Stolen By The Queen: A Narcos Romance

Chapter 24

Blood dripped down the front of his shirt. A lot of blood. 

Ryan couldn't care less. It wasn't his blood. 

He surveyed the room, the scene a bit messier than he'd intended. He had a thing for clean killing--call it a twisted kink of sorts--but the situation had unraveled more unexpectedly than he'd planned. 

When the two henchmen returned to the room for more lame attempts at torturing information out of him, Ryan had led them get a solid round of punches in, even allowed them to try and torture him a bit with their pocket knifes. Total amateurs. If there was one thing he'd learned about cartel henchmen who were lower on the ladder, it was that they were all bravado and no skill. True torture wasn't about hard punches and yelled threats and hulking figures strapped with ARs. It was about technique. It was refined, practiced, perfected. 

Ryan despised their laziness, their lack of bite to back up their bark. He'd grown bored after half an hour of their attempts, slipping his ankles through the falsely bound ties and kicking one of the henchmen so hard in the knee he crumpled to the floor like a baby.

Ryan used the shocked opportunity to slip his boot through the strap of the fallen henchman's AR and wrench up and around his throat, still keeping his wrists falsely tied behind his back to dispel any fear that he was only one decision away from being completely clear of his bindings.

The other henchmen fell for it--hook, line, and sinker, and darted over to help his friend up, not bothering to keep both hands on his gun. Ryan nearly scoffed in disappointment.

Within seconds he had both men knocked out cold, one boot on each of their throats as he slowly stole the last vestiges of life from their lungs. 

That was where the easy part ended. 

He hadn't expected a third henchmen to enter. And that required Ryan using one of the two ARs now slung in an X over his back. He blew out the man's kneecaps since he wore a bulletproof chest plate, and the howl that fucker made could wake the dead. Ryan cursed under his breath, preparing himself for an old-fashioned shoot-out, four dead, heavy bodies slumping to the floor before he managed to slip out into the hallway, stripping dead men's magazines as he stealthily stepped his way toward the home's entryway, expertly clearing each corner as he moved.

And that's when he saw the tall, slender figure of Rodrigo slipping out through the back of the house, using the scope of his AR to zero in and track the Sinaloa heir's movements as he hastily climbed into the back of a waiting black Escalade and sped off.

Fucking coward.

Ryan had the shot. His trigger finger was calm and poised, his breathing perfectly timed. Every inch the Sangfroid killer his DEA colleagues whispered about behind his back when he stalked through the government-gray carpeted halls of HQ. 

But to kill Rodrigo Sinaloa--one of two men who had worked with Camila to frame him--with a simple bullet through the head?

That felt lazy. Uninspired. Pain free.

And Ryan McCallister didn't do any of those things. 

He'd known Carlos Sinaloa had already left the premises the minute Ryan had been forced inside the house at gunpoint. The head honcho never stuck around long enough in one location for anything unpredictable to go down. The man was smart. Knew this world and ran it like a game he knew the cheat codes to.

His son on the other hand? Making deals with desperate women, running at the first sound of gunshots?

Ryan planned to take his sweet, sweet time on him.