Why won’t our mate be ours?my wolf howls, angry and heartbroken.
I don’t have answers.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Royal.”Valor pulls off his earmuffs and smacks me up the backside of my head.
I lower the rifle, looking at him rather than downrange. “You said you wanted to scare the guy. I don’t think I can get any scarier than that.”
“I was thinking a little more finesse.” Valor sighs, tossing his earmuffs aside. “Come on.”
I set the rifle on the tailgate and walk with Valor downrange, the frozen ground crunching underneath our boots.
We’re barely three steps away from the truck, and Valor starts. “What are you going to do to get Leticia back?”
“What do you mean?” I pretend not to know what he’s talking about.
“Well, she’s already married in Italy. So killing the husband would be my first move.” Valor slows down his steps, falling in line with where I’m dragging my feet.
“Are you being serious? The last time we talked about her, you were pretty much in the ‘let her go’ category.” I stop and shove his shoulder with my fist.
Valor winces, a little sore from Antonella’s wolf still taking chunks out of him when she gets a chance, which is why he needed the younger brother, with the rifle, on the shooting range for this game.
“I admit that from time to time, I can make snap judgments andneed a moment to reconsider.” Valor blows out a breath, the exhale going up in a cloud of condensation in the morning light. “In your text, what did you mean when you said: she’s the one?”
“You know what I meant.” I can’t even get the words out of my mouth.
Coming to a full stop, Valor turns on the ball of his feet and looks at me. “For argument’s sake, pretend I don’t.”
Say it with your full chest.My wolf encourages me. He thinks of all the glimpses of Leticia we’ve been storing away in our memory bank where she looked especially pretty.
I shore up and meet Valor eye to eye. “Leticia D’Medici is my fated mate.”
No ifs, no ands, no buts about it.My wolf finishes.
“Then we’ll do what we need to do to get her back, but it’s not going to happen overnight.” Valor shakes his head and scratches a spot underneath his beanie. “Give me some time to figure it out. Obviously, killing the husband is the first step, but how to get a profitable deal between the D’Medicis and us that doesn’t violate the truce is a whole other problem.”
I should probably open my mouth and say I already found a way. But I don’t want to be scolded right now. I’m already hurting, and if Valor finds out what I did, he’s likely to tell me to undo it. I want my safety net in place.
Valor keeps thinking, and we walk the near mile to the target zone.
The man is struggling where he’s tied up against the backstop. Gagged, he smells like piss and fear, and I think some feces might be mixed in there as well. I wrinkle my nose as Valor has to get much closer.
“Paulie.” Valor pulls the gag off the guy, and that’s when he looks vaguely familiar.
Is that the guy who designed Valor’s remodel of the mansion?my wolf asks, cocking his head.
“Why is it that when I went into your office to get the plans for my house, my entire home was being circulated on your televisions?”
“It’s part of the agreement. We can show off remodels that we’ve —”
Valor tuts. “Now I know for a fact that’s not the case with our agreement. I specifically had the agreement modified that you wouldn’t show any of the plans or pictures from our house, including the three-dimensional sketches and computer-generated rendering.”
“I-I-I can explain,” Paulie stammers.
“There’s no need.” Valor clearly isn’t feeling the bloodlust today because that sort of behavior, putting his kid at risk, isn’t normally well tolerated. “When we leave, Royal is going to be accessing your company’s mainframe.”
Oh joy, more work for me.I bite my tongue.
“He’s going to personally scrub every inch of your computers and pull out every single project you’ve done for Clark Enterprises and our subsidiaries.” Valor smiles, and it’s scary. “Then, because I’m feeling generous, he’s going to give you a software security update. It’ll let us monitor who you work with, when you start and end projects, and who is paying for everything.”
