Page 71 of Vengeance

Before he could process what had just happened, she turned back toward Dante. "They're gone,” she lied.

Dante looked irritated. "I don't miss my targets," he insisted. “They have to be here.”

"You missed this time,” she said.

"They'll circle back, and we'll find them." She placed one hand on Dante's arm.

"We're wasting daylight,” he said as he studied the woods one last time. Vengeance forced himself not to blink.

“What about the cabin?” she asked.

“Let it finish burning to the ground,” Dante said. Vengeance looked back at the cabin as flames rolled through it. The porch disappeared behind fire, and he knew that the place where they had found two months of peace was gone. Chloe silently cried beside him, because it had been home for her too.

They watched as the helicopters lifted off minutes later, and the search teams withdrew. The woods became quiet once more except for the sound of the cabin crashing down from the fire. Neither Vengeance nor Chloe moved until the last rotor faded into the mountains. Finally, Vengeance crawled from the freezing creek. His body shook uncontrollably as Chloe stumbled after him. They collapsed against a fallen log, soaked to the bone.

She looked back toward the burning cabin. "They found us."

"They did,” he breathed.

“Was Bowie right? Do you think that there’s a leak in the Royal Bastards?” she asked.

“No,” he said. Vengeance stared into the smoke rising above the trees. "That woman with Dante was my mother." Chloe sucked in her breath.

“So she betrayed us?” Chloe asked.

He slowly shook his head. “She looked right at us, and could have betrayed us, but she didn’t,” he said. "And she lied to Dante."

Confusion filled Chloe's face. "Why do you think she did that?" He replayed her blue eyes through his mind. The warning she had given him to run, and the deliberate lie that she told Dante. Elena had saved them just like she'd apparently tried to save trafficked women years ago by working with Savage.

His entire world tilted. "What if—" he whispered. "What if she's been trying to destroy Dante this whole time?"

Chloe stared at him. "You think she's undercover or something like that?"

"I don't know,” he breathed.

"You said she put the bounty on me."

"I assumed she did."

"You don't believe that anymore?" she asked.

He wasn’t sure what he believed anymore. "No." His thoughts raced. "The bounty."

"What about it?"

"What if it wasn't to capture you?” he asked. Chloe frowned. "What if it was to flush me out?"

Chloe whispered, "She knew you'd come for me."

Vengeance nodded slowly. "And she knew Dante would follow." Everything suddenly fit into place—Savage's journal, the Lazarus File, the recording, and Elena disappearing instead of dying. She hadn't abandoned him. She'd gone underground to finish what she'd started.

Chloe stepped closer. "What do we do now?" Vengeance looked toward the smoke and then toward the mountains stretching east. For months, he’d been reacting, running, and surviving, but not anymore.

He holstered his pistol. "We stop hiding."

"And?" she asked.

"We find my mother,” he simply said.