Page 170 of Axel

I keep my voice calm, but not my heart.

“What… What does she need?” Grant almost panics for me.

“For me to be right here, waiting for her to come back.”

After forty-two long seconds, Ruby blinks and stirs. After two long minutes, she finally speaks, “I’m sorry.”

I can’t fucking hold it in.

After fearing I’d lost her. After seeing her busted lip?After knowing the terror that fucker put her through? Like she was a trapped little girl all over again? After imagining what he could’ve done to her?

I fight a tear. “Baby, it’s okay. I’m right here. I’m never going anywhere.” I smooth her hair. I smile down at her. “Besides, it’s a precious moment when you finally shut up.”

She barely smiles. “Fuck you.”

“If you’re lucky.”

I keep trying to make her laugh. She said it’s her medicine. It brings her back.

But once we’re home, and she’s safe, sleeping in my arms, and our kittens surround us, and Sparky sleeps by our feet?

I bury my nose in her hair and vow…

I will burn the world down for my Wildfire. I’ll take so many lives to have this one with her.

I will have more than Ruby sleeping in my arms.

I will have my queen. My wife.

And I’ll give every part of me to make it happen.

CHAPTER FORTY

RUBY

“So, Wilder killed them?”

“He and his cousin, Remi, yes. They’re contract killers,” Axel answers. “And their cousin Bishop cleaned the superyacht in Savannah when they were done.”

“So, who were the men they murdered on the yacht?”

Once I felt better after my seizure last week, I told Axel about Wilder knowing he’s Russian. It took a few days for Axel to investigate, more like to track the crazy cousins down and get to the bottom of this.

“Probably the men my father hired to watch us,” Axel explains. “But someone wanted them dead, too, and hired the cousins to do it. That’s when Wilder heard my name. My birth name. Right before he slit a throat.”

I turn in my passenger seat. We’re parked in Axel’s Jaguar outside Zar and Nick’s beach home, and I’m running late to join them, but I need to know.

“So, is your father dead?”

“No. We have eyes on him in Moscow.”

“So, who was it who wanted his men dead? Who hired the cousins to do it?”

“They don’t know. It was an anonymous contract.”

“So, what does this all mean?”

Yes, I hear myself. I’m a parrot full of questions.

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