Wolf's Hunger (Mafia Monsters #5) - Atlas Rose Page 0,67

the bedroom door, cutting the bastard off mid-word. Inside, I was still shaking, still desperate for my Wolf. I stumbled to the window of my bedroom and stared out into the night. He was out there, limping…in pain and running for his life. I pressed my fingers to the cold glass. “Come back for me, Vitold. Please, come back.”

Agony plunged into my chest. The kind of pain I’d never felt before and never wanted to again. Tears filled my eyes as I stumbled backwards and hit the bed. Footsteps sounded outside, slowing at my door. I reached across to the lamp on the bedside table and hit the button, plunging the room into darkness.

He was out there.

Needing me…

I was in here, guarded like a damn prisoner. Used for bait. I leaned back against the pillows in the dark and pulled my feet up onto the bed. I didn’t want to sleep. I just wanted to remember him…every glint in his eyes, the way he’d lured those Wolves from me. I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes as warm tears fell.

I replayed every second, every growl, every howl of pain, and the desperation that lingered in his eyes as he melted into the darkness. I slept like that, dragged down into the emptiness by despair, kicking and screaming with teeth and claws, and desperation. I tossed and turned, wrestled with the sheets with the torture of his howl ringing in my ears. Until that was where I found them…that was where I found my Wolves.

Three days, and nothing. Three days of watchful glances while I sat in my chair at work. Three days I seethed and ached…and stared out the window.

“You going to do any work at all, or just sit and stare?” Niall muttered behind me. “I’ve watched you all damn day.”

I jerked myself back to the present, then stared at the pile of papers on my desk and the clock on the computer that said 3 pm.

“You know they might be watching you, but you’re still an agent of the FBI. You can still investigate, maybe try to help yourself.”

I swiveled in my chair and came face to face with an icy stare. He was quiet this one, barely saying boo in the few years I’d known him. Niall never came to work functions, never joined in team operations, wasn’t a ‘team player’, yet here he was handing out fucking advice when I didn’t need it.

“Thanks for the pep talk, buddy,” I muttered.

He just gave a shrug, those piercing blue eyes shifting to the open file on his desk. Blue eyes that reminded me of Church, and that fucking hurt. “Suit yourself,” he muttered. “Sit there and wallow.”

Sit there and wallow.

Anger burned inside me, running all the way along my throat and into my mouth, tasting like poison. I parted my lips, ready to snarl back in anger, then stilled…he was right. I looked around the mess on my desk. The same mess that had sat there when I came back. The same goddamn mess I’d left what felt like weeks ago. The same half-closed files, the same scraps of information.

My gaze went to folder tucked under all the others. Ruth’s folder.

I looked around the empty office and reached under the stack, snagging the corner of the folder and tugging it free. The file with the blood work from the warehouse. But as I pulled it, another slipped out with it.

My personal file on Ruth and all the players in the game. Her father, her uncles, her cousins…and all their dirty secrets. My mind kept going back to that black and white photograph, the one where Lenny was lying on the floor and my father was tied in a chair.

A flare of power cut across my chest as I pulled both files free, glanced around the office, and rose. I was beginning to get used to that Unseelie power, beginning to tune in to the whispers inside my head when they rose, maybe they’d been there all along? Maybe that was the real me.

It was just a seed of a thought, just a flicker in the dark.

A whisper…

I tucked the files under my arm, and grabbed my jacket as I headed to the door. That seed of an idea sprouted as I strode past Niall’s desk and snatched his keys. “Thanks for the ass kicking.”

He said nothing, but I felt his gaze on me as I strode from the office and headed toward the elevator. My mind