Page 74 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

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Isa

Joaquin wrapped his arms around my stomach from behind, lifting me off my feet as I yelled in panic. “Shhh,mi reina. You have to be quiet,” Joaquin said, his voice muffled by the continued haze. I turned my head to get a good look at him, wincing when he lifted me higher and carrying me back to the mouth of the hallway and away from where Rafe had last gone. Tears barely touched my cheeks before the heat of the air dried my skin.

We moved toward the main space, Joaquin working to hold me as still as possible as I struggled against his grip. I couldn’t leave Rafe and hide in the bunker, not until I knew he was alive. The thought of a life without him just felt...empty.

“Let me go!” I begged, yelling over the noise from the fire and the muffling to my ears. My hands shoved at Joaquin’s grip, pushing him away to the best of my ability. It was pointless, his grasp like iron in his determination. “Rafael!” I screamed.

Like an omen and a summons, his thunderous face suddenly filled my vision as he stepped in front of me. His hands cupped my face, the cold bite of the metal of the guns he held touching my skin a stark contrast to the heat of his skin against mine. Relief shoved away all the panic, my breath leaving me as a strangled sob escaped my throat.

Rafe took me out of Joaquin’s grip as I threw my arms around his neck and lunged for him, relief tangible in my veins. The sight of him alive and well, mostly unharmed, felt like a miracle I hadn’t earned.

He moved as soon as I was in his grip, murmuring softly in my ear as he clutched me tightly. I didn’t even care about the weapons touching my body, only grateful to have him with me. He walked toward the hallway that led to the guard’s rooms.

“Are you hurt?” Rafael asked, and I knew he meant the deeper kind of hurt that he wouldn’t be able to see. The scrapes on my face from the glass would heal, but the potential damage to the baby was something we’d never be able to see.

Not until it was too late.

Hugo emerged from the men’s quarters, blood staining his shirt as he heaved his lungs. He threw open the first door in the hallway, the room I knew the brothers shared, and where the entrance to the secret bunker hid.

Most of the guards didn’t even know it existed, a secret only afforded to Rafael’s most trusted men—in particular the ones who would be assigned with getting me to it in the case of an emergency.

Hugo pulled back the rug on the floor, exposing the latch that led to the underground bunker that couldn’t quite be called a basement. It was too enclosed, too bombproof to be anything so casual.

Hugo lifted the lid off the control panel tucked into the floor, entering the code with hurried fingers and then lifting the metal hatch covered in wood flooring when the lock was released. He disappeared down the ladder first. “All clear!” he called.

“Go on,mi reina,”Rafe ordered after he kissed the top of my head. I turned back to look at him, pleading with my eyes for the moment I knew was coming.

He wouldn’t hide away in the bunker with me.

“If I go, are you coming with me?” I asked.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he agreed, cupping my cheek briefly and nodding for me to follow Hugo. I climbed down the ladder as quickly as I could with the way my body ached, wincing with every move of my sore muscles. Hugo’s hands landed on my waist, pulling me into him and away from the ladder as Rafael and Joaquin followed.

The door to the bunker was closed, locked up tight until Hugo entered his passcode to open that too. The thumbprint scanner lit as it took the imprint of his thumb, the seal on the heavy metal door releasing. Hugo stepped inside, leaving me to hover at the door as I felt Rafe’s eyes on me. I turned back to face him, my heart in my throat as he hesitated.

“I’m sorry,mi reina,” he murmured, his brow pinched as if he actually meant the words for once. Something pierced my neck, my hand moving to touch the spot as heat spread from the too-familiar spot. Hugo wrapped his arms around me from behind and supported my weight as I stumbled. “Forgive me.”

In the moments before everything went black, Joaquin’s fuzzy shape pushed the door closed and he and Rafael’s faces disappeared on the other side. “When you wake up, it will all be over,” Hugo murmured gently as he lifted me into his arms. My head lolled as he carried me through the long, tubular bunker.

I’d come so far, but when it came down to it in the moments when it mattered, I was still something to be tucked away and protected.

A Princess instead of a Queen.

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