses, another kind of fury pumped through my veins.

It’s all her fault.

She had put me in this position. She kept the truth from me. She brought those men into my home.

Worse than that, she had made me love her.

Before Val came back into my life, I never spent my nights worrying about anyone. I spent them scheming, strategizing, planning the structure of one of New York’s most formidable empires, and calculating how I would burn it all down when the time was right.

I never gave a fuck about any girl, or about a son I didn’t know existed and the legacy I might leave behind for him.

I’d been content with my decision to marry someone I didn’t love, knowing I could use her family to get revenge for mine. Content to have my legacy die with me.

Not anymore.

Everything had changed in one night.

I was uncertain if this path had been laid out a decade earlier, the night of my son’s conception, simply remaining dormant until the right moment struck, or if my fate forged a new path the night I found my son.

It didn’t matter.

All that mattered now was getting Val back from Chicago.

First, I had to lay to rest the men who had died for me.

Rocco had managed not only the cleanup, but also the memorial service and burial. He had the necessary connections in place. Pulling these things together at a moment’s notice was his superpower.

He’d quickly arranged for the families to arrive and say their goodbyes inside the protection of my concrete walls.

Even as a made man and skilled earner, this talent made him more valuable to me than anything else.

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and checked for a message from Benedetta. Nothing.

That bitch would pay for not replying.

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