Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Soldiers enter first, automatic weapons on their shoulders. Three of them, one carrying a heavy-duty flashlight. They insert a key into the lock and open the door of our cage just as my uncle comes into view. He’s grinning like a fucking jackal.
His eyes fall on me first, skim over me. It would make my skin crawl if I wasn’t so afraid. His gaze bounces off each of my brothers. He’s clean-shaven, hair neatly combed back slick with gel. I can smell his signature overuse of cologne from here.
“Fucking traitor,” Diego mutters and spits in his general direction. It doesn’t touch him though.
My uncle looks at him, his lips turning down in disapproval. “Isn’t that what we all are?”
More footsteps.
I look beyond my uncle as he steps aside. Two more soldiers, another man I know isn’t a soldier just from the casual slant to his stance.
And then him. The one in charge. He’s no longer masked but I know it’s him. I’d recognize his eyes anywhere. I will never forget those eyes or the way they looked at me.
He stops just inside the cell, big frame taking up the whole of the entry, sucking up more than his share of oxygen.
My heart races at the sight of him.
The man I know isn’t a soldier slides his hands into his pockets. He leans toward the one in charge and says something too low for me to hear. He’s speaking Italian from what I can make out. I’d have known these weren’t Cartel men anywhere. He’s wearing a white button down and jeans. Casual beside the suited man who took my ring and somehow knocked me out.
The suited one scans the cell, taking in each of my brothers in turn and it takes all I have not to shrink away when his gaze fixes on me.
Instinctively, I touch my neck as I take in his head of dark hair, the shadow of a beard. The scar along his right cheek does nothing to take away from his features. The opposite. He’s dangerous, this man. Deadly. I’d know it even if I saw him out on a normal day in the normal world.
Not that I’ve ever lived a normal life in a normal world.
And even though I don’t know who he is, my brothers do. I see it in their eyes. Feel it in the anxiety coming off them, their fear stinking up the room.
“Look who’s risen from the dead,” Diego starts, taking a step toward the man like the idiot he is.
The man’s lip curls upward, and it takes the most minute gesture of his head to have a soldier on my brother, pushing him roughly to his knees.
The man’s eyes shift to me again as if he’s curious. He holds my gaze momentarily before scanning Angel and Noah, who is still passed out. What did they do to him?
“The boy,” he says. They’re the first words I hear from his mouth. His voice is deep and low. Quiet, but without a doubt, in control. I get the feeling he doesn’t waste words.
A soldier moves toward Noah, boots loud, echoing. I wonder how vast the darkness beyond our little cell is. In the distance I see glimpses of light. Windows like the one in our cell, I guess.
“He’s breathing,” Angel tells the soldier when the man bends to check if Noah’s alive, I’m guessing.
The soldier checks for himself, straightens and nods to the one in charge. He looks different out of his camo. Deadlier. His hair is a little wet. I guess he took the time to shower.
He nods to the soldier, shifts his gaze to me once more before turning to my uncle.
“Get it done,” he tells him.
Jacob, my uncle, nods and reaches behind him to where he must have had his pistol all along.
“What’s happening?” I cry out, a new panic taking hold of me even though guns aren’t new to me. I live in a world of violence. It’s my inheritance. It will be my legacy. I am the princess at the heart of it. Or I was when my father was alive. Since his murder I’ve become a pawn.
I pull my legs back, readying to stand. I’m barefoot, I realize. I must have lost my shoes in transit.
All the men turn to me.
I only look at the one in charge. He appears taller than before but that’s because I’m still on the ground. He steps toward me. I scramble backward, my hand falling on the rusting metal frame of a cot. I pull myself up to stand, willing the nausea to subside. Willing my fear to.
I realize I still have my mother’s veil in one hand. It’s bloody too. Probably from the woman his men killed in the tower.
He stops when he’s only a few feet from me. He’s taller now than he appeared in the tower room. I’ve lost the four inches my shoes gave me. I have to crane my neck to look up at him and my gaze moves from his deep blue eyes, to the scar on his cheek, to his mouth, his neck. Another scar there. The edge of one. It disappears beneath the collar of his shirt.