My fear kicked up a notch, my breathing coming in rapid huffs that I tried to calm by counting backwards from ten in my head.
Joaquin rounded the corner, his eyes going wide when he came face to face with Rafael’s gun. The men both sighed in relief, lowering their weapons. “Isa,” Joaquin said, his voice strained under the guilt I knew he must have felt.
“It’s not your fault,” I said, shaking it off and giving him a look that conveyed this was not the time to get sentimental on me. I wanted out of this house of horrors, and then we could deal with the damage that had been inflicted by Sigrid and Faye’s betrayal.
Even though it had been my body at risk, my soul that had nearly died in the arms of a man I didn’t want, I wasn’t the only one who would bear the scars of my abduction. Joaquin would wear the mark of his failure for the rest of his life.
That was the way of life onEl Infierno.
“Take her and get her to the rendezvous. If anything happens to her, I will personally gut you, Joaquin. I no longer care who you are to her if you fail her again,” Rafael ordered.
“I don’t want you to leave me,” I protested, shaking my head as Rafe leaned forward and kissed me. His lips moved against mine slowly, gentle finesse in the way he touched me as if I was his everything. I reached up with a trembling hand to cup his cheek in my hand, feeling the stubble of his jawline against my skin as I rose up onto my toes and pressed my mouth more firmly into his. The added pressure made him deepen the kiss, hunger in the contact between our bodies that we wouldn’t be able to sate until our nightmare was over.
Until only we remained.
“He willnotget away with this,” Rafe said when he wrenched his mouth away from mine. The devil played at the surface of his gaze as it darkened. His need for revenge was too great for him to let Pavel walk away, but the thought of being separated from him again was too much to bear.
“Please don’t make me go,” I argued, shaking my head. The men both snapped to attention when Gabriel strolled down the hallway, his hand wrapped tightly around Faye’s bicep. She struggled in his grip, her face streaked with the line of tears from when she’d cried before.
“I’ll deal with you later,” Rafael said, glowering at her. “I want your eyes on her.” Faye had the brains to swallow, tearing her arm out of Gabriel’s grip. He stared at his hand where he’d touched her for a minute before he raised his gun higher.
“We’ve got her,” Gabriel agreed, and I wasn’t sure if they meant me or Faye. I hoped for Faye’s sake that they were talking about me, because it would be in her best interest to slip away at her first opportunity.
The shifty look in her eyes told me she knew it.
Rafe nodded, darting down the front hall that led to the staircases to go down to the main floor. He spoke into the radio strapped to his chest, a rapid burst of Spanish orders where only Dima’s name was recognizable with how quickly he spoke.
“Move,” Gabriel said, raising his chin for Faye to walk in front of him. She huffed, holding her head high and crossing her arms over her chest.
“Make me,” she snarled, her pretty, ethereal face twisting into a challenge. Gabriel tilted his head to the side, his lips twisting as his brown eyes darkened. There was something in the expression that frightened me for her, something almost demonic about the way he watched her and waited for her to back down from her challenge.
Faye swallowed, only the slight tremble of her bottom lip giving any hint of weakness in her resolve.
Gabriel’s mouth split into the hint of a smile. “If I have to make you, we’re gonna end the night with you on your knees and begging for my cock,mi sirenita.”Faye’s cheeks turned pink with his dirty words, and even Joaquin shot him a look of shock before she turned on her heel and strode forward in the direction he’d pointed.
“I thought so,” Gabriel chuckled as he walked behind her.
“Did you get the women from the basement?” I asked in an effort to distract the two of them from the tension cracking between them.
“There’s a team down there now,” Joaquin answered, clearing his throat as we made our way down the hallway to the rear of the house.
“We have to help,” I said, turning to look at Faye. She nodded her head in agreement once, and we leveled the men with a glare when they looked as if they might protest.
“I’m not leaving them. A group of men charging into the basement with a bunch of traumatized women will scare the shit out of them. Let us help,” Faye said, meeting Joaquin’s questioning stare and pointedly ignoring Gabriel’s fixation on her face.
“Fuck,” Joaquin groaned, nodding finally. Gabriel seemed even less enthusiastic to be disobeying Rafael’s orders and going to the basement, or maybe it had more to do with the extended time he would have to keep an eye on Faye. Whether it was the tension strumming between them that made him watch her so obsessively or the need for penance that I knewEl Infiernowould demand for her involvement in my abduction, I couldn’t say.
All I knew was that he watched her like a tiger pacing in a cage, a wildcat ready to lunge at the first sign of weakness.
The way her eyes shifted to the side to watch him as we descended the second set of stairs quickly was all too familiar, reminding me of the way I’d felt in those first moments when Rafael stalked me through the streets of Ibiza. She’d been a prisoner of Pavel for who knew how long, but there was something different about men who obsessed the way Gabriel and Rafael did.
Despite myself and my better judgement, I reached over as we walked and drew her hand into mine. I couldn’t say that I wouldn’t have done the same thing if it had been a brother I loved more than anything who was taken, and that scared me more than I wanted to admit.
I didn’t know if I’d be able to live with myself afterward, but I didn’t think her choice was as black and white as I had originally thought. Anyway, between her own guilt and the loss of her brother, I thought she’d suffered enough.
She stumbled awkwardly, something that seemed so out of character for the woman who seemed to glide just above the ground, her feet never really touching the surface. When her glacial blue eyes met mine, something in her softened. Her face relaxed, and she let out a breath as she winced.
“It’s okay,” I told her. At the back of my mind, all that mattered in that moment was being better than Odina. Being better than the twin who’d taken an accident and wielded my guilt as a weapon for years.