That is not strategy. That is the compound’s surveillance reflex running on its own schedule.
I press my palm flat against the cold floorboards and remind myself: trust is not the same as surrender. Choosing to stop running is not the same as choosing to stop watching. The drive stays hidden tonight. Tomorrow, I decide what to do with the men in the other room.
But the reflex is noted. The compound does not leave you just because you leave the compound. I will have to be deliberate about that.
The cold, ruthless logic Dominic spent years drilling into my brain reasserts itself with vicious clarity. I slide my hand into the pocket of the borrowed tactical pants. My fingers brush cold, hard metal.
I close my fist around the stolen silver USB drive.
These three men sacrificed everything for my survival. Letting them fight Dominic blindly is a massive tactical failure. They need ammunition.
Tomorrow morning, I will not run. I will not hide in the shadows like a frightened mouse. We do not just hide from the cartel. We use their tactical skills and my inside knowledge.
We ruin Dominic together.
13
LUCIA
Biting, freezing air stings the tip of my nose.
Heavy silence replaces the constant, sterile hum of the cartel compound. The manicured perfection of the Costa estate is gone, traded for the sharp scent of raw pine, old dust, and damp wood.
A thick, handmade quilt rests across my chest. The rough patchwork material traps a cocoon of blistering heat beneath it.
My dark eyelashes flutter open against the dim morning light. Frost coats the small, rectangular windowpanes of the rustic back bedroom, turning the dense forest outside into a blurry, grey smudge.
A tiny, steady weight presses against my right side.
I turn my head slowly on the flat pillow. The absolute center of my universe. Tyra is curled against my ribs. Her dark, messy curls spill in wild tangles across the mattress. One small fist grips the ear of her ragged grey stuffed wolf. Her chest rises and falls in a deep, even rhythm.
She breathes. She is safe.
Raw, overwhelming love swells in my throat. It chokes the remaining oxygen from my lungs.
I move my hand from beneath the warm quilt. My trembling fingers gently smooth a rogue curl away from her soft cheek. She does not stir. The exhaustion of the midnight extraction keeps her anchored in a heavy, dreamless sleep.
The small, warm weight of her against my ribs is the only real thing in the world. Everything else—the ballroom, the blood-red silk, Calix Ferraro’s cold mouth on my knuckles—belongs to a different life. A different woman. A woman who smiled for cameras and counted exit routes and gave herself exactly three minutes to fall apart in a public bathroom stall.
That woman burned away on the bearskin rug last night.
We survived the night.
The terrifying reality of the previous twenty-four hours washes over the quiet room. Dominic marched me onto a public auction block. Calix Ferraro treated my body like defective cattle and casually threatened the beautiful, sleeping child resting against my hip. The cage door was locked tight. The key was thrown into the abyss.
Then, three feral men burned the lock to ash.
The heavy, paralyzing weight of my brother’s control is broken. We are no longer cartel property. The invisible golden handcuffs are shattered.
I lie still for one more moment. I let the sound of Tyra’s slow, even breathing fill my chest. I memorize the exact weight of her small body against mine and the sweet, lingering smell of herdark curls. I let it anchor me to this moment before the day demands everything I have.
Leaving Tyra on the bed feels like severing a limb, but the need to move, to find a weapon or a way out, is a physical itch I can’t scratch while lying still. I slide out from under the heavy quilt, my bare feet hitting the floorboards.
I move through the small space, my eyes cataloging everything with the survival instinct of a woman who spent years mapping a cage. I test the kitchen sink—the hand pump is irregular, requiring two hard thrusts before the water runs clean. I check the cabinets: functional canned goods, powdered milk for Tyra, and enough coffee to keep a small army awake. Someone stocked this place for a siege, not a vacation.
Then I hear it.
The heavy, rhythmic crunch of tires over frozen gravel. My blood turns to ice.