Page 78 of Unleashed
“No! No! No!”
Isaia’s arm is suddenly around me, but I shove at his chest, panic clawing higher. “No! Don’t touch me, I can’t…I can’t breathe.” My chest is tight, my vision swimming, black dots at the edges.
“He sewed her mouth shut!” My voice breaks, high and strangled. “He sewed her fucking mouth shut like she’s nothing. Like she’s some…some doll.” My words collapse into another sob, my whole body shaking.
“Baby, we’ll get her back.”
I’m choking on terror, drowning in it, my hands fisting Isaia’s shirt. “Please. We have to do something. We have to help her.”
Isaia cups the back of my head, forcing me to meet his gaze. “Listen to me, baby girl. We’ll get her out. I swear to God, we’ll get her out.”
I sob, my ribs, my chest, every bone in my body splintering. “We don’t even know where to start looking for her.”
“I do.” Isaia’s hands move to my cheeks, his eyes dark and wild and frantic. “I knowexactlywhere she is.”
Chapter 26
ISAIA
“Melanie.”
The name tastes like metal as I spit it into Alexius’ office and watch the temperature of the room drop.
No one sits. The six of us stand in a loose circle—me, Alexius behind his desk, Maximo at my shoulder like a blade, Nicoli prowling by the windows, Caelian propped against the bookcase with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. The office smells like leather and bourbon and fresh threat.
I hold up the phone. “The man in the video is her father.”
Maximo’s eyes twitch. “You sure?”
“I’m sure. He looks older, gaunter, but it’s him.”
Alexius sets the bourbon down in front of me like he’s handing over scripture. The glass catches the lamplight, and for a second, the room looks like it’s burning from within. “This is revenge for his daughter’s murder,” he says, quiet and certain.
“A murder he blames on us. On me.” The words scrape. “It makes sense now why every verse was about vengeance.Punishment owed to the Troublemaker. It’s aimed at me. He wants vengeance because I took something from him.”
“All you did was fuck his daughter.” Caelian finally lights the cigarette. “You didn’t take shit from him. None of us did.”
“Melanie was a target because she was involved with me,” I say, blunt as a blade. “Indirectly, her death is one hundred percent my fucking fault.”
Caelian drops onto the couch, settling back like we don’t have a crisis on our hands. “You and Melanie weren’t a thing, Isaia. You were fuck buddies—called her up when you wanted to get off, and she showed. She wasn’t a Del Rossa wife. She wasn’t supposed to be a target for Micah.”
“Nevertheless,” I say. “She ended up being one, and that’s what this sick bastard wants vengeance for.”
The memory slithers in—Melanie’s dead body dangling from the second-story railing. Eyes gouged out. Her body covered in blood. I had a key to her apartment back then, and when she hadn’t returned my calls, I went to check on her. It’s not like we were in any type of relationship. It was sex. When I needed my dick sucked by someone not on our payroll, I called her. When she needed to get railed by a man who could get her off hard and fast, she came over. But there were no feelings involved, from either of us.
That day, walking into her apartment, white walls and floors covered in red, so much guilt slapped me in the face, I could hardly take a breath. By the time my brothers came, I was halfway through a bottle of bourbon, sitting on the spiral staircase, thinking I could drink it all away. It was just anotherday in the world of the Dark Sovereign that made me realize how much I hated it all.
Nothing got close to me without ending up tainted, or worse, dead. It’s the reason I fought so hard against my feelings for Everly in the beginning, and when I failed by falling head-over-heels for her, I did everything in my power to protect her, to keep her mine. Hence, our private island getaway. It’s also why Nicoli so easily persuaded me to stay away from her when we found out she was pregnant.
All I wanted was for my world not to touch my woman. Now, look where we are.
Nicoli moves like a coiled animal by the window, one shoulder brushing the glass. “But why would—” He looks at me as if I’m the missing piece of an ugly puzzle. “What’s this fucker’s name again?”
“Sean Watson.”
“Why would Sean Watson target wives of associates, and then Everly’s friend? Why not come for our women?”
“Because our wives are armored,” Alexius says. He studies me over the rim of his glass. “Security detail, gates, household staff, constant eyes. You don’t get to them without drawing immediate, brutal attention. This shithead can’t come within fifty feet of them without triggering an apocalypse. So, he hits the people close to us who don’t live under our roof.”
