Be strong.Her mother’s voice had sounded within her head in the register it always took when Gabriella felt the floor leaving her feet—stern and close and absolutely, indisputably certain that her daughter was capable of what was being asked of her.
Her cousins had insisted on flying her to their home in Italy and securing the best attorneys money could buy. In a flurry of chaos, no expense was spared. She had left Justin everything except their shared bank accounts. He kept their house, their furniture, the carefully curated domestic life she had spent years building. But her attorneys had been ruthless and secured every penny from their accounts without a moment of hesitation.
Her boisterous cousins had taken her out to celebrate her “victorious divorce.” A few nights of drinking with them and they’d made her see the silver linings of how things had turned out. Her and Justin had decided not to have kids, for one. That would have made the divorce far uglier and harder. They had toasted, more than once, to Gabriella still having her IUD. She had laughed until she cried, the first time she’d cried from anything other than pain in longer than she could remember.
But now? Now she was reliving those memories—not gently, not at the manageable distance therapy had taught her to maintain, but in the full, immersive present tense of a body that had decided the current situation was sufficiently similar to the past one to deploy every stored fear simultaneously. All that pain and suffering surfaced like an angry siren rising from the sea, burning in her chest, her throat, the backs of her eyes. She felt cornered, stuck in this situation with no way out.
Betrayal … a violation of a trusted bond. One she thought she had with Mateo.
The helplessness and the anger melded together, indistinguishable. Mateo untied her enough to move, his fingers efficient and impersonal against the rope, the knots releasing without ceremony, no apology in his hands. Sweat soaked her clothes, the fabric clinging to her back and the backs of her thighs, the cotton gone heavy and cold in some places.
As he pulled her from the boat, he guided her forward, assisting her against the tide with his grip firm at her elbow. Not rough, but unyielding. Like she was something he couldn’t afford to lose beneath the Prussian blue waves that called out to her.
“I am getting pretty tired of the hot and cold treatment,” she mumbled as they moved towards the foliage. The jungle smelled of fuel and wet earth, rot and green life tangled together. Every instinct in her screamed to run, but the pressure of his hand kept her moving.
She heard him stifle a chuckle, guiding her to the rear of the SUV where he yanked open the hatch. The vehicle had clearly been modified, but for what purpose, she couldn’t gather. The beige rear cloth chairs were now facing one another to where her back would be along the steel body of the car. The back door of the SUV had a latch window and there was a stand modded to the door. She realized that it was to hold a very large weapon.
“You can’t be serious,” she balked. “You want me to enter this death trap?”
“I could force you, but I prefer consent with my partners,” he responded, his smooth masculine voice cutting through the surrounding jungle noise, as if only time existed for them. She knew he was trying to be stoic; his voice held neither anger nor softness. Just inevitability.
“No,” she said, her anger clear.
She could sense his unease as he glanced back in the direction they came from.
“Gabriella, you need to understand, I am trying to keep youalive.” He stressed the last word, but the white knuckles of his hand betrayed his uneasiness.
“What for? Why bother?” she asked, her chest tight and her heart a staccato of emotions over what he might say. He stared at her, umber eyes creased with worry, an absolute contrast to what she had seen from him in the last hour of events. But why? Gabriella couldn’t understand. Mateo seemed like a complex puzzle of hypocrisy and regrets.
“They will kill you if they find you, Gabriella,” he murmured to her, his posture softening as he held the door wider for her.
“So you keep saying. If I am such a burden, then go ahead and shoot me,” she snapped. It was getting harder and harder to see why she had been attracted to this man to begin with, despite the obvious way her body responded to his closeness.
His eyes widened at her tone, and he tried once more. “If you want to help those turtles and honor your fallen friends, then survive for them, Gabriella. Live.” His voice held no mockery as he hesitated to continue. “And I promise, when I tell you everything, it will make sense.”
“Not enough sense for me to forgive you,” she said, ignoring the look of pain that crossed his face.
But he’s right, she thought. He was right, and she hated him for it. She glanced down, drawing a breath that didn’t quite reach the bottom of her lungs, her chest tight and resistant.
“Fine. For myfriends,” she hissed the last word, composure shaking as she climbed in, and ignored him as he tied her and gagged her. His scent enveloped her, and she fought everything to not respond to him.
His touch lingered on her face, fingers brushing her cheeks, sending jolts of pleasure down to her core. She flinched back, meeting his eyes with fury and growling at his direction.
Don’t fucking touch me. She clenched her fists, feeling her nails bite into the calloused pads of her flesh.
Never again, she chided herself.I won’t be tricked by another man again.
He pulled back, hands slightly shaking, and nodded, as if hearing her unspoken words.
“I’m sorry, Gabriella,” he recited once more and closed the door, leaving her shaking with emotions she did not wish to dive into.
The drive to the poachers’ camp was suffocatingly quiet. It pressed against Gabriella’s ears, making every jolt of the jeep and every rustle of leaves feel deafening. She’d stopped struggling after the first few minutes. The gag in her mouth had silenced the desperate questions that had tumbled out about her team, about the men on the beach, abouthim.
With a heaviness that settled beneath her heart and into her bones, her eyes stared blankly out the window as the humid jungle swallowed them whole.
CHAPTER 6
MATEO