THEY MAKE MONSTERS (COVETED KINGDOM #3)

1. ~Nico~

1

~Nico~

My head was pounding as I came to.

I blinked past my blurry vision and struggled to get my bearings.

A burning pain in my skull drew my attention, and I looked to see my head was pushed against the driver’s window, blood slicked across the glass.

I winced and pushed into an upright position, struggling to swallow down an intense wave of nausea that rose up from that small movement alone.

I brought my hand to the left side of my head and it came away drenched in blood.

Head trauma. Just what I didn’t need.

A groan caught my attention, and I turned, a surge of adrenaline ripping through me when I found Caterina slumped in the passenger seat, her emerald eyes barely open, her face all cut up and bruised. Her seatbelt had sliced into her neck, and it was bleeding down to her shoulder.

I went to reach for her, only for a shocking spike of pain to shoot through my right arm. My shoulder specifically.

Fighting to get control of everything, of the situation, it took me a few moments to realize that it was dislocated.

I looked out at Caterina in a battered state, my gut twisting, then I took in what had happened.

I remembered Angelo running us off the road.

Now we were at the bottom of the ravine we’d been driving alongside up above.

The car had landed upright, but it was mangled to shit, the bumper completely fucked and both our doors shot to hell. I tried mine just in case, but the metal was twisted and warped, just like Caterina’s and it wouldn’t open.

I managed to pull off my seatbelt and I glanced behind me, the rearview mirror smashed so unable to help me there, and I looked to see tree branches driven through both of the back windows and the rear.

The only way out was through the windshield.

I jolted as a bullet winged my mirror.

Angelo was still active.

Another bullet ripped through the back window, but its trajectory was obstructed by one of the mammoth tree branches, the thing thankfully embedding in it instead of where it had been headed—right for Caterina.

That luck would run out soon enough, though.

We needed to get out of here.

We were sitting ducks right now.

I finagled Caterina’s seatbelt, having to twist to manage it with my good left arm, and she hissed as when I pulled it free, it aggravated her neck injury.

“So sorry, principessa .” I studied the wound quickly. “It’s gonna be okay. It’s not too deep. Just a couple of stitches, I promise. We need to get out of here. Can you work with me? Are you mobile?”

Another bullet shot through the car this time and I jerked back just in time before it drove into the dash, narrowly missing me.

The screeching of tires caught my attention then.

The gunfire ceased.

A scream sounded, followed by hefty thuds and shouts of furor, before I heard the screeching again.

What was happening?

“Nico… something’s wrong,” Caterina whimpered.

“What? What is it?” I asked, urgency taking me over as I scanned her.

Her legs were crossed, her hand right beside them.

And as she removed it and she grunted with effort to uncross her legs, my breath caught in my throat as I saw blood leaking from beneath her black skirt and down her thighs. She turned her hand over and it was covered.

Fuck.

“No. No. No. No.”

Tears welled in her eyes.

I shifted my weight and angled my right shoulder against my seat, then I roared as I forced it back into place. I couldn’t do much without it in working order.

I forced myself forward, despite my head swimming in protest, searching the floor for my gun.

It was nowhere to be found. It could’ve ended up in the backseat, but with all the debris, finding it would be near impossible.

I instinctively reached for my backup, but it wasn’t there, and I remembered giving it to Julian as an extra precaution. Fuck it.

“I can’t find mine either,” Caterina told me. Then she lurched, clutching her belly.

“Hold on,” I told her frantically. “We’ll get you to a hospital ASAP. Just… just hold on.”

She murmured something in response.

I pulled off my leather jacket and draped it over her face and upper body. “Stay under here for a moment,” I told her.

And then I reared back and smashed my boot into the windshield.

It didn’t give way, pain radiating right down my fucking leg as a result.

Caterina’s whimpers escalated, and it collided with the adrenaline and pain coursing through me like utter fucking madness, and I just kept fucking kicking.

Over and over and fucking over.

I finally made a dent and it cracked.

I stabbed at it with my boot and I was able to breach it, glass raining down and making me hiss as a couple of shards cut right through my jeans and into my calf.

I kicked out as much of the glass as I could, enough for me to get us through without sustaining significant damage.

“Come on,” I told Caterina, before I hauled her up against me, my right arm screaming at me in protest. It could fuck the hell off. She needed medical attention and she needed it now.

“Argh!” I yelled out into the night as I dug the fingers of my free hand into the sleek metal of the car as I dragged us through onto the hood.

When I’d managed it, I pulled my jacket down to Caterina’s chest, then carried her off it, my boots crunching in the brush and dirt as I moved us away from the car.

I laid her down on the grass, keeping her covered in my jacket because she was shaking. She gazed out at me, a grimace twisting her beautiful features. She was barely lucid.

“Nico,” she breathed, reaching out to me.

I crouched down beside her and took her hand as I reached into the front pocket of my pants for my phone with the other. “We’re out. We’re okay,” I told her, forcing a comforting smile that I really didn’t feel.

That got worse when I pulled my phone out to find it smashed to shit.

I went to reach for her to see if hers in her blazer pocket had survived the crash, but then a rush of movement drew my attention.

I swung my head toward my left and sprung to my feet.

Had that fucker made his way down here intending to finish us off?

Was that why he’d stopped firing?

“Nico!”

I frowned.

Definitely not Angelo’s voice.

“Rina!”

There was only one person who called Caterina by that name.

“Levi!” I called back. “Over here!”

A bright light filled my vision a few moments later and then we were bathed in the glow of two flashlights just as Levi came into view, bursting through the trees along with a bigger guy in a red Henley shirt I knew from my research on him to be Mason Hall.

As soon as Levi took us in, specifically Caterina, he choked and shoved a shaky hand through his black, curly hair. “Motherfucker,” he said, rushing up to me with Mason just behind him.

Mason told me calmly and collectedly, “We ran them off, dropped two on the road. Our people are on their way to sanitize the area.”

“Them? Angelo wasn’t alone?”

“No. He had five others with him in the back of that thing. Military types, it looked like.”

Fuck.

“Angelo?” Levi asked, eyeing me worriedly. “Angelo Simone? That predatory fucker who had his sights set on Rina?”

“The very one,” I grunted.

Levi crouched down beside Caterina just as I did, on the opposite side.

He jolted when he lifted my jacket, instinctively trying to determine how badly she was hurt, and saw beneath. His eyes met mine. “She’s… is she pregnant?”

I nodded, all I could manage as ice rolled through my veins with him putting the words out there, given the current state of her.

He looked at Mason, something passing between them. Mason winced and shoved a hand through his short, wavy brown hair.

“We’ve called for help. Paramedics will be here in minutes,” he told me. “But we need to get her up to the main road. There are steps over to the west side that lead back up there.”

“Levi?” Caterina groaned. “What’s… how?”

He reached out and stroked her hair, but pulled back when he saw me looking.

I couldn’t give two shits right now, honestly. All that mattered was her and our baby.

I gathered her into my arms and staggered to my feet, Levi staying close. He could obviously see what a fucked-up state I was in too, so he was there to back me up. He knew better than to pull her from me, though.

Mason led the way through the brush and heavy foliage with his flashlight illuminating the way, toward the steps he’d referenced, and Levi answered Caterina’s question, telling her, “That motherfucker ran you off the road on the outskirts of our territory. I have eyes this far out and with you slated to come to us tonight, I was keeping an extra look out. We saw what was happening and headed out here.”

“Oh,” she murmured. “Good.”

Levi grimaced, noting just how out of it that she was.

“Nico?” she rasped.

“Yes, I’m here, principessa, ” I said, gazing down at her in my arms.

“You… the guys… I love you. I love you… okay?”

My heart squeezed painfully in my chest.

“We love you too. That means you don’t get to leave us. Ever. Do you hear me?”

Tears sprung to her eyes. “I’m… too… tired. So… tired. Sorry… so sorry, Nico.”

Levi caught my eye, his emotion bleeding into mine.

I grimaced as I adjusted Caterina in my hold so I could stroke her face. “Stay with me, just stay with me. We’re getting help. Any moment now.”

Her tears rolled down her cheeks and her glazed eyes met mine, so much pain in them that it ripped me apart right where I stood. “She’s hurt. She’s… hurt… bad.”

“We’ll see to her. We’ll help our baby. Almost there.”

The last part wasn’t true. Levi had said that we were at the border of Stonewell, which I knew to be a ways from a hospital. And we hadn’t even made it to the fucking steps yet.

Levi spun toward Mason. “There isn’t time.”

Mason nodded, giving him the go ahead about something.

In the next second, Levi was pulling out his phone and dialing. “I need help. It’s Rina. She’s hurt. I’ll fill you in later. For now, I need a medevac. I’ll send you the coordinates. Yeah. How quickly? Okay, good. Thanks, Dad.” He hung up and told me, “I’ve got a chopper coming in. Ten minutes.”

I’d barely taken in his words when Caterina cried that she loved me again, before her eyes closed and she slipped away.

“No!” I roared out into the night. “No, you don’t get to leave us! Caterina! Caterina!”