CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE – THE HORRORS OF THE BATTLE

The hour dragged like a corpse-laden barge without update or reprieve. Julian sat hunched over the edge of his cot, shoulders bowed beneath a soul-sickness wholly separate from his injuries. Every shadow, every sliver of silence brought with it a fresh slew of lacerating images to bludgeon his sanity: Charlotte, his luminous other half, prostrate and in agony somewhere at the hands of those inhuman butchers. Or worse... He jerked bodily, burying his face in his hands to stave off the encroaching tide of useless horror long enough to cling to reason. She was strong, so goddamned strong, his tenacious fighter. And this torment would only serve to hone that steely resolve into an inferno. Alexander, Emma, those pissant Von Becher mobsters...they had no notion of the scalding reckoning he would rain down upon their heads once he'd located his wife. Every breath they drew would become an anguished rattle in their lungs for the torment they'd visited upon the most sacrosanct part of his