Page 3 of Bound By A Promise

Almost a year later

The piercing whine of alarms ripped me from my sleep. Opening my eyes wide to the darkness of my bedroom, I scanned the corners as my pulse thumped in my veins. Strobing lights flashed beneath the bottom edge of my door, giving my bedroom the eerie feeling of a Halloween haunted house. Yet within, nothing seemed out of place.

My mind scrambled for answers.

Alarms meant intruders.

While other children were told stories of princesses and princes or perhaps adventures with dragon riders, from an early age, our father’s stories warned my siblings and me of dangers in the real world. There weren’t happily-ever-afters in his tales. His honesty wasn’t meant to scare us as much as it was to prepare us.

His affiliation with the Roríguez cartel as a top lieutenant put a target on our backs. That was why when my siblings and I were younger, we were constantly watched over by our bodyguards.Now that we’re adults, for my sister and me, the rules hadn’t changed. While Catalina’s bodyguards were with her in Kansas City, Miguel remained in San Diego with me. He’d been at my side for most of my memory. My brother Emiliano no longer needed protection. Like our bodyguards, our brother was an effective killing machine. That wasn’t what I saw when I sat across the dining room table; nevertheless, it was the truth. In our world, killing was too common.

Is someone trying to kill us?

My hands trembled and my ears rang as I pulled a hooded sweatshirt over my sleeping shorts and camisole. The decal on the front displayed the letters SDSU, San Diego State University. I’d recently finished my first year.

Contemplating the idea that I may not live to see my second year, I held my breath and searched my room for a weapon as the door to my bedroom swung inward.

“Camila,” Miguel said, his voice barely audible above the alarms. He lowered his gun and rushed toward me. “Apúrese.”

“What’s happening?”

“Russians. We’re getting you and your mother to the safe room.”

He reached for my hand.

His grip was a vise.

My mother and me. What about the others? “Em?” I asked. When Miguel didn’t answer, I raised my volume over the screaming alarms. “Is he okay?”

“Sí. Ven.”

I stared up into the dark orbs of the man I’d known most of my life. Miguel was my father’s employee, but he was more than that to me. While he was deadly accurate with a shot, I knew him as the man who drank imaginary tea at my tea parties when I was young. He not only watched over me as I swam but taughtme to swim. Our blood wasn’t shared, but he was a part of my family. “Are we safe?”

“My job is you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Or you.”

The howl of the alarm shrilled louder in the hallway as I walked crouched behind my bodyguard. I hesitated as he led me away from the front staircase and away from my parents’ wing of the house. “What about Mama?”

“Luis is with her.”

Luis Bosco was the head of our family’s security. I couldn’t recall a time when he wasn’t present. Like Miguel, he was more family than employee.

As we traveled along the wall, moving toward the back stairs, I remembered the second wedding cementing the Roriguez cartel and Luciano famiglia’s alliance, of Aléjandro Roriguez and Mia Luciano, that had taken place in this home only a few days before. The fierce contrast from then to now made my skin prickle.

Suddenly, the house went dark and deadly quiet. The abrupt change left my head reeling. Miguel stopped walking as the new silence enveloped us, seeming somehow louder than the alarms.

“Fuck,” he mumbled. “They cut the power.”

“How?”

Instead of answering, Miguel continued moving toward the back steps with his gun drawn. He lowered his voice. “Stay close.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Miguel stretched out his arm, keeping me in place. I held my breath as I watched red lines of light crisscross through our kitchen. The safe room was in the lower level. The only way to the next set of stairs was through the kitchen.

“Get down.”

My bodyguard, over six feet of muscle, was on his hands and knees. I quickly followed. Together we crawled, keeping our heads below the streaming lights. I wasn’t certain if I remembered to breathe until we made it to the second staircase. It was as we began the descent that we heard a scream.

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