Page 118 of Savage King

There is nothing else to say, and we hang up.

Silence takes over the helicopter. Vito stares darkly out the window. His entire body is coiled tight, ready for war, just like mine.

One question haunts me: What if we get there too late?

The thought claws at my throat, tightens it like a noose.

I’ve lost people before. I’ve buried family. I’ve held bodies in my arms, felt the warmth drain from them. The notion of Scarlet being one of them tortures me. Because I know…

If I lose her… and the baby…

I won’t come back from that.

I squeeze my eyes shut for half a second, but all I see is her. Scarlet. The way she tilts her chin up when she’s being stubborn, that glint in her eyes when she’s fighting me. The expression on her face when she comes. The way she looks at me, her eyes filled with love. How she fits against me, soft and strong all at once.

She is my entire world. She’s out there, in the hands of men who don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her. A sharp exhale rips from my chest, and I curl my hands into fists. Breathing has become a chore as fury and worry choke my throat.

The chopper dips lower, we're almost there.

"ETA five minutes," the pilot calls.

Five minutes.

Five minutes until I paint Carlos’ warehouse red. Five minutes until I rip apart every single fucker who has dared touch what’s mine.

"Boss?" Vito’s voice is quieter now, careful, like he knows. Like he sees it. My unraveling. The thing I can’t control. I exhale slowly, pushing everything down, down, down, until the rage turns to something colder.

"No survivors."

He nods his agreement.

Tonight, I don’t just kill them.

I erase them.

The chopper sets down ten miles from the warehouse. I won’t risk them hearing us coming. As soon as I step out onto the pavement, my eyes roam over my soldiers. A quick count tells me there are thirty, when there should have been fifty.

"Where the fuck is Al?" I grind out.

Umberto steps forward. "He was in the first SUV the assholes blew up," he fills me in.

Right now, I can't afford to think about the twenty or more mothers and widows I'll have to notify later, nor can I think about what it would feel like to lose a spouse or sister. We pile into the waiting SUVs to take us closer to the warehouse.

"What's the plan, boss?" Vito steps impatiently from one foot to the other once we get there. He's ready to go in.

I already scoped the area when we circled in the chopper. Now, standing hidden in the woods that grow on one side, I make out water on the other, with warehouses in between. The area is tight and contained.

Carlos has several snipers stationed on top of his roof. I'm sure they reported seeing a helicopter coming by and are on high alert, but it won't help them.

“Snipers up there, there, and there,” I say, pointing to the tree line and the rooftops of the flanking warehouses. “Six men on top of Carlos’s building. Wait for my signal, blow the roof open, then drop stun grenades through the breach.”

It’s a risk—a big one. If Carlos—or whichever disposable scum he has working for him—used the same setup they used on Scarlet, there’s a chance the girls are close to that blast zone. And one of them is carrying my child.

But I don’t get the luxury of hesitation. I’m not just here for my family. I command soldiers with families of their own. If I send men to die tonight, it won’t be without giving them the cleanest shot at surviving.

“Three SUVs hit that hangar gate—hard.” I point again. “As soon as it’s breached, the perimeter teams go in. The roof team follows fast and coordinated. No dead weight.”

Vito hands me a vest mid-sentence. I strap it on without missing a beat, my mind cycling through every possible fault in the plan. I’m not hoping for luck—I’m compensating for it.

---