I’d almost forgotten what fear felt like. I thought I was numb to such things, but the prospect of death will break even the broken. It’s all I can do not to scream at whatever god-awful twist of fate brought me to this very moment. I clench my jaw and stare right at him. His eyebrows pinch together, and full lips press into a tight line.
“Bring her,” he barks, turning his back on me. The man who walked in with him approaches me, and I try to back away from him. He’s covered in gang tattoos. I can’t clearly make out his face beneath the shadow of his baseball cap with his hood pulled over it. Three tears are inked below his right eye, and a scar mars his left eyebrow.
At his raised hand, I squeeze my eyes shut, flinching away instinctively. Fingers brush my cheek before he grabs the edge of the tape and yanks it away, taking a layer of skin with it.
“Move,” he says.
Warily, I push to my feet, and pain fires up my left leg as it threatens to give way. The guy in the suit is gone, and I’m not sure who I’d rather be with: him or the gangbanger. I limp to the door, clenching my jaw against the crippling pain. My heart is beating so hard, it’s like it’s going to burst from my chest. With every desperate squeeze, a warning echoes in my ear. Danger, danger, danger. I stumble into the packed bar, my gaze fixed on the wooden floorboards when I collide with something, or rather, someone. My hands come up in front of me, landing on the soft, expensive fabric of a suit jacket. Broad muscles roll and contract under my palms, and I snatch them away quickly. The music quiets, and the atmosphere in the room becomes instantly tense. The guy in the suit grabs my wrist, yanking me tight behind him until I’m pressed flush against his back. I’m unable to get away, unable to see anything but him.
“Psycho,” he says. A hush falls over the bar, and I can feel the tension like a palpable force.
“Rafael. I’m going to need that one.”
Rafael laughs, the sound reverberating through his chest. Then the laughter cuts off, and it’s like that stifling pressure before a storm. The quiet. The suspense. “Get the fuck out of my way.”
“She’s seen too much.”
With a sigh, Rafael steps to the side, leaving me exposed and now standing in front of a man who looks like every nightmare I could possibly muster. A monster. A killer. His face is completely tattooed to look like a skull— eyes surrounded by black ink. Dead. Bottomless. He takes a step toward me before Rafael grabs me. Strong arms wrap around my body until my face is pressed against the soft material of his shirt. The scent of his cologne invades my senses.
Bang!
I flinch, inadvertently pressing myself closer to the suited stranger. I’ve barely acknowledged the thud of Psycho’s body hitting the floor before we’re moving again. Rafael pushes me away from him and walks off, leaving me standing in the middle of the dirty bar with a dead man’s blood pooling around my bare feet.
“Move!” The other guy tucks his gun back into the waist of his jeans and shoves me forward.
By the time we make it outside, the music has restarted. The gangbanger opens the back door and forces me inside next to Rafael. The guy gets in behind me until I’m pressed up against Rafael, trapped between the two of them. No one speaks to me as the car pulls away. I have no idea what they’re going to do to me. Take me back to the Sinaloa compound? Kill me? Maybe they’ll just fuck me and use me.
For the briefest moment, I thought I was free. I thought I’d made it out. For a second, I had hope, and hope is so very dangerous for someone like me. It makes the fall into despair that much harder.
“I am Rafael D’Cruze,” the man in the suit finally says, his voice weighted with authority. “Leader of the Juarez cartel.”
I slowly look at him, blinking through the foggy haze still trying to cling to my mind. He’s staring at me, assessing every possible detail. I don’t like it. For the first time in years, I look at someone. Really look. Years of slavery has made me hate men like him with every fiber of my being, just men in general. They all disgust me, and yet, I can’t help but notice Rafael’s cold form of beauty. His face could have been carved by a master sculptor—every line flawless. I frown at my train of thought. “This is where you tell me your name,” he says impatiently.
Wordlessly, I lift my hand and pull my hair away from my neck, showing him the tattoo just below my ear. A snake coiled around itself, the number 624 etched into its scales. “I didn’t ask for your slave number.”