Savage Queen (The Dark Elite 3)

I’m not quite sure when it happened, but the tension that once existed between all of us when it came to Grace has been slowly fading away. Maybe it’s because the ups and downs of our lives lately, the deaths and betrayals, have highlighted what’s really important.

All of us care about this woman. All of us are falling in love with her.

She’s what’s most important.

And if it takes all four of us to make her happy? To keep her safe? So be it.

“What happens now?” Grace asks suddenly, glancing from me to Lucas before looking up to the front seats. “We know what my mother wants now. So what do we do with that? Where do we go from here?”

No one responds, and silence fills the car as we all contemplate the same thing. Just because we met with Camilla once doesn’t mean that it’s all over, and as much as I’d like to think her vow to destroy the Novak Syndicate was an empty promise, we all know what she’s capable of. It’d be foolish of us to think that we could go into this and come out without shedding blood.

Hale keeps his gaze trained on the dark road ahead of us. His next words are the calm before the storm, deceptively simple.

“Now, we go to war.”

13

Grace

By the silence of the house, you wouldn’t think that there’s a war going on around us.

But I’ve been part of this world long enough to know that war isn’t always about open gunfire or bullets flying. Sometimes it slinks through the shadows, silent and deadly. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that this was simply another normal, routine day.

But I do know better.

Hale hasn’t been around as much in the past week—it’s only been one week since we met with Camilla, and yet it feels like months. There’s so much to sort out, to plan and take care of, and it’s keeping him away from the house more than usual. Not that he used to be around all the time, but now that he’s not…

I miss him. I never thought the day would come when I would say I miss Hale Novak, but that’s the only thing I can credit the aching emptiness inside my chest to. I know that his first responsibility is syndicate business, and what he’s doing right now is only to keep everyone, including myself, safe. But I’m selfish.

The selfish part of me wants to go back to the way things were before Camilla’s betrayal was revealed.

I feel like my life is divided into a series of “befores.”

Before Dad and I left Chicago.

Before my disastrous wedding.

Before I was kidnapped.

Before my mother turned out to be a psychopathic killer.

Before our meeting.

The men all agreed that I handled the meeting well, but it’s hard for me to accept that. Everything about that conversation with my mother felt wrong.

The moments she and I spent face-to-face are seared into my mind like a brand. I can go over it in my head, second by second, every word and every breath that was exchanged forever imprinted in my memory.

“Grace. Hey, Grace.” Lucas’s quiet voice pulls me out of my thoughts. “You there?”

“Oh, sorry,” I stutter, blinking. Shit. “I was just…”

I don’t finish the sentence, because I don’t even know what I was doing. I’m sitting on a couch in the living room with a book open in front of me, but I could hardly call what I’ve been doing “reading.” I haven’t turned a page in over five minutes, and I’ve been staring so hard at the words that they all sort of blurred together into a gray mass.

I can’t focus on anything. Not with the threat of my mother looming over me like a dark cloud. Not with worry for the men weighing heavy on my heart.

“Are you okay?” Lucas asks, tone softening. He sits down next to me, plucking the book from my hand before wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

I let him pull me back against the soft cushions of the couch, leaning into his embrace as I rest a hand on his stomach.