She was alive, standing on her feet, and she seemed to be unhurt.
My chest locked.
Machado stepped out behind her, his fingers closing around her arm like a claim—tight, possessive, dragging her forward a step when she didn’t move fast enough.
Something inside me broke.It wasn’t a strain or a fracture, but a shattering.Heat surged through me, violent and immediate, flooding my veins with something that had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with instinct.
Mine.
The word roared through my head, primal and unrelenting.
Mine.
He had no right to touch her.No right to even breathe the same air as her, let alone put his hands on her like he owned her.
My vision tunneled.The edges of the world blurred until all I could see was that one point—his hand gripping her arm.He’d taken something that wasn’t his to take, and I was going to rip it back.
I shifted forward, barely aware of the gravel biting into my knee, barely aware of the men around me locking into position, waiting for the signal.
There was no signal.Not for me.
My breathing turned slow.Deadly.But underneath it, there was only rage.Pure.Violent.Absolute.
Machado said something to her—too far to hear—but his grip tightened, pulling her another step toward the plane waiting at the far end of the strip.
It was the wrong move, and the final one.Because the second he dragged her—I moved.
“Move.”
I didn’t wait for the command to carry.
I broke cover first, and the world snapped.
Gunfire tore through the air—sharp, violent, immediate—like the sky itself had split open.Muzzle flashes lit the strip in stuttering bursts of white and gold.The crack of rounds hitting metal rang out, followed by the dull, wet impact of flesh.
Men moved all at once.
Doors slammed.Bodies scattered.Weapons came up.
War had started.It hit fast and unforgiving.
Bullets shredded the sides of the SUVs, glass exploding outward in glittering sprays.One of Machado’s men dropped before he even cleared the door, another dragged back behind cover as return fire came hard and precise from our side.
Orders were shouted, but lost.Drowned beneath the chaos.Because I didn’t hear any of it.
I didn’t register the gunfire ripping past me.I didn’t feel the heat of rounds slicing too close to matter.All of it—every sound, every movement, every man on that strip—fell away.
There was only one thing left.Him.And the hand he still had on her.Dragging her forward toward the waiting plane.
“Archie—!”
Her voice cut through the chaos.
“Get down!”I roared, already moving, already breaking cover, ignoring the way bullets tore past me, the way the world narrowed down to a single point.
Machado.
I closed the distance fast.Too fast for him to react in time.
