EM Security was seemingly no better. They had rescued Valeria nearly two years ago as part of another hostage extraction. Afterward, her sister had hired the private security team to get her into hiding. It had worked…for a while. But in the last four months, their location had fallen into enemy hands twice.
Who else could be to blame except them?
She was done trusting any self-serving alphabet-lettered organization. If she had to take down the rest of Emilo’s nefarious cartel by herself for her family and her future, she would.
“I wouldn’t know. You and Hector always hoarded her.” The first man sounded bitter.
“If you help me find and subdue her, perhaps I will share.” Before he killed her. That’s what Victor meant. “Go search the west side of the house. I will look east.”
The place wasn’t large. It wouldn’t take long. Time was ticking.
Laila eased Jorge’s door shut and dialed emergency services while gathering some necessities and shoving them into Jorge’s diaper bag. If she lived long enough for the police to arrive, hopefully they wouldn’t question her immigration status.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
Quickly, she whispered her dilemma to the dispatcher as she eased the bedroom window open. The burglar alarm didn’t blare. Victor had somehow bypassed it.
She winced at the squeak of the pane sliding up the track. Hopefully, the indiscriminate racket of Victor’s cohort searching the spare bedroom beside Jorge’s masked the sound. But she couldn’t get careless. She probably had under a minute before he burst into the room.
“I must hang up,” she told the dispatcher. She needed both hands to get out of here alive.
“Help is on the way. Stay on the line—”
Laila ended the call.
As she tucked her phone into the back pocket of her shorts, a stranger burst into the room, a hulk of dark clothes and a flash of white teeth. Fresh fear razed her veins…but fury won out. She was done being a victim, nor would she let Jorge become like them.
“There you are,” he said loudly enough to reveal he wasn’t Victor but softly enough that her longtime tormentor wouldn’t hear. Then he shut the door. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Laila knew why, and she’d be damned before she let him force himself into her body.
She stood in front of Jorge’s crib protectively. “Go away.”
“Not possible. But I can make your death painless”—he dragged a fingertip down her bare arm—“with the right persuasion. Why don’t you start by getting on your knees?”
Laila assessed her options. They were few and pitiful. He had her cornered. “No.”
With a thunderous scowl, he seized her arm. His pupils dilated as if violence excited him. “So you like it rough? You want it to hurt?”
He didn’t simply mean her murder.
She shuddered. “I do not want it at all.”
“Then play nice.” He reached for his zipper. “If you’re extra good to me, maybe I can be persuaded to spare you.”
“Cabrón,” she snarled, fighting every instinct to retreat, but Jorge was the son she would never have. Leaving him unprotected wasn’t an option.
Her assailant’s eyes narrowed with violence and the promise of pain before he groped his way down her body and jerked her against the hard ridge of his penis. Savagely, he cupped her backside, snarling when he found her phone.
He tore it from her pocket. “Who did you last call?”
Laila spit in his face.
He wiped his cheek dry with his sleeve and shoved her against the wall with a glare that promised agony. She stumbled back into Jorge’s diaper pail, its cold metal grazing her leg.
“Who?” He shook her. “The police?”
She pressed her lips together, refusing to answer.
“Bitch.” The thug hurled her phone to the hardwood floor, shattering it beyond use. “You won’t be calling anyone else.”
Laila tried not to panic. Her link with the outside world was gone, but did it really matter? No one had ever fought for her. As always, she would fight for herself—and Jorge.
She pushed free and bent to the diaper pail, lifting it between them by its sleek chrome sides.
The criminal sent her an amused stare. “That won’t shield you from me.”
He was right; it wouldn’t.
Instead, Laila swung it at his head.
The metal bin clocked him in the temple with a satisfying thud. He wobbled before crumpling to the floor, his phone clattering from his pocket and skittering to her feet.
She’d done it. No, she wouldn’t feel remorse for hurting another human being. He would have raped and killed her if she hadn’t fought back.
Now she had to get out before Victor finished on the other side of the house or got suspicious. The police were likely minutes away—if they were coming at all. In Mexico, Emilo and his goons had paid them all to look the other way. For all she knew, these assholes had already infected local law enforcement, too.
With trembling hands, Laila scooped up the stranger’s phone, flashing the device across his face to unlock it. Quickly, she changed the passcode as nerves made each breath roar in her ears. She had to call her sister. Valeria must be frantic. But Laila couldn’t let her sister run home—and straight into danger.