She pushed past her escort, breaking into a run, following the sounds of struggle. The corridor opened into a larger space with multiple doorways. Another scream, followed by a thud. To her right.
Without hesitation, she burst through the door.
"Stop! Don't kill him!"
The scene that greeted her was a nightmare turned real.
Lachlan, stripped to the waist and bound to a chair, his body a canvas of bruises and blood, slumped backward. No longer fighting, Alejandro’s hands wrapped around his throat, squeezing the life from him.
Time seemed to slow, the world narrowing to this brutal display of violence. Alejandro's grip slackened as he turned toward the interruption, his face frozen in disbelief.
But she couldn’t take her eyes off Lachlan. Searching, hoping, praying for a sign that he was still breathing. That she wasn’t too late. She couldn’t be too late …
And then—like a dam breaking—the memories crashed through her.
Choking on water, thrashing in the sea as the blazing heat from the fire ripped across her skin. Opening her eyes, blurred vision as a hand reached toward her. Lachlan pulling her from the water, his face illuminated by flames.
His smile across a café table at Nettie’s as she gushed over the private helicopter tour he’d given her of the island. Their first real date. After months of nearly throwing herself at him daily, she broke down his resolve. Got him to admit that the attraction was mutual. Convinced him to see her for who she was and not the daughter of a notorious gang leader.
The look in his eyes when she told him she was pregnant. His hands trembling as he stared at the ultrasound picture. His arms wrapped around her, pressing against her swollen belly as she cried—sharing their baby’s first kick. Surrounded by wood, nails, and fabric as they put together baby furniture in the bedroom overlooking the lake at their home on Dove Island. Paloma's birth, his tears of joy as he held their daughter for the first time.
But there were other memories—lurking beneath the surface.
Her life before Lachlan. Every memory sharp, clear, and focused. Two lives violently collided within her mind. The woman who loved Lachlan and Paloma and the woman born into Quattro's blood-soaked legacy.
"Stop," she repeated, her voice cutting through the shocked silence. "Let him go, Alejandro. Now."
Alejandro's hands fell away from Lachlan's throat. He stared at her as if she were an apparition, something not quite real.
"Britt?" Her name was barely a whisper on his lips. He took a step toward her, then another, his expression transforming from shock to wonder to joy. “Is it really you?"
"It's me." She held her ground as he approached, ignoring how the other men in the room had gone completely still, watching the reunion with wary fascination.
Alejandro reached for her, his hand hovered near her cheek, afraid to touch her as if she might vanish. "We thought you were dead. For three years ..." His voice broke. "I identified your body myself. We did a DNA test. It was … you. We buried … you.”
"It wasn't me," Britt said, her eyes flicking to Lachlan, who was gasping for breath, head hanging forward as he struggled to recover. "Someone wanted you to think I was dead."
A figure shifted in the corner of the room, drawing her attention. Miquel Rubio—a powerful and trusted lieutenant in the cartel. His dark eyes regarded her with calculated interest, his expression giving nothing away. She'd known Miquel since childhood. They’d taught each other how to drive a stick shift in her father’s Porsche on the roads between Miami and the Keys. Now, he studied her with the cool assessment of a predator.
"Proof," he said simply. "How do we know it's really you?"
Britt almost laughed. Of course, Miquel would be the one to question her, even as Alejandro looked ready to fall to his knees in gratitude.
"Your sister, Carolina, was born with a heart defect,” she said, holding Miquel's gaze. "I sat with her at the hospital when she had surgery while you were half a world away securing inventory for my father.” She turned to Corey Lawson, another lieutenant in charge of major operations of the cartel. “Corey, you have a scar across your back from when we were fifteen, making out on the glass table at my Dad’s beach house. Theweight of our bodies was too much for that old table, and you fell through. But you told everyone it was from a knife fight."
She continued around the room, revealing small, intimate details only she could know—the name of a child, a shared experience, a moment of weakness witnessed. With each revelation, the men's expressions shifted from suspicion to acceptance to something approaching awe.
Alejandro reached for her again, and this time, she allowed him to take her hands in his. "We didn’t believe it when we heard rumors you might be alive. I’d found your body. Your father’s relentless pursuit to find out who took you from us … everything pointed to Lachlan. He was obsessed with you. Following you. And then he planted that car bomb.” Alejandro’s gaze jerked to Lachlan, his face a mask of stony anger. “Tricked us into thinking you were dead.”
“You’re wrong,” Britt said, gently extracting her hands from his. She nodded toward Lachlan. "Lachlan didn't kidnap me. He didn’t hurt me. He's not your enemy.”
A mask of steel descended over Alejandro’s features as he shook his head. "He took you from us. Kept you hidden?—"
"No." Britt's voice was firm. "Lachlan thought I was dead, too. We were all victims, Alejandro. Someone else orchestrated all of this."
"But Titus had evidence?—"
“Of Lachlan being with … me. Because he was, but not for the reason you think. And after the car bomb, Lachlan didn’t know I was alive, either. He thought, like you all did, that I was killed.”
