Page 69 of A Queen and HER Bad Boy
“No!” His eyes blazed with frustration. “Far from that… there’s nothing brotherly about how I feel for you!”
Her stomach clenched with a painful mixture of joy, terror, and hope that threatened to overwhelm her completely. She didn’t understand how this was possible—and yet, after hearing the declaration she’d dreamed of her entire life, their future was about to be brutally cut short.
Stone ground against stone with an ancient groan. Behind an ornate sarcophagus, a hidden section of wall swung open above the waterline. Nestor emerged, gasping and completely soaked, his white hair plastered to his skull. After Aggie Mnon’s failure to kill them off, he’d come to finish the job? She’d thought he’d been too much of a coward. Achilles recoiled like a snake, his whole body stiff and ready to strike.
“Quickly! Through the old citadel tunnels!” Nestor’s eyes were wide with genuine panic as he reached for Yiorgos, scraping him off the tomb, like he was actually there to help them! “Not all the passageways are closed off! Move!”
They’d be swimming through pitch-black water toward an unknown destination… and was the priest actually their ally, or was this another trap? Glancing over at Achilles, she saw he wasn’t about to argue with this unexpected rescue. They had no other choice except to follow the priest into that black pit. The attackers’ voices and splashes echoed louder as they closed in on them.
Achilles’s strong hand pressed against her back, lifting her up and out of the deadly water as he practically threw her into the narrow tunnel opening behind Nestor. She immediately plunged into what felt like a black abyss, sinking until the frigid water on the other side reached her neck in the confined stone passage.
Seconds later, Achilles joined her, working frantically to seal the hidden door behind them. Achilles’s profile glowed, droplets of water glittering under Nestor’s heavy-duty flashlight that sent powerful beams dancing across the tunnel walls, revealing multiple branching passages. They’d be hopelessly lost in this underground maze without their guide.
Hopefully, their pursuers hadn’t noticed their escape route under those bright fluorescent lights in the burial chamber. It was a fragile hope at best, and she left her doubts unsaid as she followed after the priest to go deeper into the ancient tunnels.
The stone walls pressed close on all sides as they half-swam, half-crawled through the flooded passageways that had been built centuries ago. Bris tried not to think about what else might be sharing this space with them—Rats? Water snakes? Abnormally large spiders that had been washed from their cobwebbed homes?
Okay, what she really needed was for her mind to stop going there.
But within moments, she knew exactly what kind of creepy-crawly thing shared this space with them. The sound of scraping stone was mingled with the woman’s hysterical screams when she discovered Aggie’s body. “Can you hear me? Talk to me!” The voice was filled with desperate emotion. Who was this, Aggie’s girlfriend?
“Don’t just stand there like an idiot—” Aggie was still alive and venomous as ever. The woman screamed again—this time in surprise. Was the psychopath actually immortal? “Go after them!”
Her followers were only too eager to take over where Aggie had left off, and the sounds of splashing and scraping pursued them. And was she imagining things or had Aggie actually recovered enough to join in the hunt? She listened to his snarls: “This is your fault! If you’d held back, they’d never…”
His words disappeared under the woman’s angry shrieks. “Oh no, you don’t! You’re not blaming me for your incompetence.” Again, Bris couldn’t shake the feeling she knew that shrieking voice.And again… she couldn’t place whose it was in her panic.
The ceiling rumbled over them. She cringed, the vibrations shaking her body as something massive crashed down in a thunderous splash that made the water surge behind them—part of the ceiling collapsed behind them, sealing off their pursuers’ route to them.
“Is that bad?” she shouted over to Nestor.
He turned his head slightly. “Not for us, child. Those murderers, however, will be trapped inside the tunnel.”
Disturbing thought. Still carrying Yiorgos protectively above the water level, Nestor made the sign of the cross over his heart and murmured a quiet prayer for the souls of their enemies—nothing was saving Aggie Mnon’s black soul, of course, though itremained to be seen whether he was truly trapped or would find another way out.
As they climbed steadily higher, the tunnel turned dryer, the water level dropping from their waists to their knees to their ankles until finally, they emerged through another hidden door, gasping, shocked, and dripping with water. Had they truly survived an encounter with her lethal cousin? She could scarcely believe it, seeing they’d entered a warm, brightly lit space that felt like stepping through a portal into another world.
Blinking around her at the sudden brightness, she realized they were standing in the palace kitchens, dripping like survivors from a shipwreck. The kitchen staff stared at them in complete astonishment—four drowned rats, one of them their future sovereign, a prince, a priest, and an urchin emerging from what appeared to be a solid stone wall.
Achilles motioned to the nearest woman in a chef’s hat. “Call the authorities. The princess’s life is in danger. Aggie Mnon is on the loose—they can find him trapped in the tunnels.”
The room erupted into activity. Under the noise, Nestor threw something into Achilles’s hand, a cracked phone. “Years ago, I made a vow to protect you children after—after the Myrdons stole your parents,” his voice was thick with emotion. “When Clysta was taken and Bris’s mother… fell during the attack.” His voice broke over the grief he could no longer contain. He set Yiorgos down, his shoulders set. “I would die before I let anything happen to you… I swore I’d never repeat the mistakes I made during those dark days.”
Bris covered her mouth, looking from him to her husband, her mind exploding with questions. First and foremost, if Nestor wasn’t behind this, then who was working with Aggie Mnon? Someone had to have orchestrated his jailbreak, and it wasn’t Atreus Mnon—that psychopath’s father had lost all his connections and backing after what had happened on Scheria,which was why he’d pushed this arranged marriage in the first place.
And secondly…, most importantly, her husband had declared with such fierce, unquestionable certainty that he loved her. So why was she still afraid to believe it?
Chapter Twenty-One
Onemanhadtheanswers!
After sitting long enough for the doctor to dig out the bullet and call him lucky that it hadn’t been worse, Achilles found himself in a sling while he’d barked out orders to Bris’s security guards to keep her under lock and key. Aggie Mnon was still on the loose. He charged from his chair.
“Where are you going?” She twisted around in her seat while the doctor inspected the purple bruise on her face.
His stomach twisted at the sight of it. Aggie was just as cruel and vicious as he’d been at the Myrdon military camp where they’d first met. He’d never felt such a violent animalistic surge to tear someone apart the instant Aggie had dared touch Bris. He couldn’t understand the strength of his feelings, and how he’d thrown his heart at her, only that he never wanted to take it back.
The fiery sprite she’d been as a child when they’d grown up together had sparked into a vibrant, mysterious woman, and his feelings had grown from friendship to something fuller, that was still growing, still full of endless possibilities that he wanted to explore. Leaning over her, he kissed her, his lips gentle, brief over hers, it was nothing to what he wanted to do, but the way he wanted to express his love wasn’t meant for anyone else’s eyes… or with this sling! It made his every move feel clumsy and restrained.
