“You have to trust me to know what I am and am not capable of.”
“You’re a fool.”
He paused, blinking at me.
Now that I had his attention, I didn’t hold back. “You think you’re a superhero, but you’re not. You’re mortal. You can die.”
“I never said I couldn’t.”
“You’re acting like it. Physically, you’re not even close to healed. If you leave now, you’ll come home in a body bag.”
“Do you really believe that?” He straightened, bearing down on me. “Or are you provoking me in hopes I’ll prove just how capable my body is?”
“You’re not ready mentally, either. You’ve barely given yourself a chance to recover from an attack on your life. You’re acting irrationally, from emotion—”
“You don’t know me at all if you believe that.”
“You don’t know yourself.” I rose to my full height, holding his gaze as it darkened. “You’re a man, and you can fall, Cristiano. You have people here depending on you.”
“You don’t think I know that?” He clenched his jaw and turned his face from me. “It’s all I ever think about. All the lives that’re endangered when I’m in danger. That’s why I have to go.”
“That’s why you can’t go after Max. In your state, you’re more vulnerable than usual, and that puts those around you at risk. Don’t be stupid, Cristiano.”
He stepped into me. “Brave little girl. You think you can call me names?”
“You can try to intimidate me to keep my mouth shut, but when your life is on the line, I won’t.”
“Why?” he asked.
“You almost died.”
“I’ve come closer than that.”
I wanted to yell at him to get it into his thick skull that he could be more helpful to Max here than in the field, but that wouldn’t get us anywhere. I took a breath and tried to reason with him. He flinched as I placed my palm over his chest wound. “Escúchame, Cristiano. Listen to me. You’re not weak to rely on your men in a time of need. Can’t you see it makes you stronger to know when to stand back and let more capable people help?”
He made a fist. It hurt him that an enemy had succeeded in debilitating him and would keep him from doing everything he could for his comrade.
His hand flexed. Covered mine on his pec. “Every one of your touches comforts me. Heals me. But as you soothe me, the opposite is being done to Max. He’s a prisoner, not a guest.”
I shut my eyes against the idea, but the image only became clearer in the dark. If Max was still alive, there was no doubt he was being tortured. I tried to fight the vision of him tied up in a dark room, bloody and swollen. “I understand,” I said. “I want Max to come home, too. But we need more information. Maybe they took him to bait you.”
“Can’t bait a dead man.”
“Maybe you weren’t supposed to die.”
After a beat, his eyebrows cinched. “What?”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about all of this,” I said. “‘If you’re going to aim, kill.’ You taught me that. So why take Max? Why go to the trouble of attacking your home if they’d planned to kill you at the hotel?”
Recognition dawned as Cristiano picked up my line of thinking. “Any message would be pointless if I was dead,” he said, his expression easing. “They wanted me to live. And you, too.”
“Me?” I shook my head. “My attacker almost choked me to death. He almost slit my throat—”
“Almost,” Cristiano said. “He might’ve had orders to get you out alive. He had a syringe on him.”
“What?” A hazy memory returned of the man holding up what I’d thought was a blade. “A tranquilizer?”
“You would’ve been their first target. Why not just shoot you?” He swallowed. “My worst fear, as I thought I was dying, was that they’d take you, Natalia.”
I refrained from shuddering. This new information changed that night entirely. There’d been more at risk than my life. I could’ve been in Max’s position now, in the grips of a rival cartel with an axe to grind.
I did want Max out. Desperately. But Cristiano’s life meant more to me, so I spoke to him in a way I knew would get through to him. “Are you going to take me with you to retrieve Max?”
The corners of his mouth drooped. “Why would I?”
“Because you’d be leaving the Badlands unprotected again if you go. You’d be leaving me vulnerable. If they want me, they may try again.”
Torment marred his features, but it didn’t deter me. I needed him to understand what he could lose if he acted recklessly.
“They might be waiting for you to walk—no, run—into a trap,” I said. “And if they have you, then they have me, too.”
He brought my palm to his chest. “I . . . I can’t let him sit there and rot, Natalia. And if I can’t help him, I’ve failed him.”