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“We’ll discuss this tomorrow,” Liam says flatly. “It was a mistake, but it can be made right. Niall, go ahead with Ricardo’s plan to get Isabella back. We’ll discuss extracting her back to the States as soon as you have her.”
There’s not much more to say after that. Liam’s disappointment feels heavier to bear than Connor’s anger—Connor would be pissed if I’d fucking turned over the wrong piece of gravel on my way in. He’s looking for an excuse to be angry with me, but Liam has always had my back through everything. Knowing I’ve let him down feels particularly shitty.
A call to Max only results in getting his voicemail, and I leave him a message, letting him know I’m probably going to need his help with a job. That’s all I need to say, I know, and he’ll call me back as soon as he’s able. Max and I hit it off a while back, when Max was in Boston trying to help Ana through the worst of things post-Alexandre, and I’d be willing to trust the former priest with my life. Certainly with Isabella’s.
With that taken care of, I strip down and walk into the bathroom, wincing as I look in the mirror. I’ve got a dozen bruises that look worse in the mirror and crusted flaking blood everywhere. It’s hard to know how much of it is mine or how many superficial wounds I took until I get the worst of it off, so I turn on the shower and step under the spray as soon as it heats up, as hot as I can stand it.
The heat goes straight to my bones, soothing my tight muscles and easing some of the pain—but not enough. I feel like I’ve gone ten rounds with a herd of elephants, and I groan as I press my hand to my ribs. Washing the blood off my skin is an exercise in discipline, because what I want is to flop into bed without scrubbing my already hurting skin raw, hotel sheets be damned. But years of getting into fights and back out of them has taught me that cleanup afterward is essential. It’s the only way I’ll know if anything needs stitching and the best way to avoid infection.
I also want to sleep. Hours of deep, uninterrupted, healing sleep—but I’m not going to get that now either, just a few before I have to be back at the Santiago compound and ready to help Diego get his daughter back.
When the shower starts to run cold, I step out, drying off as gingerly as possible before taking stock in the bathroom mirror. The bruises are just as bad as they looked under the crust of blood. I have a decent number of superficial cuts and knife gashes on my arms and one that went through my shirt, as well as a split in my lower lip and a cut on my jaw where someone with a ring hit me. But nothing needs stitches, and so I throw on a pair of boxers and head for the bed.
Lying there, staring at the ceiling, I let out a breath. If the night had gone any other way, I’d be lightly buzzed on tequila, stroking myself to one last memory of Gabriela in this bed before hopping on a plane in the morning back to Boston. Now—
Now I couldn’t get a hard-on to save my life, not as beaten to a pulp as I feel right now. Even so, I feel my dick twitch in my boxers, remembering what Gabriela and I—no,Isabella—did in this room. The way she’d come for the first time on my tongue, pressed up against the door, her knees buckling so that I ended up catching her and taking her down to the floor. Her cries when I slid into her for the first time, the way she begged for my cock, that night and every night after. The first time she sucked me off, clumsy but so eager that it was the best fuckin’ blowjob of my life anyway, even if she did catch her teeth on my cockhead a few times. Her face with my cum on her lips, her on her hands and knees, waiting for me to take her ass—
I let out a hiss of pain through my teeth as my cock lurches up anyway, swelling with need at the memory of that in particular. I’m fucking pissed as hell at her, but my dick clearly didn’t get the notice because it’s well on its way to an aching hardness that only a good hard stroke will take care of right now.
I reach down experimentally, running my hand up and down the rigid length as memories of Isabella’s soft red lips, her tumbling dark hair, and her perfect body crowd into my mind, but I’m in too much fucking pain. I groan at the movement and let my hand flop back down onto the bed, willing my dick back into submission.
If only I’d done that in the first fucking place.
Lustful thoughts aside, I’m exhausted and drained, and I pass out faster than I’d thought possible, even with half a hard-on. I sleep so hard that when noises outside my room drag me out of it, I’m not even sure where I am at first.
It comes back to me quickly. The noises aren’t loud, but I’m instantly on alert, sliding slowly out of bed and fumbling for a knife and my gun as I hear rustling at the window and a brush of what could be a footstep by the door. Whoever’s out there wouldn’t be the first to make an attempt on my life, and I’m sure as hell not going to make it easy on them.
I’m also fairly certain I know that whoever is outside of my room, Diego sent them. He’ll want to finish me off, stop any chance of my coming after Isabella, but I’m not that easy to kill. And I’m not about to leave her in his hands without a fight. It’s not unlike those boys I stopped from messing with her at theSangre de Ángel,except Diego is a man, a powerful one, and he won’t be so easily dissuaded.
I crouch by the bed, waiting for them to make their move. I can hear the sound of something sliding under the window, prying it open, and the slow click of someone picking a lock. They’re not the stealthiest assassins ever hired, which makes me recalculate how many I think might be out there. If they’re not the most skilled, then they’ll have the advantage in numbers.
A click, and the door swings open. I have less than a second to count how many come in—three, no four, black-clothed figures, and as I raise my gun to fire, the window pops open, and three more come sliding in. I’m surrounded, seven to one—but I’ve had worse odds.
My first shot takes one of them down. In other circumstances, I might have tried simply to disarm rather than to kill, but not tonight. I know these men are here to kill me, and I’ve never had any objection to blood for blood.
Not to mention the fact that I am in no fucking mood for this.
“You’re bloody fucking stupid if you think I’d let you waltz in here and kill me!” I snarl, springing up from my crouch and firing again, slashing out at one with my left hand holding my knife. A spatter of blood hits my cheek, and another body goes down, but there are five left. A white-hot pain sears through my ribs, but I don’t have time to guess how deeply that cut went. Any hesitation and I’m dead.
They hadn’t expected me to fight back quite so fiercely, but there’s a moment where I’m not sure if I’m going to make it out. Two of my bullets miss, another grazes one as they close in, and both shorten my aim and force me into dodging too quickly to get a perfect bead on any one of them. I keep shooting, slicing, and grunting as the assassins get in their own blows. One of them tackles me to the carpet, and I kick upwards, jamming my elbow into his nose at the same time. Blood sprays over my face, and another tries to pin me, knocking my gun loose and out of my sight in the dark room.
Fine. I fight just as well with a knife.
I’d always preferred boxing to any other martial art, but I know how to get myself out of a ground maneuver. Fighting is my forte, more so than anything else, and once they decide to trade weapons for blows, it’s all over. They’d opted to bring knives and their fists to a gunfight, assuming, I expect, to sneak up on me and stab me to death in my sleep.
Instead, I cut a swathe through them, beating the remainder of them to a pulp. But not without consequence.
The gash on my ribs is bleeding heavily; I can feel it. I’m bleeding from more wounds, too, my nose swollen, more bruises added to the tally. I fumble for sweatpants and a shirt as I stand there bleeding and dazed in my boxers, surrounded by bodies, and then turn the flashlight of my phone on, looking for my gun and my keys.
With both of those secured, I shove my phone into my pocket and slip out of the hotel room, weapon at the ready.
There’s no one else out there, though, so far as I can tell. I creep down the hallway slowly, one hand holding another wadded shirt to the wound on my side as I aim the gun with the other. I’m not going to be sprang upon again, not until I can get to my bike and get the fuck out of here.
The night is silent now, and I make it to my motorcycle. Quickly, I tie the shirt as tightly around my midsection as I can manage, trying to stop the flow of blood, shove my gun into the waistband of my pants, and get on my bike. It’s a dangerous fucking thing to ride in this state, but I don’t have any other way of getting to the Santiago compound before I either pass out, bleed out, or both.
Hopefully, they didn’t nick anything major, but I need to get to Ricardo before I find out.
I open the bike up, figuring if I’m going to wreck, I’ll do it at top speed. Better that than wreck anyway because I took too long getting there. The night sky is full of stars above me as I speed down the highway, reminding me of my date in the desert with Isabella. That memory makes my chest ache more than anything else so far.
I should have never given her that stupid fucking necklace.
The guards at the gate of the Santiago compound are on full alert when I ride up, but one of them recognizes me—thank fucking god, because I’m too bloody exhausted and wounded to argue. “It’s the Irishman from the States,” the guard says, waving at the one manning the gate. “Open up.”
I ride in, nearly stalling the bike as I slow, seeing the alarmed look on the man’s face at my state. “Assassins,” I manage, my tongue feeling thick in my mouth. “Sent to my hotel by Diego Gonzalez. Tell Ricardo I’m here—Diego isn’t going to give up Isabella easily. We need to make—a plan.”
The last words barely make it out of my mouth before the world spins upside down, and somehow I’m lookingupat the stars, the ground hard beneath my back. A face swims into view and out again—
--and then everything goes black.
