Page 101 of Untamed

They’re not amateurs.

This is planned.

Retaliation. Nicolai fucking Moretti.

I ride like the devils on my back. Dirt and rocks fly, branches whip past me, headlights flicker through the trees.

Another shot fires. This one tears through my shoulder.

Pain explodes white-hot down my arm.

But I don’t fall.

Not yet.

I spot the bend ahead. A low wall. A thicket of shadow.

I kill the engine, veer left, and slide behind the wall just as the car shoots past.

I’m already moving.

Gun drawn, my jaw clenched.

They stop; realise I’ve vanished. One climbs out. He’s masked and armed.

He doesn’t get two steps before I drop him with a bullet to the chest, then slam him into the side of the car and drive my fist into his gut, over and over until he crumples.

The second one gets out, raising his weapon, too slow.

I put him down with a shot to both his kneecaps and kick the gun out of his hand.

He stares at me, wild-eyed. “Tell Nicolai,” I whisper, pressing the barrel to his forehead, “next time he sends men after me, he better send someone who doesn’t miss.”

I could end him, potrei ucciderlo, but I don’t.

Instead, I leave him there on the roadside, drenched in his own blood, body broken, eyes wild with the realisation that I let him live.

“Stai vivo solo perché voglio che tu parli.”

You’re alive only because I want you to talk.

Because tonight… as much as I craved the silence of a kill.

It was the message. I want this swine to go back and tell Nicolai, that I’m coming for him, and I’m going to erase his bloodline one by fucking one.

“Il Mietitore viene a strappargli l’anima... e trascinarlo all’inferno.”

The reaper is coming to rip out his soul... and drag him to hell.

The adrenaline still thrums through every fibre of my being, unspent and jagged. My right shoulder is burning, flesh ripped open, muscle fibres fraying with each heartbeat. A bullet grazed me, a shallow slash, but deep enough to see red, and it barely registered amid the storm of violence I unleashed on the men who dared to cross me. Not then. Only now, in the harsh clarity of after, does the pain bloom like a toxic flower.

And yeah, it fucking hurts.

I swing my leg over the Ducati and fire it up. The engine growls to life, low and vicious, mirroring the burn crawling through myveins. My jaw grits as I twist the throttle and shoot off the gravel, tearing down the winding Sicilian road like the devil’s riding pillion.

The wind slams against my face, cold shards that cut through my blood-warm sweat. My vision narrows as my pulse drums against my skull in time with the Ducati’s thunderous heartbeat. Blood seeps from the wound, warm and slick, painting my leather coat in streaks of scarlet. My helmet remains strapped behind me, visor up, because I need the raw brutality of the air, something to anchor me before I spiral into what I just did… or what I didn’t do.

Jordyn.

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