Page 128 of Drawn Blue Lines

“Especially not me. I wouldn’t if I were you.”

I turned a conflicted stare toward a wide-eyed Adriana.

Panic flashed across her bruised face. “He’s lying! Yes, he offered me a deal, but I was telling you the truth when I said I turned him down. I didn’t care who I was...Marisol Muñoz, Adriana Carrera, I told him, and I told you—I bow to no one. Whatever I did it would be on my own terms.” She glared up at Ignacio. “Not yours.”

“So, she went after you herself. How touching.”

“You set me up,” she shot back. “I had no choice.”

Keeping his eyes on me, Ignacio smiled and leaned down and pressed a kiss against her temple. “Is this where you tell your lover that when I made my offer you were hiding out with my son?”

Chapter Forty

Adriana

The question on Brody’s face was worse than any knife. “You were with Cristiano?”

“It wasn’t like that! I had no idea Cris was his son!”

A laugh reverberated behind me. A sick and twisted laugh I felt in my soul. “You believe that?”

“Shut up!” I hissed. He was messing with my head, but my nerves were raw, and my body battered. I searched the tortured hazel eyes I’d come to know so well. “Brody, everything I’ve said to you is real. That kiss was real. I know you felt it.”

Behind me, Ignacio groaned. “I know what I feel, and it’s bored. Deshazte de él,” he commanded, and a new guard grabbed Brody from behind. Get rid of him.

The guard gave a slight nod in acknowledgment and shoved a gun against the back of Brody’s head, but he fought back, a dead resolve in his eyes that set everything in motion and tore one word from my throat.

“No!” Ignacio was at the end of his rope, and I knew neither of us had much time. So, fighting against the haze, I jerked against him, the blade digging deeper into my skin. “Don’t hurt him! Do whatever you want to me but let him go!”

Ignacio’s arms tightened around me, dragging me up from the chair to a standing position. “Are you still trying to win? I can appreciate that kind of fortitude, and if I were a patient man, I’d watch you kill yourself slowly, but you’ve proven to be somewhat of a pain in my ass.”

Thick fingers grabbed my cheek, squeezing until I tasted blood. The harder he squeezed, the more Brody fought. Lights dimmed, and blackness swarmed in from the edges of my peripheral vision. More soundless words fell from my restrained mouth until the crack of a gunshot gave them sound.

A scream of loss and heartbreak tore out of me as I closed my eyes and prayed for the knife to sink hard and fast.

“Let her go and face me like a man.”

My eyes flew open to find Brody standing in front of me, gun in his hand and the slumped body of the guard on the floor behind him. I didn’t know what to feel first—relief or fear. I wanted to tell him to save me. I wanted to tell him I loved him. I wanted to tell him I’d never leave him.

Instead, the words that fell out of my mouth told him goodbye. “Brody, go find Santi, please. Find him and take him back to Val and Eden.”

“No! I’m not leaving you here!”

“You made me love you, and now I’m lost.” I choked out. That’s what me hiciste amarte, y ahora estoy perdida means. That’s what I said after I told you I loved you. But I was wrong, Brody. I didn’t lose my way when I fell for you. I found it.”

I’d been strong this whole time, but time wasn’t a luxury I had anymore. Desperation overtook me, and although I hated myself for it, I used Brody’s own words against him. “No one was there to save me when he tore me out of my mother’s arms. I’ll never forgive you if you let Santi suffer the same fate. You promised me. You told me you wouldn’t make me regret kissing you, and I believed you. I told Val you’d never hurt me. Please don’t make me a liar.”

The pain in his face destroyed me. “Who’s going to save you?”

All those nights we confessed our truths, it was the one he never heard.

“I told you. No one can save me.”

Stepping forward as much as the blade allowed, I kicked backward, landing a hard heel between Ignacio’s legs. He let out a grunt, and the pressure against my neck lessened just enough that I managed to land an elbow into his ribcage and grab onto his wrist with both hands. I spun around, both of us fighting for the knife.

“Time to die, pinche puta!” He shoved downward with a hard twist of his wrist.

“You first, asshole!” Chaos ensued as a second shot rang out, and pain slashed through my body, shredding every fiber into frayed threads. Ignacio’s eyes widened just before he collapsed in a lifeless heap onto the concrete.

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