Page 61 of Hearts Of Darkness

Please tell me that wasn’t Dante’s doing.Oh God, where is he? Where is he?

Manuel glances down at my naked body, and then looks away in haste. Embarrassed, I grab the loose sheet.Dante’s definitely going to murder him for that.

“Please hurry, señoritas,” he repeats, keeping his head turned. “They are nearly at the house.”

“Who are, Manuel?”

“I tell you later…when you are safe.” He’s losing his patience. Now isn’t the time for my tenaciousness.

“Sofía—I need a T-shirt and skirt…pants…anything you can find.”

She springs to her feet and dashes across the bedroom to the closet.I promised Dante I’d keep safe for him. But is he keeping safe for me?

She returns with the items and Manuel spins around again to let me dress. I snap my bra into place and yank theT-shirt over my head as my thoughts scatter like atoms. I have no stream of collective consciousness, just broken fragments of phrases and words:Must hide…Dante…this is just a bad dream…I want to go home…

At the last minute, I grab his flick knife from the nightstand and tuck it into the front of my bra like he showed me.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’ll never know what I’m truly capable of until someone tries to steal my life from me.

“Come,” says Manuel, jogging towards the door. “There is a place where we can hide.” He touches Sofía’s arm as he passes. “Ramirez told me about it. We need to go straight there. It is Señor Dante’s underground bunker.”

“Dante has an underground bunker?” I say, pouncing on his words.

He nods slowly. “The entrance is downstairs through the library.”

“But I know every inch of this place, Manuel. I’ve been locked inside this goddamn prison for days. There is no entrance to a bunker there.”

He frowns at the uncertainty in my voice. “Only Señor Dante and Señor Grayson knew about it. Señor Dante told Rodrigo yesterday before he boarded his aircraft.”

I grind to a halt again, and the soft bulk of Sofía smacks into my left shoulder. “Sorry, señorita,” she mutters.

Is this where Dante’s been hiding his clothes and possessions from me?How could I have lain so close to his secrets and not known?

All of a sudden, my thirst for knowledge is superseding everything. I need to unmask my enigma for who and what he really is.

“Take us there,” I say, rushing over to him.

“We go now.” He steps out into the hallway, unslinging his gun from his shoulder and clicking off the safety. Another explosion rocks the foundations of the house. Sofía lets out a muffled sob and Manuel curses. “Get down,” he orders, and we fall to our knees in unison.

“Who’s doing this?” I plead again. “Who’s attacking Dante’s compound?”

He doesn’t answer, but in the gloom of the hallway I catch a look between him and Sofía.

My eyes are beginning to adjust to the lack of light as we make our way downstairs, keeping our bodies low and discreet, like creatures slithering against the wall in the darkness.

Crossing the lobby, we take the second of four doors—the entrance to Dante’s library. Here, I have a clear view of sector six from the windows. What I see opens me up to the danger of our situation. There are flames licking at the roof of the nearest barrack, darkening the corrugated metal ridges with their scorching intensity.

Dante’s enemies will show me no mercy.

Like Dante will show no mercy to them.

I hurry over to join Manuel and Sofia by a bookcase covering the length of one wall. He’s whispering instructions in Spanish as they run their fingers along the lip of each shelf.

“What are you looking for?”

“A button, a lever…some sort of mechanism.”

“Here, let me help you.”

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