Page 93 of Craving Carla

“Open it. NOW.”

I sigh and do as she asks, clicking to open the email. Carla leans forward, scanning the brief message:

Have dinner with me, Amari. I’d like to discuss this lovely blood sample from the little Spider Queen you seem to be protecting.

Best,Alexis B.

Carla sucks in a sharp breath, then hangs her head. She shifts on my lap, her bare ass wiggling against my thigh as tension radiates through her body. I have to bite my tongue—literally sink a fang into it—to keep my dick from responding. The metallic taste of my own blood fills my mouth.

It doesn’t work. She feels me hardening beneath her and looks back with a grin, wiggling again deliberately. I grip her hips when she tries a third time.

“Want me to bend you over and fuck you while you stare at that email?” I growl into her ear. “Stop that.”

She’s easily distracted, thank Fate. She turns in my lap, playful despite the situation.

“How is she able to contact you so easily?” she asks.

I keep my eyes on the screen, closing Alexis’s email and scrolling through cancelled and rescheduled meetings until I spot one from Bobby.

“I have one of the top competing data centers in the state. I’ve been deliberately lowering my prices, creating a monopoly in the market, trying to get their attention.”

“Okay, but why?”

I look at her, surprised by the question. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m trying to take them down from the inside. You can’t destroy a corporation just by eliminating the board members. It’s an entity. It will find a way to refill its seats. There’s something darker, far more sinister with Brookstone and Blackburn Enterprises beneath the surface. And I’m going to find out what it is, all while taking the company down in the process.”

She huffs, looking at the screen as I open Bobby’s email. “You sound a bit too confident.”

I grin, but the expression falls away as the email opens. Carla’s eyes widen at the image that appears on screen.

It’s Verde and Petra. In a lab, bodies turned upside down, cut open and dissected like specimens. Carla screams, clapping a hand over her mouth before leaping from my lap and running upstairs, sobbing.

FUCK!

What do they want from my woman and our children?

I stare at the gruesome images, rage building inside me with each beat of my heart. They’re experimenting on her children—our children. This isn’t just about blood samples or radical humans anymore. This is something else entirely.

I slam the laptop closed and race after Carla, taking the stairs two at a time. I find her curled in the center of the bed, her body shaking with sobs, my shirt pulled over her knees.

“Carla,” I say, approaching slowly. “I swear to you, I will end every last one of them for this.”

She looks up, her face streaked with tears, eyes red and swollen. “They’re experimenting on them. My babies. Verde and Petra. They didn’t just kill them—they’re studying them. Why? What do they want?”

I sit beside her, pulling her into my arms. She doesn’t resist, collapsing against me as fresh sobs rack her body.

“I don’t know yet,” I admit, stroking her hair. “But I will find out. And I will make them pay.”

I hold her as she cries, my mind racing with possibilities, each darker than the last. One thing is certain—this goes beyond simple human fear or prejudice. This is systematic, scientific, deliberate.

And so will be my revenge.

32

Carla

I’ve spent the day in a funk, unable to get the images of Verde and Petra out of my mind. While Amari’s been packing up his cabin to move to the patrol cabin, I’ve been sulking, washing my clothes, my thoughts circling the same dark drain.

We’re back at my cabin now to pack up my things, and I can see it in his eyes—he’s about two seconds from snapping at me. I glance up at him, trying to calm my nerves. He’s standing over me, looking like he’s about to toss me over his shoulder and throw me back in the SUV, which is already packed with his stuff.

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