Page 289 of Vicious Temptation

When I open my mouth to argue, one look from her shuts me up. It’s the same look that’s ended every debate between us since I was five.

“Fine,” I mutter with an exaggerated sigh.

She smiles. “There’s my dramatic teenager.”

Leaning in, I kiss her cheek before grabbing the handle of my case. “Love you.”

“I love you more.”

I make it halfway to the door when her phone vibrates against the metal table behind me.

“Remi.”

The sudden tension in her voice roots me to the floor. I turn and find her staring at the screen, her fingers tightening around the device.

“Mamá?”

She doesn’t answer. She only lifts her eyes to mine, and every trace of color has drained from her face.

“What is it?”

Without a word, she crosses the room and holds the phone out to me..

The message is from a number I don’t recognize, and the address below it means nothing to me. But then I see the photograph.

Thiago is chained to a chair with his head hanging forward, blood covering one side of his face and soaking through his shirt. One of his hands is wrapped in a red-stained bandage, and I recognize the cuts across his skin immediately.

I did that.

A sick wave of guilt rolls through me as I stare at the damage I caused alongside injuries that weren’t there when I left him. Beneath the photograph are three words.

Come get him.

My mind struggles to process what I’m seeing, but before I can make sense of it, the weapons room door slams into the wall.

“REMI!” Matteo barrels inside, breathing hard, his shirt plastered to his back with sweat. “Thiago called me.”

I glance from Matteo to the photograph on the phone, unable to reconcile the two. “What?”

“He called me.”

“What do you mean, he called you?” I thrust the phone toward him, my hand beginning to shake. “Then who the hell sent this?”

Matteo takes one look at the screen and pales. “Fuck...” He drags a hand over his face. “They got him.”

In seconds, I’m across the room, grabbing the front of his shirt. “Who? Who has him? Matteo!”

“Helios.”

“No.” I shake my head before he can say anything else. “That’s impossible. He is Helios. Why would they take him?”

“Remi.” Catching my wrists, he forces me to look at him. “I almost hung up on him. He was driving, and I could hear sirens behind him. He said they had deployed containment teams and were coming for us.”

I search his face for any sign he misunderstood, but there’s nothing.

“He was warning us.”

My grip slips from Matteo’s shirt. “No...”