Page 71 of Beautiful Savage
The words land like bullets. Three shots to the chest.
"They took her."
Everything in me goes still. Then moves. I'm on my feet before the thought finishes.
"Stay at the cottage. Don't call local PD yet. I'll call you back."
I end it. I'm already moving. Apartment door open behind me. Down the back service stair in fifteen seconds, taking them three at a time. Across the back hallway. Out the back door. Into the loading dock.
My truck sits ready, tail-first.
I climb in. Start the engine.
But I don't pull out.
The engine rumbles while I sit at the wheel, loading dock lights cutting across the dashboard. My body screams to drive. To Pristine, to the cottage, anywhere she might be. Motion is what my body knows. Motion is escape from feeling.
But there's nowhere to drive. Not yet. I don't know where she is. Driving north gets me an empty cottage. Driving south gets me to Coral Gables where the colonel won't be. He'll be wherever his people are holding her. Driving anywhere alone burns the only resource I haven't touched.
I've worked this alone for nine years, never asking for help from anybody, not even Logan.
That changes now.
Logan picks up on the second ring. He knows I don't call. Me calling means the world is ending.
The briefing spills out in two minutes. Logan has known the name for weeks — the whole family has, since the dinner-table arguments — but none of them have ever known why. Now he gets all of it: Nine years of hunting the colonel. Six dead women in 2017, raped and then murdered. The file. The dossier ready for release to the press through my JAG contact. The journalist at the Atlantic who's been prepped. The operation I'd planned, stood down the day they broke into the cottage and broke her father. His call seven minutes ago.
Just facts. Logan listens without interrupting. Then silence.
The next words feel like pulling glass from my throat.
"I need the family." My voice cracks on it. "Not just security. The family. Adrian and Marisol and Gabriel and Isa and you and Nico and whatever Rosetti cousins can be activated from New York and Chicago."
My hands shake. Not from violence this time, but from the terrifying act of admitting I need them.
"I should have asked three months ago. Should have asked when Erika called in March. Should have asked when I first met her. Should have asked in 2017 when I started building the file." My voice keeps going whether I want it to or not. "I've been the man who doesn't ask for nine years, and my pride put her in a chair tonight."
Now the final piece, the hardest to say: "I'm asking now. Help me. Please."
Logan doesn't respond for two seconds. Doesn't ask why he wasn't told earlier. His response cuts straight to action.
"I'll gather everyone. Adrian first, he's in the building. Marisol's twenty minutes away, and Nico's with her. Isa's downstairs, she'll drop everything to step up. Emilio Rosetti in New York might be useful too, I'll brief him cold, you don't needto be on that call. Meet back at my office in twenty minutes. Get your operational kit ready."
Then softer, the brotherhood bleeding through: "You're not carrying this alone anymore, brother. We've been waiting nine years for you to let us in."
I end the call. Sit in the truck with the engine running. The tremor that started Saturday is worse now. My hands won't stop shaking. Nine years of not-asking, and the bill comes due all at once.
Finally, I kill the engine, step out, and walk back into La Sirena.
Up to Logan's office on the mezzanine. The room waits empty. Dark.
I flip the lights. Sit at the table.
And wait for the family I finally admitted I need.
Logan arrives first, laptop under his arm like a weapon. Sets it on the table, pulls out his phone. "Emilio's patching in now."
The connection crackles. A voice I don't know, dry and focused: "Logan's briefed me. I'm at my keyboard. Starting the cyber work now. Full mobilization."
