Page 246 of Untamed

“I don’t have one.” My eyes narrow. “Yet,” he adds quickly, voice hitching.

I let the tension hang, sharp and suffocating, then sit back. Crack my knuckles one by one beneath the table.

“You have seventy-two hours.” My voice is quiet, measured and final. “After that, I start pulling fingernails.”

He opens his mouth and then closes it again. “There’s something else,” he says, barely above a whisper.

“Spit it out.”

“Nicolai…” His eyes dart around the room. “He’s not just watching the girl anymore. He’s planning something public. Something bigger.” He takes a pull from his cigarette. “He doesn’t want her dead, Ares. He wants herowned.”

The word lands like a slow detonation.

Owned.

My hands curl into fists under the table. Heat rises in my throat, thick and bitter.

He thinks she’s still within reach. Still, something he can take and keep and twist into submission.

No. I rise without a word, the chair scraping back slow and deliberate.

Gallo stays frozen, eyes wide.

“Do not make me come back here.”

And then I walk out, because if I stay one second longer, I won’t leave anything behind but a corpse and ash.

The street outside is slick from a recent rain, puddles catching the dull glow of sodium lights like blood smears under amberglass. I don’t head straight for the car. I walk. Let the cold air cut through the heat simmering under my skin.

Owned.

The word doesn’t leave my head. Not because it scares me. Because it dares to exist at all.

Nicolai thinks she’s property. Something he can put in a dress and chain to a chair. Smile at while carving up the city behind closed doors. He doesn’t understand yet, that kind of mistake doesn’t come with a second warning.

I reach the car. Vincenzo is waiting by the door, hand resting on the butt of the pistol holstered at his ribs.

“Problem?”

“Yeah,” I mutter, getting in. “And it’s about to become his.”

He shuts the door behind me. I don’t speak again until we’re halfway down the road, the engine growling low as the city peels past us in streaks of shadow and concrete.

“Contact Leo at the docks,” I say. “Tell him I want a name by morning. Anyone who’s moved money for Nicolai in the last six months. Shell companies, fake IDs, unmarked vehicles, everything.”

Vincenzo nods once, pulling out his phone.

“And get a crew on standby,” I add, watching the streetlights flash like gunfire across the windows. "Somebody’s going to bleed for this."

I thumb the screen of my phone again, pulling up the tracking feed.

Still there, still steady. She’s safe, for now.

But safety is temporary, and vengeance…vengeance is permanent.

By the time I reach the villa, the sky’s just starting to bleed open at the edges. That soft, ash-grey light that doesn’t know if it wants to be night or morning.

The guards at the gate straighten when they see me, but they don’t speak. They don’t dare.

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