Page 16 of Lady of Darkness
We weren’t keeping a close enough eye on her, and now she’s gone.
The guilt hurts the most, followed by unadulterated fury.
“If they hurt her, I will rip their heads off myself,” Theo grits out.
“They know better than to fuck with us,” Alaric growls. “They’re going to use her as a bargaining chip,” he adds, speeding down the road to Theo’s house.
Theo will find them. I’m confident of that fact.
But what will they have done to her?
Acadia especially–the motherfucking kings of human trafficking.
If they wanted to make her disappear, I have no doubt they could find a way. That’s the thing with their sick industry. They take people and turn them into new people–hiddenpeople.
Hopefully Alaric is right and they wouldn’t think of fucking with us.
“If they so much as touch her,” Gideon starts, his voice deep and menacing. “I will cut them from head to toe. I will take their entire network down, one person at a time. With my bare hands.”
“That’s a given,” I snarl. “They fucked with the wrong men.”
We let one of our rivals take our little monster. My nostrils flare and my throat stings when I think of what we subjected her to today.
We punished her, rode her so hard, and now… she’s gone.
I’m sure she’s terrified.
And she probably doesn’t even think we’ll come after her.
She’s wrong, of course.
We’d rip the world apart to find her–one human sack of Acadian shit at a time.
“We’ll find her,” Alaric assures me as we make eye contact in the rearview mirror. His voice is calm, but it’s tinged with unease. Still, his eyes bore into mine. He’s the only one who can sense when I’m about to go feral. And right now, I don’t even feel where my knuckles are bleeding, or how my wrist is slashed from a shard of the planter. There’s blood all over my arm and on my trousers, but I don’t care.
I would cleave the world in half to get back to her, because right now, her betrayal doesn’t matter. She is one ofus.And you do not fuck with the Lords of Darkness.
“We have to. We have no choice,” I tell him, my voice guttural. “There are about to be a lot of fucking dead bodies.”
CHAPTERSIX
Theo
I rubmy eyes and lean back in my chair, sighing. I keep replaying the texts from Harlow.
He’s in New York with Gemma. I think he was looking for me. She met him taking pictures outside of her building.
Oh God. We have to keep her safe. What if they kill her?!
Just keep her safe. Please.
Gemma was never the target.
Harlow was.
We’ve heard nothing.
The trail for Luka Jovovic is cold, and my spy for Acadia is dead.
