Page 73 of Savage Saint
Watching her feels invasive, but necessary. I need to know she's safe. I need to see her breathing.
She's tangled in my sheets, her strawberry blonde hair splayed across my pillow. Even through the grainy feed, I can see she's restless. She mumbles something I can't make out, her head turning sharply to the side. A nightmare. Another one.
"Nie," she whimpers.No. Her accent thicker in sleep. "Prosze..."
I quickly open a browser tab, typing the unfamiliar word into the search bar. Polish to English translation. Prosze.Please. The simple word carries a weight that settles in my chest like a stone. Not just a plea. A desperate one.
My fingers grip the edge of the desk until my knuckles turn white, the old scar tissue stretching painfully across them. Every instinct screams at me to go upstairs, to wake her from whatever hell she's revisiting in the darkness of her mind. The urge to protect her is almost overwhelming, a visceral pull that threatens to override my better judgment. But I force myself to stay put, rooted to the spot. Waking her might make it worse, might drag her deeper into the nightmare rather than freeing her from it. I've seen that happen too many times with soldiers fresh from combat zones, their eyes wild and unseeing, their bodies reacting to threats only they could perceive.
Besides, what the fuck would I even say to her? I'm not built for comfort. Never have been.
The small device sits on my desk, mocking me with its silence. I pick it up, turning it over in my palm, searching for any detail I might have missed. Nothing but the wolf symbol and a serial number so faded and scratched it's illegible.
I drop it back on the desk with a soft thud and move to the bar cart. The crystal decanter catches the dim light as I pour two fingers of whiskey into a glass. No ice. I don't need any dilution tonight.
The rim of the glass touches my lips just as my phone buzzes on the coffee table. I'm across the room in three strides, abandoning the untouched drink.
Arrow.
I swipe to answer. "Tell me."
"Check the encrypted drive," Arrow says without preamble, their voice tight. "The one I gave you for emergencies. Password is RED75WolfRising24. Red in all caps, no spaces."
I pull out the small titanium box from the floor safe beneath my desk, thumbing open the biometric lock and extracting Arrow's emergency hard drive.
When it connects to my laptop, a single folder appears on the screen. It's labelled simply: "Kowalczyk." The password takes me a minute to enter correctly, my fingers feeling strangely numb.
The first document that loads hits me like a bullet to the chest:
"Katarzyna 'Kasia' Kowalczyk, age: 23, daughter of Jerzy Kowalczyk, head of the Kowalczyk crime family in Chicago known asWilki or Chicago Wolves."
A second note follows immediately, stark black letters against white:
"Dangerous. Gun for hire, killed several high-profile targets across the world. Code name: UNKNOWN."
I click through to the attached images, my mouth going dry. The first photo shows a young Kasia, can't be more than sixteen, handling a sniper rifle with practiced ease. What strikes me isn't her youth but her expression. There isn't one. Her eyes are dead, her face a blank mask as she adjusts the scope with slender fingers.
The second image loads. A man with steel-grey eyes and a smile that doesn't reach them. Jerzy Kowalczyk. Even through a photograph, the cruelty radiates off him.
The third photo makes me pause. Kasia, at around eighteen, dressed in black tactical gear, fresh blood splattered across her face. She stands over a body, partly visible in the frame. Her expression is still empty, but there's something in her eyes now, a hollow exhaustion that's painfully familiar.
None of this matches the woman sleeping in my bed. The woman who flinched when I moved too quickly. Who curls into herself during nightmares. Who watches exits and keeps her back to walls.
Or maybe it matches perfectly.
At the bottom of the folder sits a video file. I hesitate before clicking it, some instinct warning me I won't like what I'm about to see.
The footage is grainy security camera material. Kasia moves through a dimly lit corridor, her movements fluid and precise. She can't be more than fourteen or fifteen. Two guards appear. Two guards die. Fast, efficient, merciless.
A third guard rounds the corner. Huge guy, built like a tank. They engage. Kasia fights dirty, biting, clawing, going for his eyes and throat. But the guard gets the upper hand, knocks her down hard.
Then something happens. Something that makes my stomach roll.
She stops fighting.
It's not a tactical choice. It's not playing possum. Something in her just... shuts off. The guard hits her, and she doesn't defend herself. Another blow. Another. She curls into a fetal position, taking the punishment without resistance.
A red dot appears on the guard's forehead. Then a spray of blood as he drops.
