He ignored it. “I came here to free Vera Gomez, kill your brothers, and destroy the cartel. I’m part of a vigilante group. We annihilate monsters. People just like you.” He bared his teeth in a terrifying smile. “I fell in love with Vera the night I saw her fight. You, on the other hand, have repulsed me from the moment we met.”
Her head hit the floor as he dropped her. Then his fists flew. One punch after another, he bludgeoned her face. She made no noise, no attempt to fight him. Soon, the sounds of wet smacks gave way to crunching bone. He didn’t stop.
Vera recognized the torment in his eyes. The rage. The haunting nightmares. Silvia had raped him, and she hadn’t been the first. Vera’s heart broke as she watched him unleash eight years of memories in the harrowing drive of his fists.
He hammered strike after strike, raging in a gruesome trance, long after Silvia was dead. Long after Vera could stomach the macabre sight of blood and bone splattering beneath his blows.
Romero sat in a huddled ball with his eyes clamped shut.
“Luke.”
He didn’t hear her.
“Luke. Luke! Snap out of it and look at me! I need you!”
He stopped, stared at his bloody hands, and met her eyes.
“Time’s up.” Her body felt like ice, her head squishy with fuzz. “I’m losing blood, and you need pants.”
He looked down at himself, brows knitting as if noticing his lack of clothes for the first time. Rising to his feet, he didn’t give Silvia another glance. He strode directly toward Marco’s corpse, stripped off the suit pants, and dragged them on.
By the time he returned to her, the blood was gone from his hands. He appeared composed, hawk-eyed, and laser-focused. One-hundred-percent Luke.
“Romero.” He snapped his fingers. “Stand up.”
“Don’t hurt him. He designed the cartel’s security system. Really smart kid.” She felt herself fading, her fingers slipping on the grenade. She readjusted her grip. “I promised him amity and protection. He’s coming with us.”
A period of murkiness flickered in and out, disorientating her. Seconds passed. Or minutes? She was losing her sense of time and awareness.
Luke was bent over her, his shirtless torso bulked up and strapped with weapons. Expression hard, eyes aglow with green flames, he looked like a rogue soldier, armed and ready for a revolution.
“Let me have it, baby.” His hands were wrapped around hers, keeping the grenade safe.
She released the locked grip of her fingers and watched through blurred vision as he passed the small missile off to Romero. Then he removed the heavy artillery from her body.
A necktie appeared in his hand, one that Marco had worn. He tied it tightly around her thigh above the bullet wound. She cried out and pressed a fist to her mouth, shaking through the unholy pain.
“I’m so sorry.” He kissed her face and pulled her hand away to kiss her mouth. “I’m getting you out of here.”
“For the second time.” She tried to smile, but her lips were numb.
“For the last time.”
As he bent to lift her, an explosion rocked the foundation. The ground shook like an earthquake, and the atmosphere charged with electricity. He spun, grabbing the grenade from Romero’s hands.
Her ears rang, and the boom lingered in her chest. When the tension released, overpowering relief swept in.
His team was here.
As the dust settled, Luke turned to her, thunderstruck. “Tell me that was our guys.”
She looked to Romero for confirmation.
“I hooked your friends into my phone’s GPS so they could track us, and vice-versa.” Romero removed the device from his pocket and tapped on the screen. “They’re on the south side. All the activity is there. We should be able to escape out the main gate.”
“I can’t wait to hear how the two of you pulled this off.” Luke grinned.
Romero might’ve been a genius, but his story wasn’t much different than hers. Poor Latino boy supporting his poor family. A wealthy, powerful man strolled in, offered him a high-paying job, U.S. citizenship, and a slew of other empty promises.
She’d learned about him through the gossip of the girls in the estate. The cartel kept him sequestered away from the guests, but with Silvia’s key card, she’d been able to enter his room and take him by surprise.
Romero wasn’t really a bad guy. He’d made some mistakes, the same as her. Now they were both working toward redemption.
“The pounding on the door stopped,” she said.
The explosion had drawn the crowd away.
Luke glanced at the grenade in his hand, then at the wall near the exit. “What’s on the other side of that door?”
No way could he carry her, a grenade, and aim a gun at the same time. He must’ve been thinking the same thing.
“A garden.” Romero looked up from his phone. “Lots of foliage to hide anyone who might be waiting for us to come out.”
“Stay here.” He strode toward the door, opened it with Marco’s key card from his pocket, and chucked the grenade.
Seconds later, it detonated with a chest-rattling bang.
Well, there was no one waiting out there now. But more would come.
She didn’t know how he planned to carry her to the gate without taking gunfire. But the pain in her leg was eating away her ability to worry about the endless details.
The persistent pull to close her eyes was grueling. She wanted to sleep, needed it desperately after being awake all night. But Luke probably hadn’t slept, either, and his night had been much, much worse.
“Here we go.” He crouched over her, gun in hand, more guns strapped to his back, and lifted her into his arms.
She bit back a scream as her leg jostled and burned with a vengeance. “Remove my vest. It’s bulky. Too heavy.”
“Not a chance. Hold on.”
She tried, but the universe was spinning around a black curtain. Daylight speckled in through moments of darkness. Gunfire sounded off and on, muffled pops, as if passing through wads of cotton.
Then there was nothing.
“Vera.”
“Huh?” She woke with a rumbling vibration beneath her and a rumbling voice beside her.
“Vera. Wake up.”
She rubbed her eyes and found herself in the luxurious leather seat of a fast car. Like really fast. It flew down a barren road, hugging the turns and growling through the gears.
Behind the wheel sat the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Red hair glinting in the sunlight, shirtless chest boasting strength and hard work, and powerful hands that knew how to maneuver high speeds, deliver fatal punches, and touch a woman until her eyes rolled back in her head.
“We’re alive,” she said in wonder, watching trees blur by. In the distance, clouds of smoke billowed on the horizon. “Is that the compound?”
“Yeah, it’s burning. We hit them hard and fast. There will be nothing left by the time the authorities show up.”
“How did you get us out?”
“Your badass haul of guns. I had enough firepower to clear a path to the car. Romero’s safe. None of us were hit.”
“What about the girls?”
“Rounded up and protected. This is what we do. Trust me, they’re fine.” His green eyes cut to her and returned to the road. “How are you doing?”