Savage Wolf Vow (Mafia Pack #4)

Chapter 1

MIA

Most cities keep their ugliest monsters hidden in the shadows. Indigo Hills parades them in daylight; a city of wolves in every sense of the word, unashamed of its own evil. Almost as if to prove it, the downtown skyline gleams like polished armor in the morning light.

I stand barefoot in my kitchen and admire the view from my penthouse apartment window.

It doesn’t matter how many times I see it; I’ll always love staring at this glittering city.

Straight ahead, glass towers catch the sunlight and throw it back defiantly.

To the left, brick row houses sit shoulder to shoulder like they’ve made a pact to endure together.

In the center, a thin river cuts through downtown in a slow, deliberate curve, its surface reflecting gold like even Mother Nature is draped in luxury.

In the distance, hazy mountains loom like a wall around the fortress.

Indigo Hills is a beautiful city.

And a brutal, dangerous, deadly one.

But it’s mine.

By the time I remember it, the coffee in my hands has gone lukewarm, but I don’t move to reheat it.

I like these first few minutes of stillness.

The quiet hum of traffic below. The distant wail of a siren.

The way sunlight pools across my floors and climbs the walls, catching in the gilded frames of the almost-neon abstract canvases I hung to make this place feel alive.

My friends think my place is too colorful. The first time Dutch saw it, he asked, “Where’s the brooding dungeon aesthetic from your dad’s place? And why does it look like a clown threw up in here?”

I’d rolled my eyes and handed him a beer.

I grew up in a house that feels more like a mausoleum. Dark wood. Closed curtains. Chandeliers that drip crystal tears like they were mourning something long before there was anything to mourn. And then long after there was more than enough to cry about.

My mother used to throw the windows open in defiance.

My father used to close them again after she fell asleep, especially in the winter when snow would blow across the sill.

Funny, the small things you remember when the big moments are too painful to forget.

But a rabbit hole of reminiscing will lead to more feelings than I have time to deal with today.

So, I yank my thoughts back from that precipice before I can fall over its edge.

Instead, I force myself to think about safer topics. Like the fact that, two weeks ago, this city nearly tore itself apart in the biggest war ever waged in these streets.

Even war is safer to think about than my mother.

Now, Vincenzo is dead. Franco’s legacy lies in a pile of ash. And finally—the mafia pack stands under new leadership that actually gives a damn about protecting its own.

For the first time in my entire life, Indigo Hills feels like it might have a future that isn’t carved from cruelty. My heart swells at the thought.

I love this city.

Not the mansions in the suburbs or the penthouses perched like crowns.

Not the men who mistake dominance for strength.

I love the corner bodega that stays open late.

The teachers who stretch budgets that should have broken them years ago.

The girls who walk home in pairs because they’ve learned not to trust even the busiest of streets.

I fight for them.

For the innocents.

For the version of this city that exists underneath the luxury-draped rot.

Which is why sunny, peaceful mornings like this are dangerous. Because when everything looks this calm, this untouched, it’s easy to pretend the cost wasn’t real.

It was.

Anytime I’m tempted to forget that, I think of Claire. A girl I rescued from a man who thought he had a right to her body simply because he wanted it.

Her scars are visible.

Mine are not.

Loss doesn’t leave scars the way battle does. But the invisible scars are just as painful. Except this pain lingers in empty chairs at the table and rooms so quiet, they echo with it.

It turns strong men into ghosts of themselves. Men like my father.

Sometimes I worry that no amount of peace in the future can make up for the past. But I have to try.

The knock at my door pulls me from my thoughts.

Two raps. Pause. One more.

Dad.

Out of pure habit, I check the security monitor just to be sure. Not that Ramsey would know my father’s special knock. Nor would he bother trying to impersonate anyone but himself. The prick has too big an ego for that.

Once, I found that ego weirdly endearing. Now… fuck him.

As predicted, I open the door to find Charlie Reyes standing in the hall with a bakery box in one hand and a tentative smile on his freckled face.

He looks older lately.

Maybe it’s the way his shoulders aren’t quite so stiff anymore. Or his relaxed posture. He’s not weaker. Just… less braced.

I pretend to scowl.

“Morning,” he says.

“You’re late,” I say.

“It’s seven-thirty on the nose.”

“Exactly.”

His mouth twitches. “That’s right. You used to be up at five.”

“I still am.”

“Well, I’m not. So, seven-thirty will have to do.”

“Retirement has changed you already,” I say, and he snorts.

I step aside and let him in.

He sets the bakery box on my kitchen island and looks around as if reacquainting himself with the space.

He probably is. I can’t remember the last time he came here.

When he was a general, he stayed away to keep Vincenzo from coming around.

Lately, though, I’ve been the one too busy running a pack to spend time.

Or maybe I just can’t bring myself to go to that house anymore. Too many painful memories inside it.

Guilt tugs at me, but I shove it away.

“I forgot how much light you get up here,” he says, blinking at the view.

When my mother got sick, he closed every curtain in the house. At first, it was to keep the light from bothering her eyes. After she died, it was because he couldn’t bear the way it illuminated what was missing.

“Is that a problem?” I ask.

“Of course not.” I watch as his gaze swings from the window and catches on the large canvas hanging above the fireplace. Where bright streaks of cobalt blue are run through with neon yellow paint slashes. “It’s… cheerful.”

I arch a brow. “Careful.”

He huffs a quiet laugh and opens the box he brought. The scent of sugar and fried dough fills the air. Cannoli. My favorite.

He pretends not to watch for my reaction, but I know seeing me smile makes him feel better. Even if it is over something as simple as a cannolo.

We move around each other with a familiarity that feels comforting.

He gets us both a plate. I pour him coffee.

Black. No sugar. He snags three napkins.

One for me, two for him. We sit at the small table by the windows where the sunlight warms my arms and legs.

The city stretches beneath us, steady and stubborn.

For a few minutes, we just eat.

It’s unhurried.

I try to soak it in, the ease of being able to sit here with my dad. No phone dinging, demanding he report to Vincenzo. No crisis for me to solve after one of my idiot friends pissed off the wrong person. No tension between us that we’re fighting on opposing sides.

It won’t last, this peace. It can’t. Not with Ramsey still out there gunning for us. But I try not to think about that right now. Just for a moment, life feels simple.

“So,” he begins. “It’s been two weeks, and things are still quiet.”

There goes the simplicity. “Yes.”

He studies me over the rim of his mug. “That’s good.”

I shrug. “It’s temporary.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

He sighs softly. “You don’t always have to assume the worst.”

“Ramsey is still out there,” I say, because I don’t do gentle delusion. “He didn’t vanish into thin air. And he wouldn’t wait this long to make his move unless he had an actual plan.”

Dad sets his mug down. “Lexi and Grey are handling it.”

“Of course they are.” For two weeks, I’ve sat in non-stop meetings, brainstorming ideas about how we can get to Ramsey first or reading patrol reports as our searches for him come up empty.

“And you,” my dad adds. It comes out almost like a question.

“I always handle it.”

His gaze softens in a way that makes something in my chest tighten. “How are you sleeping?” he asks.

“Fine,” I lie. “And you?”

He considers that. “Not bad.”

He says it like it’s an achievement. It probably is.

These last years under Vincenzo’s thumb have taken their toll. I can see the exhaustion behind his gaze. But I can also see relief and, for the first time in years, the faintest glimmer of hope for the future.

“I was thinking,” he says, fingers tracing the rim of his mug, “about selling the house.”

I blink.

The words hang between us.

The house. The one with the heavy drapes and lavender ghosts. The one where my mother’s laugh still echoes. The one I refuse to visit too often.

“Why?” I ask, though I already know.

“I wonder if it’s time to leave the past behind,” he admits quietly.

As if the past is something you can pack into boxes. As if a bond like theirs doesn’t leave hooks in the walls, the floorboards, the body.

I look out the window to the street below. This city moves forward whether we’re ready or not. It’s a survivor that way. So is my dad, even if he doesn’t know it.

“I don’t want you anchored to something that hurts you,” I say, turning back to him even though I feel awkward being so vulnerable. We haven’t had many honest moments between us these past years. We were too busy surviving.

Now, his gaze lifts to mine, a softness in his eyes.

“She would be so proud of who you’ve become,” he says, and the words prick at my control.

I look away, forcing myself to keep it together. Silence settles again, heavier this time, but not sharp.

“I failed her,” he adds sadly.

The admission isn’t new. Neither is the guilt behind it.

“You loved her,” I reply.

He nods. “With everything I had.”

“And the system failed her.”

He flinches at the sharpness in my voice. Or maybe it’s his own guilt again. The pack’s policies. The corruption. The restrictions that left women like my mother waiting for care that never came.

He enforced those policies.

He didn’t create them. But he carried them out.

But then my mother died, and the broken mate bond nearly killed him.

Not metaphorically.

Physically.

I remember the way he collapsed the night we lost her.

The way the pack doctors whispered in the corner together like they were already preparing for a second funeral.

That was the part I never got over. Not the grief.

Grief was honest. But the way the bond had reached inside him and decided whether he lived or died.

He survived only because Vincenzo’s wolf commanded it—a sacred dominance gifted to alphas that might as well be hex magic, considering how powerful it is. But survival and living aren’t the same thing.

“I should have fought harder,” he says.

“You’re fighting now,” I remind him.

Since her death, his protection of me has been quiet but unflinching.

This apartment—bought in cash he gave me, listed in my name only—is proof of that.

And more recently, when it mattered most, he broke with Vincenzo and came to our side.

It’s the biggest reason we’ve been able to rebuild our relationship these past few weeks.

“I’m proud of you, too,” he says after a moment.

“For what?”

“For choosing to protect this city instead of rule it.”

I glance at the skyline again.

“I don’t want to rule anything,” I say honestly.

“What do you want?” he asks, and the openness in his expression makes it clear he’s genuinely asking.

I bite my lip, thinking before I answer. But I don’t have to think hard. I want what I’ve always wanted. “I want the girls in this city to grow up without needing to learn how to fight off predators before they learn algebra.”

His expression tightens. “You’ve become stronger than I ever was,” he says quietly.

I don’t argue.

Outside, Indigo Hills gleams in the morning light.

Ramsey is still out there. Another storm is coming. But for a few stolen minutes in a sunlit apartment carved out of a city that nearly destroyed itself—

I let myself love it.

And I let myself love the man who survived losing everything in service to it.

But I remind myself of a vow I made a long time ago: I will do whatever it takes to remain unbound by fate’s will.

Whatever mate I choose, whoever I love, it will be my choice alone.

Because I have no intention of ending up like him.