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I opened my mouth to scream, and a damp towel covered it, suffocating me with a sickly-sweet reek. I held my breath, fighting not to inhale. I was surrounded. My vision blurred with little bursts of light. Not even the tight hold on me could disguise the feeling of my lungs caving in. Nor could people’s screams and mariachi music drown out one single word in my ear as the world around me faded to black.
“Princesa.”
22
Natalia
My head lolled somewhere soft, but the backs of my eyeballs throbbed. Lying on my side, my body jostled with the whir and hum of an engine.
My baby.
My eyes flew open to pitch-dark nothingness. I went to cover my stomach, but my elbows were bound behind my back and had been long enough that I couldn’t feel my hands.
“Sleeping Beauty stirs.” The voice sounded both muffled and directly above me and its familiarity tugged me from my dull consciousness. Aching shoulders. Burning throat. My cheek scratched against burlap. I was . . . on a lap?
“We didn’t even get to the part where the prince kisses you,” he added.
Diego.
My heart lurched in my chest as my entire body stilled.
On All Souls Day, Diego had risen from the dead. My head pounded with pain and questions. How was he still alive? Where had he been the last several months? What did he want with me?
Traces of earthy soil and pungent gasoline mixed with Diego’s familiar smell. Never get in the van. It was rule number one around here. I had no idea how long we’d even been driving, but a victim in a vehicle was as good as dead.
Then again, it seemed death wasn’t always permanent.
“You were . . .” My vocal chords protested from whatever he’d used to knock me out. “You died.”
“Not yet. Not without you.” The sack lifted, and my skin cooled as I blinked open my eyes to two armed skeletons across from me. We rode in the back of a gutted, windowless van with a bench along each side panel. The skeleton who’d helped corner me laid his gun on his knee, and it pointed directly at me. One major pothole and I could be done for.
I shifted, turning my face up to see Diego looking down at me. His golden-streaked, cocoa-colored hair fell around high, regal cheekbones. A black shirt with dust on the collar lent masculinity that offset features pretty enough that he could’ve been a movie star. I saw the same patience and kindness in his mesmerizing green eyes as I had many times before, but now, I could only interpret it as an act to get what he wanted.
I could act, too, though.
He stroked my hair. “I promised I’d come back for you, didn’t I? I risked my life to get you away from him.”
Him.
They could’ve hurt or taken Cristiano, too. Everything had happened so fast. My throat thickened with emotion. “Where is he?”
“You’re free of him now, muñequita.”
Muñequita—his little doll. Fury snuffed out my confusion as a million rebuttals raced through my head. I could never be, and never wanted to be, free of Cristiano. He was my husband, my rock, and my future. He was ten times the man Diego would ever be—and he’d never treated me like a helpless doll.
But I had to think straight. To be smart, like the queen Cristiano demanded I be. One worthy of standing at his side. I was responsible for more than Cristiano and myself now. I couldn’t act recklessly or out of emotion. Raging at Diego wouldn’t get me anywhere, especially while I was tied up and at his mercy. While I carried a baby, my body was my priority.
Despite years and years of Diego’s deceit, it couldn’t have all been a performance. There had to be some part of him that cared for me. Cristiano had called it fondness. Diego had spent day in and day out by my father’s side, picking up my calls, and listening to me go on for hours about school, or how I missed him or my mother.
I couldn’t be the girl I was with him anymore—even if I wanted to be—but I could act the part. Cristiano had tried to warn me early on that this was a game, and I had to compete.
I steadied my breathing. One thing Cristiano had imparted: if I’d failed to incapacitate a captor, as I had now, I should act compliant, even if it felt unnatural, until I had an escape plan in place.
“Everything hurts,” I said softly.
“I’m sorry we had to ambush you like that,” Diego said. “I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t scream or fight back. I’m sure my desperate brother has tried hard to convince you that you want to be in the Badlands.”
“I’ve had to make my life there bearable.” The lie soured on my tongue as it came out, but it wasn’t hard to sound convincing. After all, before I’d loved Cristiano, I’d fought against anything to do with him. “But that doesn’t mean I forgive you for trading me to him.”
