Natalia
I suspect you might even like the feeling of surrender.
Cristiano’s distant words echoed through the darkness falling over my mind. He hadn’t meant submitting to death, but the hands around my neck demanded that.
The back of my skull throbbed where it’d been slammed against the tile floor. One moment, I’d been trying to tell Cristiano something important over the phone. The next, dragged through our bedroom and pinned on my back by an immovable weight.
Now, pinpricks of white light pierced the black. Stars in the night sky, promising peace. It wouldn’t be difficult to walk toward them. The dark had always been a fierce presence within me. Unknown. Ever-inviting.
Surrender would be simple. My body and my training had failed me—I hadn’t even fought back. Or maybe nothing up to this point had been real. Maybe this had all been a dream, and I was being torn from sleep.
As my windpipe closed under the grip around it, my screams relented. The shrill house alarm faded into a peaceful buzz. My fear ebbed, an ocean of tranquility rising in its place.
Heaven.
Mamá waited with open arms.
Go to her. Be with her again. Submit.
I wasn’t waking up; I was dying. Cristiano was the last person I expected to see at the gates of Heaven, but there he was, waiting in his suit and tie. Thank God. Wherever I was going, Cristiano was there, and he wouldn’t let anything hurt me.
He and my mother would be the light, the serenity, the prize for giving in to death.
All I had to do now was succumb. Go to him . . .
Cristiano.
“Cristiano is dead.” A scratchy male voice took hold of me the way strong hands locked around my throat. “You have nothing to fight for,” he said. “Go to sleep.”
The word scraped through the dregs of my consciousness. Dead.
That was why Cristiano waited for me at the gates to eternity.
But he could not die. He was untouchable.
What was a world without Cristiano de la Rosa? Grief flooded me, but just as quickly, it ebbed. And in its place, fury swelled. Someone had killed Cristiano.
The voice above me thought I had nothing to fight for, but it’d just given me a reason.
Nobody--nobody—would get away with murdering my husband.
Fight, Natalia. Surrender is not an option.
Reality flickered. Carotid arteries. No oxygen. I forced myself out of the encroaching darkness. Clawed at the tightening fingers around my neck. I arched my back until I was looking upside-down in the bedroom mirror propped against one wall. My first night here, we’d stood in front of it—Cristiano wrapping his arms around me from behind, demanding my submission. I hadn’t given in then. And over time, I’d grown stronger. Mentally, emotionally—and physically. Under Cristiano’s guidance.
I wanted those moments with him back. For him to survive so I could look him in the eye and tell him I’d resisted, and I’d won.
Because he’d taught me how. He’d taught me strength.
With a clicking noise, I struggled to turn my head and see where it was coming from, but my vision blurred. Moonlight glinted off metal. A knife? Fuck. I began to thrash under him.
“Shh,” he said. “This won’t hurt.”
I had no defenses against a knife. No weapon. Nothing on me but flimsy satin pajamas and plenty of exposed skin. But my breath . . . it was coming back.
Change your mindset, Cristiano had told me. You’re in control . . . you can take down an attacker . . . you can fight for your life and escape.
That was all I had to do. Escape. Run. I wasn’t at the level I needed to be to win, but I had the will to survive on my side—and the fact that he’d removed a hand from my neck to pick up the blade. I only needed to incapacitate him long enough to outrun him and get to the panic room.
My first self-defense lesson on the lawn had taught me more than hand-to-hand combat. There was the art of diversion. The magic of distraction.
Have you ever been to Disneyland? I’d asked Cristiano as his bar of a forearm had locked around my neck from behind.
The sound of Cristiano’s answering laughter heartened me.
Words scraped from my throat. “Cristiano . . . isn’t . . . dead.”
The attacker’s face bent toward mine, giving me my first close-up glimpse of him in the dark. Crooked nose, foul breath, beady eyes. “What?”
“He’s not dead. I can”—I let my voice falter—“take you to h-him.”
He leaned closer. “¿Qué?”
I rammed my forehead into his mouth, and blood burst from his lip. “¡Cabrona!” he cursed.
The butt of my palm slammed into his trachea. Plastic clattered to the ground. I only had enough strength to shock him, but it was all I needed. He loosened his other hand around my neck, and I punched him in the same spot, harder this time.
Alarm crossed his face with his guttural shout. The fact that he could shout at all meant I hadn’t crushed his windpipe. I fisted my left hand and made good use of the extravagant diamond Cristiano had saddled me with. I jammed my wedding ring into the man’s throat over and over until he’d released me completely to grab his own neck. Blood trickled onto me as he wheezed so hard, my own chest went tight.
With a bare foot, I kicked him in the crotch, crawled out from under him, and jumped up. I’d taken only two steps when his hand grabbed my ankle, and I fell forward. My head cracked the mirror. It teetered, and I rolled away a split second before it toppled to the ground.
The short fight had winded me, but he hadn’t gone down yet. Movement from the corner of my eye spurred me to get back up. I grabbed the biggest shard of broken glass within reach and got myself to stand. The moment I was on my feet, the man seized me from behind. He pinned my elbows to my sides with one arm, grabbing at the glass with his other hand. I held onto it until blood dripped down my fingers, but he wrestled it from me and put it to my throat.
“Nobody . . . told me . . . you’d fight back,” he panted, struggling to speak. If his mouth hadn’t been in my ear, I wouldn’t have heard him over the blaring alarm. “Your husband teach you that?”
“Fuck you.”
“It’s a nice surprise. Very exciting. But I’ll cut your throat if I really have to.” His front flush against my back, he lifted my chin with the glass as his tone turned from amused to foreboding. “Your husband stole from us. This is the price. For every woman Cristiano took, we’ll kill two inside these walls.”
I’d been in this position before, at the mercy of a menacing man and his whims. And I’d been just as scared.
But Cristiano had taught me a valuable lesson that day he’d simulated jumping me on the lawn.
I was not to be underestimated. I’d survived my time in the Badlands by doing my best to protect myself from every angle—mentally, physically, emotionally. Cristiano had pushed me as far as he could without injury. But now, I had to be willing to get hurt.
I yanked on my attacker’s wrist with all my body weight. The glass sliced the length of my throat as I rotated until the man’s arm was twisted at an unnatural angle. I wrenched it as far back as I could and kneed him in the nose. He stumbled backward through the archways to the balcony as blood gushed from his face.
Run? Or stay and fight? I had to decide--
“Maldita perra.” He charged at me with the shard of glass. “You fucking bitch.”
Too late. I’d broken the first rule Cristiano had ever taught me.
Don’t hesitate.
I covered my face and ducked a second before a gunshot exploded through the room. I lowered my arms as his body jerked and staggered onto the balcony. He coughed, reaching for me, blood gurgling from his mouth.
I wouldn’t hesitate twice.
I sprinted at him and shoved him as hard as I could. He flipped backward over the wall and tumbled down the rocky cliff. His guttural yells echoed through the mountainside until he hit a crag with a thud, and landed on the strip of shore below.
Silence descended. Even the alarms became white noise. I’d killed a man. I hadn’t thought about it. Just rushed him . . . pushed him . . . murdered him.
I clutched my neck. Something warm and sticky filled my palm. I pulled my hand away—blood. He would’ve killed me without a second thought. I didn’t owe him one, but I peered over the edge anyway. There was just enough moonlight to make out his shadowed figure, arms and legs splayed like a broken action figure. A dark shadow seeped over the sand. “Oh my God.”
“He’s dead.” I whirled to find Jaz’s petite frame in the doorway, her gun aimed at me. She raised her voice over the sirens and added, “It’s a long way down.”
A beat passed as we stared at each other. “Thank you,” I said.
She lowered the pistol. “They cut the electricity and killed the generators,” she said. “We have to take the stairs to the panic room.”
“They?”
“There are more men in the house.”
I glanced back over the wall. High tide. The frothy ocean licked at the distorted body on the shore. “He said they’re here for us,” I told her. “The women. As payback.”
“Are you with me?” Jaz asked.
A breeze passed over my half-naked body. “I should—”
“There’s no time,” she said, turning. “Come on.”
She hurried through the room, and I followed as we sprinted down to the second floor. “Wait!” I said at the mouth of the staircase and turned back.
“What are you doing?”
“We have to get Pilar.” Keeping my back to the wall, I made my way down the dark hallway to her bedroom, where I hissed her name.
After a second, Pilar slid out from under the bed, her face streaked with tears. “Natalia. Ay, Dios mío.”
“Come,” I said, squatting to help her up. “Hurry. Are you hurt?”
“N-no.” She shook as she got to her feet. Jaz guarded the door, poking her head into the hall before beckoning us over.
Pilar gasped. “You’re covered in blood.”
“I’m fine.”
“Who’s doing this?” she asked. “What do they want?”
“Come on,” Jaz whisper-ordered.
I took Pilar’s hand and let Jaz lead us through the dark, trusting her intimate knowledge of the house. When we reached the ground floor, she ushered Pilar and me ahead of her. “Run. I’ll watch our backs.”
We crossed the main room and slowed as we approached the kitchen, the quickest route to the cellar and panic room. Jaz raised her gun and entered first, her eyes narrowed sharply as she surveyed the room.
“It’s clear,” she said, nodding at a door that led to the garage. “Through there. You know the way?”
“Sí,” I answered. “What about you?”
“Right behind you.”
I grabbed Pilar’s arm and sprinted forward. My bare feet slapped the tile, and we were within reach of the handle when Pilar tripped and pulled me down with her. My head just missed the corner of a table, but my cheekbone smacked the ground. Pain shot through my face, but I quickly forgot it when Pilar screamed.
I looked back and slapped a hand over my mouth. We’d fallen over Rocío, a woman who’d worked alongside Fisker in the kitchen. Blood splattered the ground and cabinets, darkening the floor around her.
“Shh.” Jaz yanked Pilar to her feet and, when she didn’t quiet, silenced her with a slap across the face. Jaz squatted. Held her fingers to Rocío’s neck. “She’s dead.”
My throat closed. “She—she was going to the panic room, too.”
“Maybe.” Jaz made the sign of the cross, picked up a gun next to Rocío’s body, and nodded toward the refrigerator. “But she went down fighting.”
I followed her gaze to what looked like a man’s body slumped in one corner. “Is that one of them?”
“He’s not one of us. Other cartels don’t realize that we always fight back. Every one of us. We win, or we die trying.” Jaz handed Pilar the gun. “But everyone in this house fights.”
“I don’t know what to do with this,” Pilar said, holding out the Glock like it was a ticking time bomb.
“If anyone comes at you, pull the trigger,” Jaz said, closing Pilar’s hand around it. “You need to watch Natalia’s back. She’s probably the one they want. And she’s going to get you both to the panic room.”
“What about you?” I asked.
Jaz’s eyes dropped to Rocío. “I told you,” she said, swallowing. “I fight.”
“No, Jaz.” I pulled her arm to get her to face me. “You don’t understand. Those men are here for us. They’re looking for any woman, and they will kill you.”
“I have a job to do. Just like Rocío did.”
I still didn’t know exactly how Jaz had ended up in the Badlands, but I could piece some of it together. My first morning here, she’d revealed that she’d used sex to survive at some point in her past. Cristiano had said earlier tonight that Jaz hadn’t known much kindness. Considering the Badlands had partly been built as a safe haven and rehabilitation center for victims of the pleasure trade, forced labor, and more, Jaz most likely fell into one of those categories. “Maybe they won’t kill you,” I said. “What if they take you instead?”
She froze, fear clearly working through her. “I—I can’t hide down there while . . . while the others defend us.”
“You’re not hiding. You’re protecting us.” I wanted to yell to get through to her, but I struggled to speak as it was, my throat aching. I gripped her arms and shook her until alarm crossed her face. “We need you. If you don’t come with us, then I’m staying here with you.”
“No, please,” Pilar begged through a sob, her wide eyes fixed on Rocío. “You can’t leave me alone.”
Jaz shook her head. “If you die, and Cristiano survives—he’ll kill me himself.”
“So where do you think he’d want his most tenacious fighter?”
“With you.” Jaz’s jaw firmed. “Fine—let’s go.”
We all tumbled through the door, into the garage, and down the staircase to the cellar. At the door to the panic room, I was shaking too hard to get my thumb on the fingerprint scanner, so Jaz took over. Within seconds, it lit up green, and the lock clicked open.
I let Pilar and Jaz go in first. After the near complete darkness of the house, the safe room’s overhead lights seared my eyes and turned everyone a dull shade of gray. I pushed the door shut, and the slam echoed in the otherwise complete silence. Even Pilar had stopped crying. Locked in the vault, I pressed my forehead against the cool steel door.
Cristiano.
Even from a distance, he’d saved me. If it weren’t for my self-defense lessons, I wouldn’t be standing here. But where was he?
I need you to save yourself and come home to me, he’d told me once.
I was home. I’d saved myself.
Had he?
My breath stuttered.
“Cristiano is dead. You have nothing to fight for. Go to sleep.”
Taunting words as I’d been held down. No air. Barely enough hope to save myself. My throat constricted as ghost hands wrapped around it.
I made two fists, fighting back sobs that rose fast and overwhelming in my chest. Cristiano hadn’t sounded right on the phone earlier. He’d called my name as if in slow motion, from a distance. And there’d been a man in the background. What had he said?
My temples pounded as the back of my throat ached from holding in tears. We’d been talking . . . my heart rate quickening with an unfamiliar and scary kind of excitement.
Come back.
That was the important thing I’d been trying to find a way to tell him without betraying the person I’d been when I’d arrived here.
If I’d known those were his final moments, I would’ve just said it.
Come home.
I turned and leaned back against the door. One of the walls opposite me had been slid open to reveal shelving, like the inside of a large locker. Jaz passed Pilar a blanket and water, even as she held her gun close in her other hand. In a corner, a TV monitor flickered with security footage of the house. Not that there was much to see when it was deathly still and silent.
I opened my mouth to tell Jaz what had happened. Maybe I could connect the upstairs attack with what I’d heard on the phone with Cristiano. But Jaz’s words from earlier came back to me.
If he doesn’t make it back, you won’t make it out.
She’d warned me nobody in the Badlands would forgive Cristiano risking his life on my behalf. If Cristiano was in danger, I was in danger. Jaz had made herself clear not even hours ago.
It would be my fault if he didn’t make it home.
The cost of his life would be mine.
Pilar was suddenly in front of me, trying to get me to move away from the door. “You don’t look well.”
“She hit her head,” Jaz said, shifting brown, almond-shaped eyes to me. “Do you feel . . . ¿cómo se dice? How do you say in English? Sick to the stomach?”
“Nauseous.” Pilar twisted her dark hair on top of her head, secured it in a knot, and took my elbow. “You should lie down.”
“She should do anything but lie down,” Jaz said.
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked Jaz. Pilar tugged on my arm, but I stayed put. The pounding in my head could wait. “Where’s Alejandro?”
Jaz shook her head. “Fighting or dead.”
“You saw him?”
“No, but I know. Some cartel thinks it can come in and slaughter us, but nobody who enters will make it out alive. We can defend ourselves, and we will. They can’t know that every person in this home will fight to the death for what we’ve built.”
The Badlands wasn’t Cristiano’s town. It belonged to all of them. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one Cristiano had equipped to defend herself—and this place—in the event of his absence.
Pilar returned to the locker, searching the shelves. When the door beeped behind me, I moved, and Alejandro ushered in two women from the staff who ran into Jaz’s open arms.
I grabbed Alejandro’s elbow. “Have you heard from Cristiano?”
“I’ve been looking for you.” His eyes roamed my face as Jaz and the women talked over each other in Spanish. “What happened?”
“Have you heard from him?” I repeated loudly, and the bunker went silent.
Cristiano is dead.
This is the price.
Alejandro glanced at the ground. “I have to get back up there. Stay here until I come for you.”
“Max?” Jaz asked from across the room. “Daniel?”
Hearing the names of the two men who’d gone with Cristiano on his mission, Alejandro turned his face away. Grease smeared his cheek. “Nothing.”
My heart missed a beat as panic rose in me. “Nothing?” I asked.
“Nobody’s answering my calls.”
“Maybe they’re not able to,” Pilar said. “They could’ve put their phones down or gone to sleep—”
“They were attacked, too.” Alejandro sighed, clearly torn about whether to stay or go back up, and maybe even how much he should say. “And in an emergency like this—danger out in the field, an intruder or attack within the walls—we always check in within ten minutes. No matter what,” Alejandro said. “It’s a rule.”
The air around me constricted. My vision narrowed on a bloody smear on Alejandro’s green, long-sleeved shirt. I could still hear Cristiano’s deep, alive voice over the phone. His hard-earned laugh. His controlled, unnerving command for me to get down to the cellar when the sirens had sounded. There’d been no alarm on his end. Only my name. And the voice in the background.
“A gift from Belmonte-Ruiz, cabrón. You’ve fucked with us for the last time.”
“Belmonte-Ruiz,” I whispered. Mexico’s most pervasive human trafficking ring. They wanted Cristiano dead, and with good reason. He’d stolen from them. Evaded their attempts to stop him. Taken pride in hurting them, and in the fact that he was still standing.
It was only a matter of time before it would catch up with him, though. And yet, even knowing it put his home, his people, his wife, and himself in danger—he’d persisted. He wouldn’t be deterred from helping those who couldn’t help themselves.
I wanted to be mad at him for it, but it only showed the kind of man he was. A man I had doubted and maligned every chance I’d gotten. Some good in this garden of evil. And I hadn’t gotten the chance to tell him before they . . .
I choked back a sob. “They tried to kill him.”
“They might’ve succeeded,” Alejandro said.
A wave of nausea hit me. I touched the blood-caked gash on my throat. All at once, everything throbbed. My neck. My hand. My forehead where I’d smacked it against the glass, my cheek from hitting the floor.
“Check her head,” Alejandro said to Jaz. “She looks too pale.”
“I’m fine.” I had to be. I needed answers, not more problems. I grabbed Alejandro’s rumpled shirt. “You have to find Cristiano. His phone could be broken,” I said. “They could’ve lost signal. Or been forced to leave their things behind. He can’t be . . . he needs us.”
“I’ve deployed a team to find them,” Alejandro said, a failed attempt to sound reassuring. “According to GPS, Cristiano and Daniel haven’t moved. I think that’s good. But Max . . . his phone is offline.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Hell if I know, but he’d answer if he could.”
“What happens if you don’t hear from them within ten minutes of an emergency?” Pilar asked.
“It’s never happened,” Jaz answered.
“Never?” I looked to Alejandro for confirmation. “In all the years you’ve known Cristiano, there was never once a miscommunication, an accident, a—”
“Never.” He checked his watch. “We always find a way to make contact, even if we have to find a phone somehow. It’s been over half an hour.” Alejo sniffed and grabbed the door handle. “I have to get—”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Pilar said, her voice rising as she glared at Alejandro. “Phones fail all the time. And you need to work on your bedside manner.”
“I’m just trying to prepare Natalia.” Despite his brusque tone, worry etched the lines around Alejo’s eyes. “Even putting aside the ten-minute rule, if Cristiano was alive, he never would’ve let this long pass without checking on Natalia.”
Oh, God. My limbs weakened, and I grabbed Pilar’s arm. Alejo was right. Cristiano’s silence spoke louder than anything. He and I had a turbulent history, a marriage that better resembled a battlefield, and we’d been sparring for weeks—but my gut knew. He would’ve done anything in his power to make sure I was safe.
And even though I’d wished him out my life more times than I could count, I wanted safety for him, too. I wanted him back.
The world began to swim. I slid down a wall and dropped my head between my knees.
If I’d had any doubts, they vanished before my eyes.
Something he’d said at the costume gala came back to me . . .
It had been Cristiano’s dying wish to hear me scream.
And the heavens had granted him that.
I suspect you might even like the feeling of surrender.
Cristiano’s distant words echoed through the darkness falling over my mind. He hadn’t meant submitting to death, but the hands around my neck demanded that.
The back of my skull throbbed where it’d been slammed against the tile floor. One moment, I’d been trying to tell Cristiano something important over the phone. The next, dragged through our bedroom and pinned on my back by an immovable weight.
Now, pinpricks of white light pierced the black. Stars in the night sky, promising peace. It wouldn’t be difficult to walk toward them. The dark had always been a fierce presence within me. Unknown. Ever-inviting.
Surrender would be simple. My body and my training had failed me—I hadn’t even fought back. Or maybe nothing up to this point had been real. Maybe this had all been a dream, and I was being torn from sleep.
As my windpipe closed under the grip around it, my screams relented. The shrill house alarm faded into a peaceful buzz. My fear ebbed, an ocean of tranquility rising in its place.
Heaven.
Mamá waited with open arms.
Go to her. Be with her again. Submit.
I wasn’t waking up; I was dying. Cristiano was the last person I expected to see at the gates of Heaven, but there he was, waiting in his suit and tie. Thank God. Wherever I was going, Cristiano was there, and he wouldn’t let anything hurt me.
He and my mother would be the light, the serenity, the prize for giving in to death.
All I had to do now was succumb. Go to him . . .
Cristiano.
“Cristiano is dead.” A scratchy male voice took hold of me the way strong hands locked around my throat. “You have nothing to fight for,” he said. “Go to sleep.”
The word scraped through the dregs of my consciousness. Dead.
That was why Cristiano waited for me at the gates to eternity.
But he could not die. He was untouchable.
What was a world without Cristiano de la Rosa? Grief flooded me, but just as quickly, it ebbed. And in its place, fury swelled. Someone had killed Cristiano.
The voice above me thought I had nothing to fight for, but it’d just given me a reason.
Nobody--nobody—would get away with murdering my husband.
Fight, Natalia. Surrender is not an option.
Reality flickered. Carotid arteries. No oxygen. I forced myself out of the encroaching darkness. Clawed at the tightening fingers around my neck. I arched my back until I was looking upside-down in the bedroom mirror propped against one wall. My first night here, we’d stood in front of it—Cristiano wrapping his arms around me from behind, demanding my submission. I hadn’t given in then. And over time, I’d grown stronger. Mentally, emotionally—and physically. Under Cristiano’s guidance.
I wanted those moments with him back. For him to survive so I could look him in the eye and tell him I’d resisted, and I’d won.
Because he’d taught me how. He’d taught me strength.
With a clicking noise, I struggled to turn my head and see where it was coming from, but my vision blurred. Moonlight glinted off metal. A knife? Fuck. I began to thrash under him.
“Shh,” he said. “This won’t hurt.”
I had no defenses against a knife. No weapon. Nothing on me but flimsy satin pajamas and plenty of exposed skin. But my breath . . . it was coming back.
Change your mindset, Cristiano had told me. You’re in control . . . you can take down an attacker . . . you can fight for your life and escape.
That was all I had to do. Escape. Run. I wasn’t at the level I needed to be to win, but I had the will to survive on my side—and the fact that he’d removed a hand from my neck to pick up the blade. I only needed to incapacitate him long enough to outrun him and get to the panic room.
My first self-defense lesson on the lawn had taught me more than hand-to-hand combat. There was the art of diversion. The magic of distraction.
Have you ever been to Disneyland? I’d asked Cristiano as his bar of a forearm had locked around my neck from behind.
The sound of Cristiano’s answering laughter heartened me.
Words scraped from my throat. “Cristiano . . . isn’t . . . dead.”
The attacker’s face bent toward mine, giving me my first close-up glimpse of him in the dark. Crooked nose, foul breath, beady eyes. “What?”
“He’s not dead. I can”—I let my voice falter—“take you to h-him.”
He leaned closer. “¿Qué?”
I rammed my forehead into his mouth, and blood burst from his lip. “¡Cabrona!” he cursed.
The butt of my palm slammed into his trachea. Plastic clattered to the ground. I only had enough strength to shock him, but it was all I needed. He loosened his other hand around my neck, and I punched him in the same spot, harder this time.
Alarm crossed his face with his guttural shout. The fact that he could shout at all meant I hadn’t crushed his windpipe. I fisted my left hand and made good use of the extravagant diamond Cristiano had saddled me with. I jammed my wedding ring into the man’s throat over and over until he’d released me completely to grab his own neck. Blood trickled onto me as he wheezed so hard, my own chest went tight.
With a bare foot, I kicked him in the crotch, crawled out from under him, and jumped up. I’d taken only two steps when his hand grabbed my ankle, and I fell forward. My head cracked the mirror. It teetered, and I rolled away a split second before it toppled to the ground.
The short fight had winded me, but he hadn’t gone down yet. Movement from the corner of my eye spurred me to get back up. I grabbed the biggest shard of broken glass within reach and got myself to stand. The moment I was on my feet, the man seized me from behind. He pinned my elbows to my sides with one arm, grabbing at the glass with his other hand. I held onto it until blood dripped down my fingers, but he wrestled it from me and put it to my throat.
“Nobody . . . told me . . . you’d fight back,” he panted, struggling to speak. If his mouth hadn’t been in my ear, I wouldn’t have heard him over the blaring alarm. “Your husband teach you that?”
“Fuck you.”
“It’s a nice surprise. Very exciting. But I’ll cut your throat if I really have to.” His front flush against my back, he lifted my chin with the glass as his tone turned from amused to foreboding. “Your husband stole from us. This is the price. For every woman Cristiano took, we’ll kill two inside these walls.”
I’d been in this position before, at the mercy of a menacing man and his whims. And I’d been just as scared.
But Cristiano had taught me a valuable lesson that day he’d simulated jumping me on the lawn.
I was not to be underestimated. I’d survived my time in the Badlands by doing my best to protect myself from every angle—mentally, physically, emotionally. Cristiano had pushed me as far as he could without injury. But now, I had to be willing to get hurt.
I yanked on my attacker’s wrist with all my body weight. The glass sliced the length of my throat as I rotated until the man’s arm was twisted at an unnatural angle. I wrenched it as far back as I could and kneed him in the nose. He stumbled backward through the archways to the balcony as blood gushed from his face.
Run? Or stay and fight? I had to decide--
“Maldita perra.” He charged at me with the shard of glass. “You fucking bitch.”
Too late. I’d broken the first rule Cristiano had ever taught me.
Don’t hesitate.
I covered my face and ducked a second before a gunshot exploded through the room. I lowered my arms as his body jerked and staggered onto the balcony. He coughed, reaching for me, blood gurgling from his mouth.
I wouldn’t hesitate twice.
I sprinted at him and shoved him as hard as I could. He flipped backward over the wall and tumbled down the rocky cliff. His guttural yells echoed through the mountainside until he hit a crag with a thud, and landed on the strip of shore below.
Silence descended. Even the alarms became white noise. I’d killed a man. I hadn’t thought about it. Just rushed him . . . pushed him . . . murdered him.
I clutched my neck. Something warm and sticky filled my palm. I pulled my hand away—blood. He would’ve killed me without a second thought. I didn’t owe him one, but I peered over the edge anyway. There was just enough moonlight to make out his shadowed figure, arms and legs splayed like a broken action figure. A dark shadow seeped over the sand. “Oh my God.”
“He’s dead.” I whirled to find Jaz’s petite frame in the doorway, her gun aimed at me. She raised her voice over the sirens and added, “It’s a long way down.”
A beat passed as we stared at each other. “Thank you,” I said.
She lowered the pistol. “They cut the electricity and killed the generators,” she said. “We have to take the stairs to the panic room.”
“They?”
“There are more men in the house.”
I glanced back over the wall. High tide. The frothy ocean licked at the distorted body on the shore. “He said they’re here for us,” I told her. “The women. As payback.”
“Are you with me?” Jaz asked.
A breeze passed over my half-naked body. “I should—”
“There’s no time,” she said, turning. “Come on.”
She hurried through the room, and I followed as we sprinted down to the second floor. “Wait!” I said at the mouth of the staircase and turned back.
“What are you doing?”
“We have to get Pilar.” Keeping my back to the wall, I made my way down the dark hallway to her bedroom, where I hissed her name.
After a second, Pilar slid out from under the bed, her face streaked with tears. “Natalia. Ay, Dios mío.”
“Come,” I said, squatting to help her up. “Hurry. Are you hurt?”
“N-no.” She shook as she got to her feet. Jaz guarded the door, poking her head into the hall before beckoning us over.
Pilar gasped. “You’re covered in blood.”
“I’m fine.”
“Who’s doing this?” she asked. “What do they want?”
“Come on,” Jaz whisper-ordered.
I took Pilar’s hand and let Jaz lead us through the dark, trusting her intimate knowledge of the house. When we reached the ground floor, she ushered Pilar and me ahead of her. “Run. I’ll watch our backs.”
We crossed the main room and slowed as we approached the kitchen, the quickest route to the cellar and panic room. Jaz raised her gun and entered first, her eyes narrowed sharply as she surveyed the room.
“It’s clear,” she said, nodding at a door that led to the garage. “Through there. You know the way?”
“Sí,” I answered. “What about you?”
“Right behind you.”
I grabbed Pilar’s arm and sprinted forward. My bare feet slapped the tile, and we were within reach of the handle when Pilar tripped and pulled me down with her. My head just missed the corner of a table, but my cheekbone smacked the ground. Pain shot through my face, but I quickly forgot it when Pilar screamed.
I looked back and slapped a hand over my mouth. We’d fallen over Rocío, a woman who’d worked alongside Fisker in the kitchen. Blood splattered the ground and cabinets, darkening the floor around her.
“Shh.” Jaz yanked Pilar to her feet and, when she didn’t quiet, silenced her with a slap across the face. Jaz squatted. Held her fingers to Rocío’s neck. “She’s dead.”
My throat closed. “She—she was going to the panic room, too.”
“Maybe.” Jaz made the sign of the cross, picked up a gun next to Rocío’s body, and nodded toward the refrigerator. “But she went down fighting.”
I followed her gaze to what looked like a man’s body slumped in one corner. “Is that one of them?”
“He’s not one of us. Other cartels don’t realize that we always fight back. Every one of us. We win, or we die trying.” Jaz handed Pilar the gun. “But everyone in this house fights.”
“I don’t know what to do with this,” Pilar said, holding out the Glock like it was a ticking time bomb.
“If anyone comes at you, pull the trigger,” Jaz said, closing Pilar’s hand around it. “You need to watch Natalia’s back. She’s probably the one they want. And she’s going to get you both to the panic room.”
“What about you?” I asked.
Jaz’s eyes dropped to Rocío. “I told you,” she said, swallowing. “I fight.”
“No, Jaz.” I pulled her arm to get her to face me. “You don’t understand. Those men are here for us. They’re looking for any woman, and they will kill you.”
“I have a job to do. Just like Rocío did.”
I still didn’t know exactly how Jaz had ended up in the Badlands, but I could piece some of it together. My first morning here, she’d revealed that she’d used sex to survive at some point in her past. Cristiano had said earlier tonight that Jaz hadn’t known much kindness. Considering the Badlands had partly been built as a safe haven and rehabilitation center for victims of the pleasure trade, forced labor, and more, Jaz most likely fell into one of those categories. “Maybe they won’t kill you,” I said. “What if they take you instead?”
She froze, fear clearly working through her. “I—I can’t hide down there while . . . while the others defend us.”
“You’re not hiding. You’re protecting us.” I wanted to yell to get through to her, but I struggled to speak as it was, my throat aching. I gripped her arms and shook her until alarm crossed her face. “We need you. If you don’t come with us, then I’m staying here with you.”
“No, please,” Pilar begged through a sob, her wide eyes fixed on Rocío. “You can’t leave me alone.”
Jaz shook her head. “If you die, and Cristiano survives—he’ll kill me himself.”
“So where do you think he’d want his most tenacious fighter?”
“With you.” Jaz’s jaw firmed. “Fine—let’s go.”
We all tumbled through the door, into the garage, and down the staircase to the cellar. At the door to the panic room, I was shaking too hard to get my thumb on the fingerprint scanner, so Jaz took over. Within seconds, it lit up green, and the lock clicked open.
I let Pilar and Jaz go in first. After the near complete darkness of the house, the safe room’s overhead lights seared my eyes and turned everyone a dull shade of gray. I pushed the door shut, and the slam echoed in the otherwise complete silence. Even Pilar had stopped crying. Locked in the vault, I pressed my forehead against the cool steel door.
Cristiano.
Even from a distance, he’d saved me. If it weren’t for my self-defense lessons, I wouldn’t be standing here. But where was he?
I need you to save yourself and come home to me, he’d told me once.
I was home. I’d saved myself.
Had he?
My breath stuttered.
“Cristiano is dead. You have nothing to fight for. Go to sleep.”
Taunting words as I’d been held down. No air. Barely enough hope to save myself. My throat constricted as ghost hands wrapped around it.
I made two fists, fighting back sobs that rose fast and overwhelming in my chest. Cristiano hadn’t sounded right on the phone earlier. He’d called my name as if in slow motion, from a distance. And there’d been a man in the background. What had he said?
My temples pounded as the back of my throat ached from holding in tears. We’d been talking . . . my heart rate quickening with an unfamiliar and scary kind of excitement.
Come back.
That was the important thing I’d been trying to find a way to tell him without betraying the person I’d been when I’d arrived here.
If I’d known those were his final moments, I would’ve just said it.
Come home.
I turned and leaned back against the door. One of the walls opposite me had been slid open to reveal shelving, like the inside of a large locker. Jaz passed Pilar a blanket and water, even as she held her gun close in her other hand. In a corner, a TV monitor flickered with security footage of the house. Not that there was much to see when it was deathly still and silent.
I opened my mouth to tell Jaz what had happened. Maybe I could connect the upstairs attack with what I’d heard on the phone with Cristiano. But Jaz’s words from earlier came back to me.
If he doesn’t make it back, you won’t make it out.
She’d warned me nobody in the Badlands would forgive Cristiano risking his life on my behalf. If Cristiano was in danger, I was in danger. Jaz had made herself clear not even hours ago.
It would be my fault if he didn’t make it home.
The cost of his life would be mine.
Pilar was suddenly in front of me, trying to get me to move away from the door. “You don’t look well.”
“She hit her head,” Jaz said, shifting brown, almond-shaped eyes to me. “Do you feel . . . ¿cómo se dice? How do you say in English? Sick to the stomach?”
“Nauseous.” Pilar twisted her dark hair on top of her head, secured it in a knot, and took my elbow. “You should lie down.”
“She should do anything but lie down,” Jaz said.
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked Jaz. Pilar tugged on my arm, but I stayed put. The pounding in my head could wait. “Where’s Alejandro?”
Jaz shook her head. “Fighting or dead.”
“You saw him?”
“No, but I know. Some cartel thinks it can come in and slaughter us, but nobody who enters will make it out alive. We can defend ourselves, and we will. They can’t know that every person in this home will fight to the death for what we’ve built.”
The Badlands wasn’t Cristiano’s town. It belonged to all of them. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one Cristiano had equipped to defend herself—and this place—in the event of his absence.
Pilar returned to the locker, searching the shelves. When the door beeped behind me, I moved, and Alejandro ushered in two women from the staff who ran into Jaz’s open arms.
I grabbed Alejandro’s elbow. “Have you heard from Cristiano?”
“I’ve been looking for you.” His eyes roamed my face as Jaz and the women talked over each other in Spanish. “What happened?”
“Have you heard from him?” I repeated loudly, and the bunker went silent.
Cristiano is dead.
This is the price.
Alejandro glanced at the ground. “I have to get back up there. Stay here until I come for you.”
“Max?” Jaz asked from across the room. “Daniel?”
Hearing the names of the two men who’d gone with Cristiano on his mission, Alejandro turned his face away. Grease smeared his cheek. “Nothing.”
My heart missed a beat as panic rose in me. “Nothing?” I asked.
“Nobody’s answering my calls.”
“Maybe they’re not able to,” Pilar said. “They could’ve put their phones down or gone to sleep—”
“They were attacked, too.” Alejandro sighed, clearly torn about whether to stay or go back up, and maybe even how much he should say. “And in an emergency like this—danger out in the field, an intruder or attack within the walls—we always check in within ten minutes. No matter what,” Alejandro said. “It’s a rule.”
The air around me constricted. My vision narrowed on a bloody smear on Alejandro’s green, long-sleeved shirt. I could still hear Cristiano’s deep, alive voice over the phone. His hard-earned laugh. His controlled, unnerving command for me to get down to the cellar when the sirens had sounded. There’d been no alarm on his end. Only my name. And the voice in the background.
“A gift from Belmonte-Ruiz, cabrón. You’ve fucked with us for the last time.”
“Belmonte-Ruiz,” I whispered. Mexico’s most pervasive human trafficking ring. They wanted Cristiano dead, and with good reason. He’d stolen from them. Evaded their attempts to stop him. Taken pride in hurting them, and in the fact that he was still standing.
It was only a matter of time before it would catch up with him, though. And yet, even knowing it put his home, his people, his wife, and himself in danger—he’d persisted. He wouldn’t be deterred from helping those who couldn’t help themselves.
I wanted to be mad at him for it, but it only showed the kind of man he was. A man I had doubted and maligned every chance I’d gotten. Some good in this garden of evil. And I hadn’t gotten the chance to tell him before they . . .
I choked back a sob. “They tried to kill him.”
“They might’ve succeeded,” Alejandro said.
A wave of nausea hit me. I touched the blood-caked gash on my throat. All at once, everything throbbed. My neck. My hand. My forehead where I’d smacked it against the glass, my cheek from hitting the floor.
“Check her head,” Alejandro said to Jaz. “She looks too pale.”
“I’m fine.” I had to be. I needed answers, not more problems. I grabbed Alejandro’s rumpled shirt. “You have to find Cristiano. His phone could be broken,” I said. “They could’ve lost signal. Or been forced to leave their things behind. He can’t be . . . he needs us.”
“I’ve deployed a team to find them,” Alejandro said, a failed attempt to sound reassuring. “According to GPS, Cristiano and Daniel haven’t moved. I think that’s good. But Max . . . his phone is offline.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Hell if I know, but he’d answer if he could.”
“What happens if you don’t hear from them within ten minutes of an emergency?” Pilar asked.
“It’s never happened,” Jaz answered.
“Never?” I looked to Alejandro for confirmation. “In all the years you’ve known Cristiano, there was never once a miscommunication, an accident, a—”
“Never.” He checked his watch. “We always find a way to make contact, even if we have to find a phone somehow. It’s been over half an hour.” Alejo sniffed and grabbed the door handle. “I have to get—”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Pilar said, her voice rising as she glared at Alejandro. “Phones fail all the time. And you need to work on your bedside manner.”
“I’m just trying to prepare Natalia.” Despite his brusque tone, worry etched the lines around Alejo’s eyes. “Even putting aside the ten-minute rule, if Cristiano was alive, he never would’ve let this long pass without checking on Natalia.”
Oh, God. My limbs weakened, and I grabbed Pilar’s arm. Alejo was right. Cristiano’s silence spoke louder than anything. He and I had a turbulent history, a marriage that better resembled a battlefield, and we’d been sparring for weeks—but my gut knew. He would’ve done anything in his power to make sure I was safe.
And even though I’d wished him out my life more times than I could count, I wanted safety for him, too. I wanted him back.
The world began to swim. I slid down a wall and dropped my head between my knees.
If I’d had any doubts, they vanished before my eyes.
Something he’d said at the costume gala came back to me . . .
It had been Cristiano’s dying wish to hear me scream.
And the heavens had granted him that.