Page 164 of Healed

“Come with me, brother,” he said quietly. “Urgently.”

I looked at Gabriella sleeping next to me, her face so calm and serene in her sleep, and gently rolled her away so I could slip out of bed unnoticed.

I pulled on my jeans and my cut, not bothering with a shirt underneath, and slipped out of the door, careful not to wake her up.

“What’s up?” I asked, not liking the grim look on Dante’s face.

“We’ve had a report of a body.”

“Another one?” I asked with a flinch.

We had been getting reports of more and more bodies as of late. All of them women, all of them showing evidence of sexual assault and violent murder.

All of them pointing to Nico as the culprit.

He wasn’t exactly subtle, considering each of them had a message. It had taken us a while to find the first one—it had only been found in the morgue when she was being examined. Nico had shoved a note inside her genitals, essentially blaming Gabriella for leaving her behind.

After that, we made sure we checked each and every one of them, and it was always the same message.

One was stuffed inside the victim’s mouth. Another carved into her stomach. One had it written on her stomach in blood. But the message was always blaming Gabriella for having not saved them.

“Yeah, another one,” Dante said.

“So why does it need me?”

Dante looked at me, and I already knew what he was going to say.

“We think it’s Michelle.”

I swore under my breath.

“It gets worse,” Dante said, his jaw tight.

“Of course it does.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Hit me.”

“He’s left her in the park.”

“Which park?” I demanded, once again already knowing the answer.

“The neutral one. Where we met Gabriella for the first time.”

“Of fucking course,” I sighed.

Nico was making this more and more personal every fucking day.

“Shit,” I hissed as we pulled into the park and saw the state of the body waiting for us.

Thank fuck it was night, because this would traumatise the hardest of men, never mind fucking kids.

“That’s one fucked up biker,” Ant agreed, his face greening at the edges.

This park was in neutral territory, so there was no concern about us all being here. We could focus on the matter at hand, rather than concerning ourselves with territorial matters.

And focus we were, because Nico had made sure that Michelle’s body was centre stage.

Her arms were attached to the monkey bars, as wide as he could stretch them. Her head was flopped onto her chest, a lump in her neck clearly showing that it was broken.

“He ain’t no biker,” Doc spat. “He’s a cunt that rides. No biker would do this to a woman. It ain’t our way.”