Page 16 of Savage Saint

She’s less focused. Paler. Still, Genesis lifts her hands, and I close the first cuff around her wrist. The second follows closely after. Her bound hands fall into her lap, and the words good girl are on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t say it.

I’m impressed by her composure. Won’t deny it.

Grown men twice her size beg after seeing the patch on my back. Not her. While men bargain with money, family connections—anything they think might save them, she sits like a pretty, scared doll.

I respect her for it. The way she looks at me.

Her gaze travels over the blood drying across my hands that just cuffed her, slowly moving up my arm, catching my cut before reaching my face. Clinical. Precise. She’s memorizing me, trying to make sense of the way her shift ended.

Genesis looks like someone who’s been up all night. Exhaustion is clear to see, and it doesn’t stop me from lowering my face to hers until we’re nose to nose. Moreover, she inhales the second I move into her personal space.

Deep. Nostrils slightly flaring. Three times, she does this while her brows furrow and her face angles down a bit.

She’s scenting my cologne.

Of all the things this woman can focus on right now…

Definitely shock, and that could make her a liability.

This isn’t a date or a hookup: Genesis Romero needs to remember that.

I move my mouth to her ear and let my lips skim the edge. “If he dies, my little Pocket Doc…I’ll put a star between your pretty eyes.”

Her entire body goes rigid. For a second, nothing happens.

Then she blinks twice as I pull back, eyes losing focus before slumping in her seat.

“Fucking hell,” I grit out, righting her when her head tips to the side. Genesis is limp, her breathing still rough, and I press two fingers against the side of her neck. Her pulse is fast, yet she fainted. Surprised she lasted this long. Exhaling roughly, I stare down at her for a second before shifting her carefully in the seat. “Rest now, Genesis. You’re going to need it.”

My brother needs care. I kidnapped a nurse.

This is a debt I’ll take full responsibility for.

Closing the door, I go around and get in, flooring it out of the parking lot. The guard is still by the ER’s main entrance, watching us, hands at his side as I drive by him. Everything is silent as I push Thiago’s rental through backroads toward the compound.

It’s been too long already, but as I tap my phone screen with the hand not on the wheel, I find no missed calls. That’s a good sign. Rizos would call if something went wrong—he knows what would happen if they fail me.

I’m not a forgiving man.

The sun crests over the buildings and houses I pass; Puerto Plata is waking up all around us, and already, the humid air causes a few beads of sweat to roll down my neck. Delivery trucks and early workers begin appearing on the roads—a few bodegas are playing music as they prepare for another long day of serving their customers.

I pass a woman doing what looks to be the walk of shame.

I pass a church with someone sweeping the front steps even though their service doesn’t begin for hours.

Normal. Everything and everyone around me is acting fucking normal while my little brother is bleeding back on Doc’s table, waiting for me.

My hands tighten on the steering; I exhale roughly as I take a sharp right turn into a narrow street. The area is full of houses—the rooflines all connect—and the few people already outside starting chores or talking to a neighbor nod as I pass.

This area is all Royal Bastards property. Only those connected to the club can live here.

Moreover, the deeper I drive through the sector, the more it opens into a stretch of land thick with vegetation until reaching the last row of homes, where the one at the center sits unoccupied, and the only ones with a code carry our brotherhood’s patch.

We built it this way for a reason. Unless you knew where the compound sits, you’d drive past this house without knowing it’s the first gate.

The first entrance to the compound opens for me after I punch in the code, and I drive through, flooring it past the driveway and straight onto a dirt road that leads deeper into wild terrain. There are trees and vegetation—dense cover that makes it impossible for most to see us from above for a quarter mile—and then it opens into the center of the Royal Bastards' territory.

A clubhouse.