“Now I’m going to go change,” she said. “Want a gun? They’re brand new carbine AR-15s.”

I pursed my lips. “Nah. Seems a bit impersonal, don’t you agree?”

She stared at me for a few beats. “How about protection?”

I grinned at her. “I don’t use protection. Dulls the senses.”

“For your body,” she said in annoyance.

“I’ve got a vest underneath and a few pistols. I’ll be fine.”

“Your funeral,” she said before she turned and headed toward the barn.

It wasn’t long before she came back looking like a man. Every part of her was covered up in the DEA’s armor, the long AR-15 held proudly in her hands. She smiled at me. “Well, I just spoke to the PGR. They have another five helicopters at their location, and they’re about to set off. Are you ready?”

“To be thrown out of a helicopter? Not particularly.”

She jerked her head toward a helicopter that was just starting up, its blades slowly whirring around. “Let’s go.”

Just like that, everyone around us started clamoring toward the waiting choppers. I climbed in with Berrellez, Greg, and four other men whose names I didn’t know, nor could I tell them apart, and soon we were lifting off into the air. Though I denied an AR-15 and protection, I was still given a headpiece which I could talk to them through, something that was already useful, considering how loud the helicopter was.

“You look nervous,” Berrellez said to me.

“I’m not the best flier,” I admitted.

“Nothing to do with you being dropped off at the heavily-armed compound of the world’s most wanted drug trafficker?”

“No,” I lied. It wasn’t that I was freaking out. It wasn’t even that I was afraid. But there was a thread of apprehension that ran through me, tickling me from time to time. It wasn’t often that I was out of my element, and beyond that, beyond the idea of dying fruitlessly, I was worried that I still wouldn’t be able to save Luisa in the end.

“Good,” she grinned. “I’m not nervous either.”

To my surprise, the choppers didn’t head toward the city of Culiacán, the hazy mass of roofs and rivers. They headed further inland, into the mountains. It seemed that Salvador had changed it up after we captured Luisa and had moved to another mansion. I had no doubt that the remoteness meant security was even tighter.

“Based on satellite images,” she said, pulling out a mobile device and flipping through it, “there’s a plot of land both behind the house and down the road by a few meters. We’ll go as close to the house as possible. If the PGR aren’t already there, we’ll be the first on the scene. We’ll all head out first, then you follow.”

I nodded, understanding but not agreeing.

Suddenly the choppers swooped up, nearly missing a row of trees that protruded from a rapidly rising cliff.

And on the other side of them, settled in the middle of a plateau, was Salvador’s house. It was a mansion not too dissimilar to mine, albeit with none of the class or beauty, with a few guards milling about and some stationed at the gates. Naturally, as soon as we started bearing down on the house, they started panicking and shooting at us.

The gunman in the chopper began firing back, taking out as many as he could before the pilot began a quick descent toward the green grass of the backyard.

Not going to lie—my heart was in my throat.

And I had to take every opportunity I could. As soon as Greg slid the doors open and the chopper was making its way past one wing of the house right over a small balcony, I made the sign of the cross, leaped past Berrellez, and jumped out.

Someone tried to grab me at the last minute, maybe it was Berrellez, but gravity had taken hold and I plunged about fifteen feet, landing straight on a glass table. It shattered beneath me and I lay there for a few moments on my back, the wind knocked out of me, staring blankly up at the black chopper blades as it continued on its way. The sound was incredible, hypnotic, until I heard Berrellez squawking in my ear.

“What the hell was that?” she yelled at me through the scratchy earpiece. I quickly rolled over in time to see someone coming to the balcony door. I whipped out my pistol and shot right through it, getting the figure before they could get me.

“You do things your way,” I said to her, “I’ll do things my way.”

“Don’t forget the deal. All bets are off if you end up killing him. We need Salvador alive!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, and switched my earpiece off.

I scrambled to my feet, shrugging the broken glass off of me. Rapid gunfire erupted on the lawn though I couldn’t tell who was firing the most and who was already winning.

It didn’t matter though. I was after only one thing.

I gripped my gun and stepped through the broken glass door and into a cool, carpeted bedroom of Salvador’s house.

Time to find my queen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Luisa


At first I thought it was the end of the world. I heard the deep rumble slice through the air, felt it quaking in my bones, shaking the floor of the bathroom I was lying on.

I welcomed the end of the world with open arms. In fact, I think I smiled knowing that death was finally on its way. It had ignored my pleas for far too long.

But then, when I didn’t die and the world didn’t burn and crash around me, I realized that the sound I was hearing was helicopters. I tried to raise my heavy head to look through the narrow window above the shower. It was glassless now, as was the mirror. Salvador had taken them out after I had stabbed him in the forearm one day with a slice I broke off. It cut my hands up pretty bad and I received a round of electric shock torture for my disobedience, but damn had it felt good.

Through the window I saw a black helicopter fly past, heading right over the house and the sound built up, growing deeper. Then I saw another helicopter and another.

Something was going on. I should have been happy, just having a disruption to the daily monotony. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been kept in the bathroom, perhaps ten days, perhaps two weeks? It was hard to remember. My brain wasn’t functioning anymore since he stopped feeding me several days ago. I still had water coming out of the bath and the taps and the toilet, just to ensure I wouldn’t totally die. If I was dead, how on earth could he torture me? How would he hear me scream?

Salvador hadn’t even raped me aside from the first day or two that I had arrived back. I felt like that was purely to assert his dominance, especially after he saw Javier’s brand on my back. He wanted to make sure that I belonged to him again. But to my surprise, the sexual attacks stopped soon after.

It was nothing to be relieved about. Salvador’s big thing now was to torture me in other ways. I was no longer his wife that he could have every which way he wanted. He no longer wanted me. So I was treated like an informant, like a spy, like a hostage. I was locked up in the bathroom somewhere in his house and he would visit me … sometimes once a day, sometimes twice, sometimes once every couple of days, all his ways of keeping me in suspense.

Too bad I had become too numb inside to even care anymore.

The first week, he removed the nails from my pinky toes. While one of his men held me down, he slowly ripped the toenails straight out. I prided myself on not passing out, but boy did I scream. It was just what he wanted. After that, I did my best not to make a sound. I was able to make it through the Tasers, being the old pro that I was already, but when it came to the hot irons he applied against my stomach, well that I could never keep inside.

And while I was able to take the beatings quite well, the other day he took a hammer to my finger. He seemed extra angry, muttering something about my choice in hired help, and I was punished accordingly. I screamed more after he left, when I attempted to bandage my broken index finger to my middle one using a toilet paper roll and strips of the shower curtain I had painstakingly ripped off.

Now I was lying on the cold tiles of the floor, wondering if the end was coming or if the helicopters were only going to bring me more pain. I didn’t even have the strength to crawl over to the door and see if I could hear anything.

Not that I needed to. Soon the air was filled with the sound of gunfire coming in all directions. People were no doubt dying. I wanted to smile at that. I wanted the whole world to burn.

I closed my eyes again and lay down my head, envisioning the madness that was going on outside, pretending that the good guys had come—whoever they were—and that Salvador would be caught in the crossfire. I hoped he’d die feeling like a fool.

Minutes passed and more helicopters sounded. More gunfire followed. I wondered what would happen if someone found me. Would they mistake me for being part of the cartel and shoot me on sight? Would they show me mercy? Or did the world hold worse things for me? It didn’t seem possible.

Eventually I heard quiet footsteps on the floor outside, and when I opened my eyes, I could see a pair of boots underneath the doorframe, waiting on the other side.

I started smiling before I even knew why.

The door was suddenly kicked open, narrowly missing my face, and I followed the boots up to see a pair of golden eyes staring down at me. Waves of pain and relief swirled in them with startling clarity.

“Luisa,” Javier whispered, immediately dropping down to his knees. He looked completely beside himself as his eyes searched my body up and down. He touched my face and I closed my eyes, leaning into the warmth of his palm. He was here. He had come. My beautiful, ruthless king.