Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Everything in me hones down to one impulse—protect her. She’s the only person who matters to me when you get down to it. I care about Mike. I care about my mother. I don’t want anything bad to happen to Angelica.
However, Emma is the reason my heart beats. She’s the one who made me feel alive. She broke down my walls. Rafael is insane for daring to even think about threatening her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
RAFAEL
Ilaugh because it has to be a joke. How much I love my lady, but then Jacob moves so fast, and I realize my mistake. I should’ve tied him up. He moves like a wild animal, finally permitted to kill. Slinking down, he pushes the chair back against the man behind him, then drives up, grabs the gun, shoots, turns, and shoots again.
I raise my gun a bit too slowly.
No, God. No. This isn’t how it was supposed to end. I went through all this effort. I won. I had him—three guns against none.
Then Jacob fires another shot. Time slows. I see all the things I’m going to leave behind. I see all the adventures I’m going to miss. I never should’ve left home.
Then darkness… I’m so scared. I collapse to the floor, struggling to breathe, struggling to…
From the dark, I hear a voice. If I were a religious man, I’d say it was the devil. “Nobody ever threatens my woman. Nobody.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EMMA
The door to the safe room opens. I let out a scream when the figure steps in, a red figure of pure death, covered head to toe in gore. Then my vision clears, and I see my man. He’s not covered, but there’s a lot of blood on him. He looks wild. He steps aside, his jaw tense, and two women walk into the room, one older and the other younger, wearing old-looking coats. Dad walks in a second later, his face tight. He glances at Jacob as though he’s scared of him.
“Wait here,” Jacob says. “All of you.”
“Jacob,” Dad says, sounding much younger like he’s afraid of Jacob. “I can help. I can’t let you go out there alone.”
Jacob sighs and nods. “You’ll be safe here.”
He leaves the room, giving me no time to pull myself against him, embrace him, and tell him I’ve never been more relieved about anything than him being alive. Then he and Dad are gone, leaving the room with urgency. The doors close behind them.
The younger woman swallows, her arms wrapped across her middle. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“He did what he had to do,” the older woman says, sitting on a low bunk. She wraps her hands around her knees, shuddering.
I grab a blanket and drape it over her knees. She smiles shakily up at me. “Thank you, dear. It’s been a crazy couple of days.”
“Are you… Jacob’s mom?” I ask.
She nods. “Isabell, and you?”
“Emma,” I tell her. “I’m…” Your son’s girlfriend. “Mike’s daughter.”
From how the younger woman looks at me, I make a connection.
“Wait… are you Angelica?”
She nods, seeming shell-shocked by whatever they just suffered. I walk over, take her hand, and lead her to the bed. “Sit down. Do you want some water?”
“Uh, yes, sure. Thank you.”
I go to the small kitchen area in the corner. It’s like a bunker in here, with enough food to survive for days and weeks, but I don’t believe Jacob would ever leave us for that long. He’d never abandon us. I take two glasses of water, handing one to Isabell and one to Angelica.
They sip as I fold my arms across my middle, muttering a small prayer.
“What was that, dear?” Isabell asks.
“I was praying.”
“For Jacob?”
“For Mike?”
They ask the question at the same time. It’s almost enough to make me let out a surreal, insane laugh. Only ten, twenty, maybe thirty minutes ago, I was naked with Jacob, indulging in all our steamiest fantasies. Then Dad saw and after that… How the hell are we going to make it out of this?
“What happened?” I ask, changing the subject.
“He made me tell him where Mike was. I’m sorry, Emma. I didn’t want to.”
“You did the right thing,” I tell her. “You’d be dead now if you didn’t.”
She looks at me with wide eyes, seeming so young and naïve. I wonder if this is how I seem to Jacob. Then again, I didn’t have to watch whatever happened out there. Angelica lived through it.
“Then they made us sit around the table,” Isabell goes on in a quiet voice. “The man in charge started speaking with Jacob. He used your name. I don’t speak Spanish, but I think he was threatening you, Emma. As soon as my son heard Emma, he went—”
“Feral,” Angelica whispers, shuddering. “One of them had a gun to his head. There was another just behind me, and the man in charge…”