Page 94 of Deception & Desire

“I care about you too,” I whisper, the words barely audible.

She slams her hand down on the table, making me flinch. “No, you don’t! If you cared, you wouldn’t have betrayed me.”

I can’t answer that. I don’t know how to. The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating.

Carmen wipes a hand across her face, her jaw tight as she fights to regain control.

“You were the only person I thought was real,” she murmurs, more to herself than to me. “And now you’re just...nothing but a walking death wish.”

She rises from her chair abruptly, pushing it back with a screech. For a moment, I think she’s going to storm out, but she pauses at the door, her back to me.

“Tell me why, Mia,” she says quietly. “Why did you do it?”

I open my mouth, the words forming on my tongue, but the sudden wail of an alarm cut me off.

The shrill, piercing sound makes me jump, and I see Carmen flinch, too, her hand jerking back from the door as if it were electrified.

My heart hammers in my chest, a wild hope blooming inside me despite my better judgment. If that alarm is what I think it is…

“No.” Carmen’s wide, panicked eyes meet mine. For a fleeting moment, she’s just a young woman caught in the crossfire of something far bigger than herself.

“They’re here, aren’t they?” It comes out like I’m begging her to confirm it.

She takes a shaking step away from the door. “They’ll kill me.”

“No, Carmen, listen to me,” I say, leaning forward as much as my restraints allow. “I won’t let that happen. You just need to let me go.”

She’s already shaking her head like she can’t process what I’m saying. “No. I can’t. My father?—”

“Your father isn’t here, is he?” It’s a shot in the dark, but why else would she look so terrified? “No one else is here to protect you. Please, let me do it again, one last time.”

Her lips tremble, hesitating as the alarm shrieks through the room.

I press on, desperate. “Please. You trusted me once. Trust me now. Let me go.”

Her jaw clenches, tears glistening in her eyes. For a moment, I think she will walk away, to leave us both to our wretched fates.

But then, with a sharp inhale, she takes a decisive step toward me.

The door bursts open, and both of us freeze.

28

LEON

The chaos outside the compound is deafening: gunfire cracks through the air, punctuated by the occasional explosion that rattles the earth beneath my feet. Smoke curls into the night sky, blotting out the stars.

It’s a damn symphony of war, and I should be directing it, not skulking in the shadows like a ghost.

But Mia is inside. And that’s all that matters.

The hardest part had been convincing Teo that I intended to stay and commit to my bed rest. Slipping out of the hospital had been child’s play.

I press my back to the concrete wall of the perimeter, the coarse surface biting into my shoulder blades. Every step I take sends a fiery ache through me, radiating outward from the bullet wound in my chest.

I’m slower than I’d like to be, stiffer to avoid agitating the wound that is packed under enough gauze that I may as well be wearing a corset. But I use the pain to sharpen my instincts as I peer around the corner of the wall.

What remains of the Guild and the Prince’s Hand have swarmed the compound. They’re focused on the main entrance, drawing the Cartel’s fire.

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