Chapter 2
MIA
The Giovanni estate wasn’t built to prove wealth like some of its neighbors. No, this monstrosity was built to intimidate. Stone facade. Iron gates. Windows tall and narrow like the house itself is permanently squinting in judgment. Even on a sunny day like this, it projects an aura of gloom.
The gates swing open as my car approaches.
Guards nod as I pass—some new, some more familiar now.
I catalog them automatically, mentally double-checking they’re the same guards I assigned to day shift.
We can’t afford to get lazy, and if I were an enemy of the pack, I’d test our strengths by trying to infiltrate the duty guards first. But every face is familiar and on the list I approved.
I drive on with a wave.
Ahead, the estate rises from the manicured grounds; a relic of a man who believed power should be carved in marble and stained with other people’s blood.
Lexi’s already begun sanding down its sharper edges.
The hedges are trimmed back. The heavy black banners that used to hang like funeral shrouds are gone. Windows are open where they were once sealed tight. Light spills across the stone like it’s reclaiming territory.
It’s an improvement, though not by much. I still don’t know how Lexi can stand to live here. Not that she spends every night inside her castle. According to my night patrol reports, she and Grey have slipped away to their secret cabin the last two nights.
They think I don’t know about it, and for forty-eight hours, I let them have their secret. But it can’t happen again. Not when both alphas are now the target of Ramsey’s enmity.
I park near the east wing and step out, the morning air crisp against my bare forearms. I grab my suit jacket from the backseat and slide into it, straightening the lapel as it settles against my blouse.
Black suit against cream. Bright red hair to match my lips and my heels.
Feminine simplicity is powerful in a way those dead relics never understood.
Inside, the foyer smells like polished wood and fresh coffee. The marble floors gleam. The chandelier overhead still drips crystal arrogance. I wonder if Lexi will get rid of it. Maybe let us take turns swatting it like a pinata when the time comes.
I turn away from it and head for the office wing.
Movement hums through the halls. Staff. Wolves.
Security rotations clicking into place with mechanical precision.
Thanks to my restructuring, it’s controlled.
But I don’t mistake control for safety. This pack is too new, its protocols too untested for me to feel safe inside it yet.
Donahue, one of Lexi’s team leaders—we’re not calling them generals anymore, thank the wolf goddess—peels off from his conversation with a duty guard near the staircase and falls into step beside me.
“Morning, boss,” he says. Cheerful. Friendly. It’s still weird that I’m in charge but weirder still that people are happy around here.
“Report.”
He hands me a tablet as we walk. “Perimeter sweep completed at oh-six-hundred. No breaches inside the boundary line.”
“And outside?”
“Patrols found two new sections of wards missing. They did a quick sweep of the vicinity. No confirmed sightings.”
I glance at him. “What aren’t you telling me?”
His expression sharpens. “A pair of scouts found a campsite in the north. Abandoned days ago, from the looks of it.”
“Any evidence who was camping?”
“A purse with Violet’s ID was found nearby.”
Merda.
Violet is Lexi’s human friend. The one who showed up on our doorstep two weeks ago, bloodied and bruised, as a message from Ramsey. Had he held her in this camp first? For how long? Was he still using it as a place to hide?
My adrenaline pumps.
Finally. Something to go on.
“Rotate patrol routes fanning out from that site,” I say. “No predictable patterns. I don’t want Ramsey mapping us while we hunt for him.”
“Already done.”
“Good.”
We pass an oil painting still hanging from Franco’s reign.
It’s the old man himself, in wolf form, standing on a hill above the gathered pack, all of them bowing to him.
I make a mental note to ask Elena to have it removed next time I see her.
The Giovanni housekeeper might work for Lexi and Grey, but the way she rules this place, you’d think we all work for her.
Even I don’t change anything inside these walls without her permission.
The meeting room doors swing open under my hand. Inside, it smells faintly of dry-erase marker and breakfast sausage.
Maps cover one wall—Indigo Hills dissected into grids and sectors like a body laid open for study. Border lines are drawn in red where we’ve fortified with additional sentries. The ward lines are another matter.
The ward lines are hex-magic-infused boundaries put into place by Franco years ago.
The full boundary runs in a complete circle around Indigo Hills’ city limits.
Or it used to. On our current maps, they’re represented by dashed lines or no lines at all in the places we’ve confirmed they’re gone.
The areas without any dash lines are already alarmingly large.
Once, the ward lines were impenetrable without an alpha’s approval to pass through them. But since Ramsey has clearly found a way to dismantle them, I won’t trust their protection until we can find another hex witch to fix the magic.
Davina might have been that witch, but she’s been missing since before Vincenzo and Dr. Severin reunited for one last attempt at creating a super-alpha using Franco’s LAG gene mutation serum. I hope she got away. No one deserved a life sentence of working for a guy like Franco. Or Dr. Severin.
This morning, Razor sits at the conference table, inhaling a breakfast sandwich like it’s a contest to see how few bites he can take before it’s all stuffed into his mouth.
He looks up when I enter. “Hey.” The word is muffled thanks to the food filling his face.
“Am I interrupting?” I ask wryly, setting my bag down and reaching for the file folder of reports sitting untouched in front of him.
He chews, swallows, groans. “Crow might be a hex witch.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This breakfast sandwich is so good; it’s gotta be magic.”
I shake my head, then glance at the report inside the folder. “This says Crow pulled a shift on patrol last night.” I glance at the empty wrapper that apparently once held a magical breakfast sandwich. “When does that asshole sleep?”
Razor’s eyes light up like I’ve just validated his conspiracy theory. “That’s my whole fucking point, dude.”
“I don’t see your report,” I say, returning to the folder’s contents.
He smirks. “That’s because I didn’t write it yet.”
I look up sharply. “Don’t be a smartass. Did your night turn up anything?”
“No hex witches that we could find,” he says, deflating as he delivers the news. “We’ve run down the usual channels. Nothing.”
Usual channels meaning interrogating any and all prisoners we have in custody, which are mostly Vincenzo’s loyalists or anyone corrupt enough to actually get convicted of a crime in this lawless town.
“Which means they’re either no longer in the city or very good at hiding.”
“Hexes have always been good at hiding,” he says.
Thanks to the wards acting like a prison cell for some of us, Razor’s not too fond of hex witches. I don’t blame him, but I also don’t make sweeping judgments of entire races of people based on the work of a few—who were probably coerced in the first place.
“We still need to find one to reinforce the wards,” I say, scanning the notes. “I don’t care if we have to drag a witch in by her designer boots to do it.”
Franco might have been an evil asshole, but I’m not above coercing either when it protects my city.
Razor snorts. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Where the hell is Dutch anyway? He’s supposed to be at this meeting that starts in…” I check the time, “…ten minutes.”
“Probably skulking around, staring at Andy like she invented oxygen.”
I grin and take a seat across from Razor, happy to roast our mutual friend in his absence. “He does look a little… domesticated these days.”
“Whipped,” Razor corrects.
“Honestly, it’s kind of gratifying to see that asshole brought to heel.”
Razor cracks up.
Razor, Crow, Dutch, and Grey have been my besties since second grade when Danny Firo tried bullying me into kissing him on the playground and ended up with two black eyes and a bloodied lip instead.
Those were from me, but the guys never wavered in having my back just in case I needed it.
We’ve been inseparable ever since. Even if they do piss me off regularly.
And after a fucked up few months, the joking and laughter with Razor go a long way to easing my stress.
Razor’s expression shifts the second my smile falters. He’s better at reading my moods than I want to admit. I’m even better at reading his.
“Hey, have you heard any updates on Violet?” he asks.
“Not in a few days,” I say. “But I’m heading to a meeting with Lexi now.”
“Let me know if—” He stops himself, jaw tightening. “Just let me know how she is.”
“I will.”
He nods once.
I don’t push. But I file it away. Just like I’ve filed away all the other times he’s asked about the human girl.
At first, I chalked it up to him being the one to catch her before her head hit the floor when she passed out in the restaurant that day.
Or the look of sheer terror on Lexi’s face when she saw her friend beaten like that.
I know Razor would go to war for Lexi, and that loyalty extends to anyone she cares about.
But I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t something more.
Before I can let myself get too distracted over untangling the chaos that is Razor Martinez’s brain, I head to Lexi’s office.