Cenobia stared out the tinted window of the Phantom, letting the morning sun shining across the low, flat constancy of the Bajío—its low trees of mesquite, its ubiquitous nopal, its grasses turning to yellow with the end of the rainy season—soothe her while she slowly traced her fingers over the back of her hand.
What did Adán want to talk to her about?
“Did I upset you last night?” Roman murmured, providing both balm and scrape to her thoughts as he leaned over the leather divider to slide his hand into hers. “I want to take things off your plate, not add to it.”
She glanced at Arnol, who was resolutely keeping his eyes on the road. The former Mexico City pesero driver had faced down would-be rapists and drug runners on his graffitied bus and could be a pleasant source of jabber at the end of a long day. She’d earned his eternal loyalty by always suggesting the perfect gifts for his many nieces.
“No,” she said softly, giving Roman what she hoped was a sincere smile. “It’s just the usual worries: career on the line, future of the company in the balance, intrigue and terrorism at my doorstep. And I was a little restless in bed last night.”
She felt like she pulled off the under-the-eyelashes look just right. But her hand was curled around his and she was rubbing her fingers over the large, satiny burn scar on the back of his hand.
“If it helps,” he said, so low she felt it more than heard it. “I didn’t get much sleep either.” The etch of those lines at the corner of his eyes were deep. She wished she could lean over and kiss them.
Roman wanted her.
Yesterday, she’d stripped herself bare for him. She’d let him see everything down to her bones and viscera: her sisters, her efforts to protect herself and them, her rage at the injustice, her hurt caused by another, her fear of being defined by it. Her inexperience.
She’d revealed herself to the only man she wanted to see her and the only man who could have destroyed her by perceiving her as weak because of a horrible ten minutes not of her choosing and out of her control.
And he’d shown her with his words, his eyes, the sacrificial offering of his pornographic mouth, and the unflagging readiness of his body that he wanted her. He’d seemed undone by her kiss and touch. She’d made this huge, hard-muscled, experienced man stagger. Her memories of being young and carnal had been tainted, but last night, he’d made her feel what other girls at seventeen, eighteen, nineteen must feel: that greed. That desperation. That power.
She’d been nothing but the skin that reveled beneath the touch of those dreamt-about lips, the scalp that tingled as he pulled her hair, the fingertips that clung to the heat and muscle of him, and the michi that danced and rubbed wildly against his hard, eager, throbbing, long, thick penis.
Roman’s long, thick, hard penis for her.
He’d been militaristically precise in laying out how difficult being together would be. She didn’t disagree. But if he believed outlining his discipline, honor, and respect would dampen her desire, he wasn’t as good as a tactician as he thought he was. Only looking away from him and performing measured belly breathing had prevented her from unleashing thirteen years of stored-up sexual fantasies and frustrations on him on the couch.
She would give him time. She would be patient—as patient as her innate impatience allowed. She would hold on tight to the belief that wanted her and saw her as powerful, and that his knowledge of her rape hadn’t weakened that. She’d gone to bed exultant and a little in shock. After all this time, her warrior prince was here, and he was gentle and dominant and empathetic and bloodthirsty and...perfect. Better than a fantasy.
It should have been a morning for celebration.
But Daniel’s call last night reminded her that, no, Roman didn’t know everything.
Her father had said Adán wanted to speak to her immediately, first thing in the morning. About what, he didn’t know.
“But I love that boy, too,” he’d said, “and if he has something to ask you, I will support him.”
Carajo. She almost forgot. She gently tugged her hand from Roman. “When we arrive at my father’s house, I need to meet with my father and brother alone.” She’d texted Roman last night about the change in the day’s itinerary, but she hadn’t mentioned the need for privacy.
Her words bounced hollowly around the tinted glass.
Never one to react quickly, Roman’s silence still spoke volumes. It was the first time she’d spoken to him like he was staff.
“Okay. Glori was planning to interview Daniel’s security while we’re here.” She was in the front car. “I’ll join them.”
Could someone from inside her father’s household be providing information about her movements, her home, her work, her past?
We kept you blindfolded last time. This time, we’ll cut off your eyelids so we’ll be the last thing you see.
The men working for Las Luces Oscuras believed they’d kept her blindfolded when she was their captive. But her eyes hadn’t been covered the whole time. And only one person in the world knew that. He’d been a young man, then. Or at least, she’d thought he was a young man.
He’d been her first lesson that someone could take all of her resources—her might, her wealth, her high IQ and inductive reasoning and problem-solving skills—ball them up and throw them away like used tissue.
They pulled off the highway and onto the miles-long private road that led to the flat-topped mesa where the compound loomed. The dry grasses and jacaranda trees that they passed hid the kind of deterrents usually found surrounding American military bases. Locals took the fence and “Peligroso. No entrar.” signs that had gone up twelve years ago seriously after one elderly nopal picker was swarmed by her father’s SWAT team.
Her childhood home, the place she’d dreamt about when she was excelling in her American boarding schools, hadn’t always been called a compound. Her father had transformed it for her.
And yet she was only here for one meal a week. Sometimes less.
Arnol made a harrumph of sound from the front seat. “Some pendejo is driving down the road like he’s racing the Carrera Panamerica,” he said.
Cenobia glanced out the Phantom’s front windshield to see dust billowing behind a car speeding in their direction.
Roman spoke to his team through his earpiece. “Alpha Team, we’ve got an unknown vehicle moving fast toward us. Contact the main house and make sure—”
Suddenly he winced, dug his finger into his ear, and pulled out his earpiece, throwing it to the lambswool carpeting. She could hear a tinny feedback squeal.
He grabbed for his phone. “Communications are out,” he said. Cenobia glanced at hers, heart pounding, and saw that it also showed no reception.
“Señorita,” Arnol said, his voice hard in a way she’d never heard it. “That’s your father’s car.”
They were close enough now to see that it was her father’s black S-560e Mercedes barreling toward them.
What was happening?
The black, bullet-proof Escalade at the front of their caravan swerved sideways and screeched to a stop, blocking the road. Arnol braked behind it.
“You stay down,” Roman ordered as he pulled the gun that she always forgot he wore from the holster inside his coat. His face looked marble-carved.
This was the soldier who’d dragged her out of the bunker, held her up when she was sick, then raced her across the desert to safety. This was the man who did the things no one else wanted to do, but did them because they were necessary and he was called and he could do them best.
He cracked his door open.
Through it, she could suddenly hear automatic gunfire, sounding like the crackle of fireworks, coming from the top of the mesa.
Someone was shooting in the compound.
Terrified, horrified, Cenobia looked at Roman.
Her father. Bartolo.
Adán.
“I’ve got you,” he told her, reassurance in every warrior-hard line.
With the Mercedes almost on top of them, Glori and the Escalade’s driver leapt out of his door and positioned themselves behind the hood, aiming their guns over it. The two guards in the rear Escalade came running up to join them. Roman opened the passenger front door then stood behind its bulletproof wing.
“As soon as we find out if the oncoming car’s a tango or friendly, we need to exfil,” he called to the guards, aiming his gun over the door frame. “Keep your eyes on your quadrants, we don’t want to get flanked.”
Cenobia watched over Arnol’s shoulder as the dust plume filled the road in front of them. He crossed himself. She’d stopped praying years ago, but she hoped his murmuring lips had power.
She could save a kingdom and build a car from the ground up and kick a man so that he couldn’t support his weight for an hour. But she’d never felt more helpless.
At the last second, the car screeched to a sideways stop across the road. It was still shuddering when Bartolo stuck his head above the driver side door, waving his hands.
“I’ve got Daniel and Adán,” he shouted. His shaved head was bleeding and there was blood on his shirt. “Daniel’s hurt. We’ve got to get out of here.”
She scrambled to get out the passenger door and to him, but only made it a step before Roman grabbed her arm.
“Please,” she begged, inches from his face. “I need to see if they’re okay.”
He breathed out a harsh breath. “Stay behind me,” he commanded. He signaled to his people. “Cover us.”
She crouched behind Roman as they ran.
“We’ve got to go,” Bartolo yelled as they scrambled to his side of the car. “It was an ambush. They were waiting for you.” She wrenched open the back door and gasped at what she saw: her father, stretched out on the seat, his head in Adán’s lap. They were both covered in blood.
“¡Papá, Adán!” she cried. Daniel was pale and glassy eyed. Adán held a thick compress against her father’s side.
“It’s okay, mija,” her father croaked. “I’m okay.”
The amount of blood meant he was not okay. “Adán, mi amor, ¿estás bien?” He nodded. He wasn’t shot, but his eyes were glassy and sweat dampened his lank curls. He was probably in shock.
All she’d ever wanted was to protect him from this.
“I don’t know how they got in and I don’t know how long they were there undetected,” Bartolo told Roman, pressing his palm to the bleeding cut on his head. His knuckles were torn and bloody. “They were waiting for Cenobia. But someone jumped the gun and the alarm was sounded. I got the staff safely into the panic room, and I was able to trap the chingados behind the compound gate, but I don’t know how long the lock code will hold them.”
A moment of total stillness blinked over Roman.
Cenobia watched him as the moment grew uncomfortable.
Then, as if it hadn’t happened, he looked over and yelled for Glori. He ordered Arnol, the SUV’s driver, and her two guards to turn the rear van around and head for the exit. “Send up a flare if we’ve got a second front forming,” he called as Glori jogged toward them. “We can drive out over the desert but I don’t want to.”
The stunted trees and cacti would make that escape an obstacle course. And while Cenobia had been adamant that her father reject using land mines, she didn’t entirely trust the decisions he made about protecting her when she’d first come home from the kidnapping.
Roman focused again on Bartolo as Glori joined them. “Did the house security know we were coming?”
Bartolo shook his head.
A dreadful sadness passed over Roman’s beautiful face as he looked at his second in command. “Our people knew,” he said.
Glori’s dark eyes flashed wide and Cenobia could see the instant objection in her face before she swallowed it. “Yes,” she said. “I informed our people and Cenobia’s people last night.”
Adán gave a scared sob. Still crouching in the car, Cenobia reached for his blood-sticky hand.
He turned his face to the window.
“We’ve got to get them out of the country,” Roman said.
“I can’t leave!” Cenobia cried, standing.
He stepped close and she could feel the force of a man who commanded elite soldiers. “We’ve run out of options,” he said through gritted teeth. “They know your locations. They sabotaged your shipment. Now, they got inside your dad’s compound.”
Conscious of the terrified boy in the car, he held her elbow and whispered into her ear, “If they’ve corrupted someone on my team, there are few places they can’t get to you.”
He could’ve shaken her and it wouldn’t have had the power of the tortured look on his face.
He stepped back, his jaw turned to granite.
“We need to get you and Adán out, someplace remote, someplace safe. Bartolo should come with us.”
“Not without Daniel,” Bartolo barked, eyes blazing.
But there was so much blood.
“Glori will get him to the hospital and protect him.” Roman’s voice was surprisingly soothing as he answered the ferocious bodyguard. “I trust her with my life.”
Glori gave an affirmative nod. Cenobia was so glad he had this unyielding woman watching his back.
“Yes, compadre,” her father insisted, his voice weak. “Go with them. Help Roman. Protege a nuestros hijos.”
Protect our children. “Papá,” Cenobia croaked, not wanting to leave him alone either.
Even weakened, her father looked back at her with fortifying love. “Nothing is more important than the life of...of Adán. Of you and Adán. Por favor, mijita. Go. Be safe.”
He was right. Nothing was more important than Adán’s safety. Not a car. Not her legacy. Not her employees or the people of her country.
Adán. She had to keep Adán safe.
She nodded, and Bartolo cursed then agreed desolately.
The next half hour was a crazy, desperate dance. She only got to give her father a tiny kiss before Glori was tearing off in the Mercedes with him. He would be safe in the Trujillo wing of Hospital Angeles in León. The idea that it was her people who’d betrayed them was torturous—for Roman, the thought that it was his people would be deadening.
She, Adán, Roman and Bartolo escaped in the Escalade. Two miles up the road, driving away from Guanajuato, they threw their destroyed phones out the window. Five miles up, they traded their Escalade for a farmer’s truck and a flip phone.
On a tiny airstrip outside San Miguel de Allende, they boarded billionaire Roxanne Medina’s private plane. The pilot knew where they were going. But Adán, Bartolo, and Cenobia didn’t.
Cenobia was flying through the clouds with her warrior prince. The trust she’d first placed in him based on memory and fantasy was now as real as life and death.