Page 89 of For The Days We Can't Forget

“Breaking that one was necessary?”

She kneeled on the seat, with her back to the windshield, and positioned her rifle outside to shoot at our back. “What can I say?” She fired against the men. “I have a new penchant for destruction. Now speed.”

I pushed the gas as far as I could, grabbing the wheels for stability over the slippery road. There was nowhere for Matias to hide, and soon enough we caught up to him.

She turned around to face forward. “Get closer so I can get a shot at him. I don’t want to risk shooting the tires on this road. He’ll lose control easily.”

In front of us, the car swerved to the right abruptly before going back to the road. “Something’s going on.”

“Is he losing control?”

“No. Lisa’s fighting back.”That’s my girl. It was hard to see inside their car, but from their silhouettes, she was giving him a hard time, and I couldn’t be prouder. I only hoped we would have the time for me to congratulate her.

“Where are they going? Why are they heading to the lake?” Her breath caught in her throat. “He’s sinking them.”

“What? That’s insane.”

“We need to kill him first.” She pushed her torso outside her window and aimed at him before shooting. The rear window shattered and the car swerved again as Matias was grazed on his shoulder. “Damn it. I need to get his head. Push the gas.”

“You’re being crazy. There’s no way he’d do it.” Despite countering, I sped up, trying to get closer to them, only to have Matias speed up as well.

“I’m telling you, he’s diving,” she insisted. “He’s rushing to the lake instead of around it, he’s going to drive into it.”

“The thing is frozen, he’d kill himself.”

“He knows he’s dying today anyway. It’s either by the lake, by the cartel, or by us. And with the lake, he has a chance.”

“But if he drives into the lake to kill himself—”

“He’s taking Lisa with him.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

My nightmare kept getting worse. When I heard the shooting, I was awash with a myriad of feelings. I was relieved that someone seemed to have found me. I was panicking about being kept in the dark room with only the shooting sounds and my dark imagination to keep me company. I was scared that Danny was outside as the target of the fires.

After my lame attempt at an escape, Matias tightened the constriction on my wrists, tied my feet, and put the cloth back in my mouth. For whatever reason, waiting for certain death was worse than facing it head-on.

My hopes deflated when Matias was the one to open the door to my prison room. Throwing me unceremoniously over his shoulder, he ran outside the building. My insides coiled and heart sped up at Danny’s booming voice behind us.

He was so close, yet not close enough.

I was forced into a car by Matias right when Danny and Mia ran out of the mansion, only to be stopped by more shooting. Despite the cold weather, I was sweating, and my clothes were suffocating me. There was no pleading or reasoning with my tormentor, so I let my instinct lead the way through fighting instead of arguing.

Changing the tune, Matias wasn’t calculating. He didn’t promise me death and pain, he didn’t claim to kill Danny or our friends. He looked deranged, as if something worse than rage moved him. Fear.

“They shouldn’t be here already. They were supposed to be here after the boss arrived.” He hit, hit, hit the steering wheel with his palm. “It shouldn’t be like this. They’re going kill me.”

He muttered unintelligible words, mixing English and Spanish, leaving me more scared and confused. “He doesn’t allow mistakes. But it wasn’t my fault. None of them was my fault. They’re going kill me. I just needed thewoman and the boy, but I couldn’t get them. You should be enough until I could. I would get them. That title was mine. I should be at the table, to honor my father and keep his legacy.”

His rambling was driving me to lose my mind over fear, and it was getting harder to breathe. I took the cloth from my mouth, and Matias was so disturbed and inside his own head that he didn’t notice. Or care.

Noticing Mia and Danny getting closer, I pulled the steering wheel to the side, hoping Matias would lose control. I’d take that over staying in the car with him any longer.

Taken off guard, he couldn’t contain the swerving, yet he managed to put the car back on the road before punching me in the mouth. “Hija de puta, this is your fault. Women shouldn’t get in the way of men’s business, and you keep forcing yourself into my thing.”

Moved by fear and rage, I attacked again. My man was on his way to me, and he wasn’t alone. Maybe if I could help them by getting Matias distracted and out of sorts, we could end it all faster.

But not once, in my wildest imagination, not even in the craziest scenarios my mind could conjure did I imagine Matias would opt to risk killing himself—and me—to get away from his dire situation.

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