Page 66 of Falling for the Enemy

“We must go,” he says, his thick accent barely discernible. “The police have clearly been tipped off and will arrive quickly. The Chief of Police will cover us but with so many dead—”

I begin to move.

I only stop when the cocking of a gun echoes from behind me. “Hand her to me.” Manzana’s lieutenant has to be the stupidest hombre alive. Can he not see how close I am to removing his intestines via his throat? To further prove my point regarding his idiocy, his tone is hard and demanding, as if he expects my knees to bend to his will. “She’s not yours to take.”

My head turns, gaze finding him over my shoulder. If he thinks I’ll hand over the woman who is quickly becoming my entire world, he’s dead wrong.

If I had more time, I’d use my blade to show him just how much.

“And what, you think she’s yours?” Agitation grips me and I chuckle, the sound devoid of amusement. “It was my name she screamed minutes ago, pendejo.” He flinches, my words a direct hit. “Not yours.” I readjust Ari in my arms. “Remember that.”

Seemingly appearing out of thin air, Benito rounds my front, his drawn gun aimed. Despite our differences and the tension that lingers between him and me where my love life is concerned, he’ll pull the trigger, eradicating the threat at my back without hesitation.

He’s a hot-tempered pendejo.

But he’s also my most loyal soldier.

“I’m getting her medical help,” I continue, anxiety continuing to climb. “Come with me as a living man or stay behind as a corpse. Those are your only two options today.”

I don’t care which he chooses.

With my sole focus returning to the woman in my arms, I exit the warehouse with Benito walking backward, shadowing each of my steps, his well-trained aim protecting me from the hailstorm of bullets that at least one King wishes to bury in my skull.

To my surprise, the bull holsters his weapon, likely realizing that this battle is one he won’t win.

And like a good soldier, he follows.

* * *

Fear is an emotion I’m unaccustomed to.

Right now, however, it consumes me.

“Come on, Hermosa…” Seated in the back of my Rover, with Arianna’s still form resting in my arms, I run a shaky finger down her cheek. My touch on her ashen face is gentle despite the chaos that whirls within me, diminishing the fraying rope tethering my razor-thin control in place. “Wake up for me, baby.”

With my racing heart causing pain to weave through my chest, I carefully extract the clean towel Christian handed me the minute we climbed into the SUV from her injured side.

Blood and lacerations.

Both cover her ribs, visible slivers of wooden shrapnel embedded in her skin. The wounds are surprisingly superficial, none of them lethal. Yet I still grind my back teeth, the sight of each cut enraging.

With the gunfight between the Fallen Kings and La Famiglia already in motion, I know little of what happened prior to my arrival at the abandoned warehouse. But I will find out, and when I do, every man responsible for her pain will die at my hands.

No one touches Ari.

Not without receiving a death sentence.

“This is it,” Christian says from the driver’s seat, breaking through the haze of murderous thoughts that plague me when we finally arrive at our destination, an inner-city clinic known for silently helping criminals like us.

For the right price, of course.

It’s always about the money.

“I’ll pull around back,” he continues, “and—”

His voice becomes muted, the words he spoke failing to penetrate the fog that surrounds me when a pair of half-lidded blue eyes meet mine, the queen they belong to tensing in my arms.

Mimicking a viper prepared to strike, she curls her manicured hands, allowing the deadly instinct that’s been burned into her very DNA to take over before she’s even fully alert.

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