“I have given you both more than most people in our country ever dream to have. You’re ungrateful.”
“Oh, forgive me for not being grateful that my own father took my innocence,” I said sarcastically. Carlos looked at me in warning, but I ignored him. I didn’t know what my father would do to me for speaking to him this way, airing what was between us. He might kill me, but in a way, he already had.
“Hush, Camila,” my father warned.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”
“That’s where you are so very wrong. Your papa is always in charge. I don’t care how old you are or that you’ve been off living a life that never should have been. You belong with your family. That’s where you will stay, and you will be grateful I’m accepting you back with open arms.”
He believed the nonsense he spoke. “Has your bed been cold? Is that why you’re so eager to have me back?” I said venomously.
“You will not disrespect me.” He gripped his thighs, his control slipping.
“To disrespect you would mean I respected you in the first place. Believe me, I don’t.” I couldn’t seem to stop. “Have you told Carlos how you kept me in your room for days while you drank and raped me? Does he know how you shoved yourself down my throat? I was eleven. You could have had any number of women. Why did you do it to me?”
Carlos visibly paled. Hearing about my abuse at our father’s hands couldn’t have been easy. I regretted polluting his ears, but I needed to say this to my father, and even though I’d asked him why, I didn’t actually care about the reason.
There was nothing he could say to make me forgive him, and I refused to sweep it under the rug as if nothing had happened just so everyone could be more comfortable.
The silence in the car was oppressive. My father ignored me as he ignored anyone who said something he didn’t like. I wouldn’t allow him to pretend that I hadn’t spoken.
“Well? Nothing to say? Tell me, Papa”—I drew out the word with all the disgust I felt toward him—“are you planning to give me my own room or just move me into yours? Make things—”
“Enough!” he shouted, and I could have sworn the car vibrated around us from the thunder in his voice. His eyes darkened to the blackest night, and I wondered if he might actually kill me. After all, I was a virtual stranger now.
“You didn’t care when I’d had enough.” The metal of the gun pressed against my back, tempting me. I had dreamed on more than one occasion of killing him, most often by shooting him between the eyes, but his death would change nothing. There was no way to make him pay for what he’d done to me. “Should I strip for you now?” I tugged at the hem of my sweater, as if I was going to remove it. “Oh. How could I forget? You like to do that yourself.”
“Camila.”
My blood boiled. “I don’t answer to that name. You killed her.”
“You speak foolishly.”
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’ve admitted nothing in front of Carlos. You’ll deny it all later and say I’ve lost my mind.” I twirled an index finger by my temple. “Deny whatever you want. You know what you did. I know what you did. I’m ashamed I have your blood running through my veins.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I very much do,” I assured him.
That shut him up for a while, and when I finally registered what was out the window, I saw we had made it out of the city and darkness surrounded us. Traffic was nonexistent. We were the only car on a desolate road, the headlights shining on the overgrown grass in the ditch. I realized the airport we were headed to must be isolated, and I saw that when it was safe for me to run, there would be plenty of places to hide. There weren’t even any stars. The clouds hid them.
“All these years I suffered because I thought you were dead,” my father said quietly. “Now that I have you back, I won’t let you go, Camila. Resign yourself to that.”
“No matter what you do to me, I will never be yours. I am not your family. You are nothing to me.”
“I’ve cut out people’s tongues for saying less offensive things,” he said with an air of indifference.
“Do what you must. That’s your way, isn’t it?”
Carlos slowed the car, making a turn onto a dirt driveway. He flipped on the high beams, illuminating a couple of buildings in the distance, one unmistakably an airplane hangar. My throat constricted as our proximity to the plane that could take me back to captivity reignited my fear that Carlos wouldn’t help me escape after all. He’d given me a gun, but I hadn’t thought to check if it was loaded. His show of alliance may have merely been a way to keep me calm as they brought me here.
We rounded a shallow curve, and the headlights landed on a dark pickup truck parked in front of the wide hangar doors. A lone figure leaned casually against the passenger door. I squinted, and dread and relief flooded through me.
Stone.
Chapter Forty-Four
Stone
The second the headlights hit me, I was glad I’d trusted my gut. Daniel had agreed, putting me in touch with the head of his security team. They’d been held up in traffic by some visiting dignitary’s motorcade and re-routed here. At last contact, they were ten minutes out. I’d been warned to wait for them, but that wasn’t something I was willing to do. Every second counted right now. I didn’t know if she was in that car, but chances were in my favor, and I had zero regrets about going it alone. Bottom line, I wasn’t leaving here without her.
Grateful for my hat shielding my eyes, the car pulled to a stop, followed by an SUV. A man climbed out of the driver’s seat who shared Muriella’s features. I squinted and scanned for any sign of weapons as he strode toward me. If he had them, they were concealed.
“What are you doing here?” he hissed as a second man approached.
“Taking Muriella back where she belongs.”
His jaw worked, and upon closer inspection, I saw the man looked an awful lot like a younger version of her father I’d seen in a photo. Carlos. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell whose side he was on.
Relief and horror attacked me from opposite sides when the back door of the car opened and Muriella appeared. I lifted my chin and prayed she’d understand I was telling her to go.
A third man got out of the car. I recognized him immediately.
Juan Carlos Calderón.
He strode toward us, as commanding and formidable as described in the script I’d read. I leaned against the side of the truck and crossed one ankle over the other.
I kept my eyes trained on him, though out of my peripheral vision I saw Muriella reach behind her. A sense of dread washed over me, but I forced myself to remain calm.
“She’s not going anywhere with you,” I said steadily.
“My daughter is coming home to be with her family. You can leave now with no consequence, or you can stay and die.” He said this in accented English as calmly as if he’d just told us the time of day.
I itched to reach for the gun, but that was a method of last resort. “Nobody’s going to die. You’re going to get on that plane and go back where you came from. She stays.”
Her father laughed without a trace of humor. “Who does he think he is?” he asked Carlos. He stopped abruptly and leaned within an inch of my face. “This is your last chance. Be grateful I’m giving it to you. Get in the truck and leave. Forget you ever heard the name Calderón. Forget Camila. In turn, I will forget you.”
I let out a long breath. “I can’t do that.”
I pushed away from the truck and dug in my pocket for the keys so we could get the hell out of here. Juan Carlos grabbed me by the shoulder. I stopped in disbelief. “I don’t think you want to go that route.”
Her father clapped his hands in delight. “It’s decided. You will die. Slowly. I don’t know if Camila cares for you or not, but she needs to get over that to assume her role in our family.”
The man was insane if he thought I would ever let her anywhere near him again.
The shot hit her father in the thigh. He screamed in startled pain as he fell to the dirt and clutched his wound. She stalked toward him and fired again, this time hitting his arm as he reached for his gun. He grunted in pain, and it fell to his side.
Carlos swiped the weapon off the ground as I snagged Muriella by the waist. She stood over her father, her gun pointed at his forehead. My lips pressed against her ear. I spoke soft enough so only she could hear. “Think about this before you do it. Whichever way you go, I’m with you. I just want you to be sure.”
She leaned into me, hesitating before she lowered the gun. When she turned to look up at me, everything was right for the first time since this morning. I beamed at her, so grateful she was in one piece.
Movement behind Muriella set the world in slow motion. Juan Carlos lifted a second gun he’d kept concealed. There was no time to fire mine. I spun so my back was to him. The shot sounded off like a crack, breaking the silence of an otherwise peaceful night. I lurched and hit the ground.
Lights out.
Chapter Forty-Five
Muriella
I pitched forward as if I’d been hit, yet there was no pain. And then I was on the ground, rocks digging into me through my clothes, dirt filling my nose and mouth.
Stone covered me. His chest rose and fell against my back. He made not a sound. Panic seized me. My father gasped out a cruel laugh. I clutched the gun I’d somehow managed to hold onto after the fall.
Slowly, I raised my head. The General stood near the SUV, his weapon drawn. My father sat halfway up, his gun still pointed at Stone and me. Our eyes met, his intentions clear. I struggled to lift the gun in my hand. He would not kill Stone. I squeezed the trigger and hit the arm that held his weapon. It dropped immediately. He reached for it but winced in pain.
Before my father could get to it, Carlos swiped up the weapon and hit him in the back of the head with the butt. One look from Carlos, and the General stopped advancing. “You breathe one word of this to him when he wakes up, and I will see to it there isn’t a single recognizable piece of you left to give your family.”
The General dropped his pistol and held up both hands in surrender.
“Get him on the plane,” Carlos directed.
“Stone,” I said softly, trying to wiggle out from under him.
His eyes opened. “Muriella.” His voice was hoarse, ridden with pain.
“Are you hurt?” My eyes searched his, pleading for him to give me the right answer.
“As long as you’re okay, I’ll be all right.” The words were strained, and I held him.
That’s when I felt his soaked shirt. “You’re hit.”
“It’s nothing.” Carlos jogged over to us, his hands full, but of what I couldn’t tell. “Let me have a look.”
“What do you know about tending injuries?” I asked as he produced a small flashlight from what appeared to be a medical kit.
“More than I want to.” Without asking, he lifted Stone’s shirt and examined the wound. “Hold his shirt up, Cam—” Carlos stopped before saying my given name. I appreciated his effort and immediately complied with his command. “This is going to hurt,” he said to Stone.
“Already does,” he muttered good-naturedly.
Carlos worked quickly and efficiently, even in the darkness. I peered at the wound, my stomach turning. In what little light we had, it didn’t look good. Stone’s smooth flesh was marred by a jagged slice. Regret and anger coursed through me. He shouldn’t have been here.
My brother wasn’t joking about his expertise with injuries. He stitched up the hole in Stone’s side with precision as if he did it every day.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” Stone said reassuringly.
“That should hold for now. Let’s get him to the truck.” Carlos and I had the same caramel skin tone, dark hair and eyes, but our height and builds were polar opposites. Where I was petite and small-framed, he was tall and solid muscle.
He scooped Stone up off the ground as if he weighed nothing. I scrambled to my feet and rushed forward to open the passenger door of the truck. Carlos set him in the seat, adjusting Stone’s legs so they fit inside.
“Thank you. I’m Stone, by the way.” He held out his hand to Carlos, and they shook.
“Carlos. Take care of my sister,” he said solemnly.
“I will. Just make sure that son of a bitch never comes near her again.”
Carlos closed the door. “He’s going to be fine,” he said to me, continuing to speak in English. He lifted his arm as if he wanted to touch me, but dropped it before he did. “But you need to get him to a doctor to properly tend to the wound.”
“Thank you,” I said, chest tightening.
“I have to go back with father. If I don’t, I’ll have no way of knowing what he’s doing.” He paused, remorse filling his eyes. “I’m sorry I let it get this far. I’ve tried to protect you from him. I failed this time.”
“No, you didn’t. I’m not on that plane.”
Carlos snorted, picked up Stone’s hat off the ground, and held it out to me. “Before we left your apartment, I called my phone with your phone so I could text these coordinates to it. Just in case someone looked for you.” He roughed his hands through his hair. “I’d very much like the chance to know you if you’d let me. Call that number any time, day or night.”
I held out his gun, hesitating before I released it. “I’d like to know you too.”
“I’ll speak to you soon.”
“Soon.”
After one last look, he rounded the back of the truck and secured me in the driver’s seat. Carlos nodded, then walked toward the hangar.
I started the truck, adjusted the seat forward so I could reach the pedals, and put it in drive. The sound of a plane engine roared to life behind me. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see it crawling from the hangar. As I swerved around my car and the General’s SUV to head back down the dirt road, dread filled me at the sight of my father escaping to safety as the plane lifted off. There was nothing I could do about that now, and I had to get help for Stone. When I reached the main road, I realized I had no idea where we were or where to go. And then I saw three SUVs speeding toward us.
“For the middle of nowhere, there certainly is a lot of activity,” I said, looking over at Stone. His eyes were closed, but they blinked open at the strain in my voice.
“Must be the security team.”
The first SUV squealed to a stop blocking my way, and the back passenger door popped open.
“Daniel’s men? I thought the panic button didn’t work.”
“There were some streets blocked off and they had a hard time getting around. We told them to come here.” Stone’s voice was gritty, even as he tried to hide his pain.
Cautiously a man approached our truck as one remained positioned near their dark SUV. I cracked the window.
“Miss Morales, are you all right?”
If I was supposed to be surprised the man knew me, I wasn’t. Daniel didn’t leave details to chance. They probably knew more about me than I did myself.
“Fine. Thank you for coming.”
“I apologize ma’am for not arriving sooner.” His slight Southern accent was overshadowed by the no-nonsense tone. “Where is Calderón?”
I pointed toward the sky. “Gone.” The man’s mouth pinched in the corner. “If you don’t mind, we need to be on our way. Mr. Jacobs has been shot.”
The only indication he’d registered my words was a raised eyebrow. Then he gave me a sharp nod and motioned for the driver of the SUV to unblock our path. “Some of us will stay here to secure the other vehicles and the scene, ma’am. The rest will escort you wherever you need to go.”
I maneuvered onto the road, heading back the direction the security team had c
ome from.
“Do you have a phone I could easily access?” I asked Stone once I reached cruising speed.
“Yours is in the cupholder.”
I picked it up and dialed.
“Muriella?” Daniel answered hoarsely. It sounded as if he’d swallowed a handful of sand, and I ached at his worry.
“It’s me, Daniel.”
“Thank God. I’m so sorry—”
“Not now,” I cut him off. “Stone’s been shot. My brother temporarily patched him up, but we need a doctor. We’re in the middle of nowhere—”
“Connecticut,” Stone interrupted.
“Connecticut. Where should we go?”
“Head for the apartment for now. I’ll call you back in a few minutes with further instructions,” Daniel barked.
I hung up without another word and entered our home address into the truck’s navigation system.
“Do you have a charger?” I asked Stone, whose head lolled to the side.
“In there.” He pointed to the center console, and I opened it, pulling out a white wire that was already plugged into a USB port.
Once I had my phone connected, the music function of my cell played “Home” by Rudimental. The volume was low, and I left it on, the silence more than I could stand at the moment.
“How badly do you hurt?”
“Are you okay?” The way he avoided my question intensified my worry.
I was only able to see his outline by the glow from the touchscreen display in the dash. His head rested on the back of the seat, but his face was turned toward me.
“I won’t be until I get you to a doctor, and you’re healed.” I gripped the steering wheel and focused on the dark road, speeding along faster than I’d normally drive.
He reached for me, and I felt him wince. “Muriella, it’s just a scratch.”
“It is not just a scratch,” I said, my voice rising before I took a deep calming breath. “Please just relax.”
Three Dates (Paths To Love Book 2) Page 23