Stolen By The Queen: A Narcos Romance

Chapter 32

The sound of Camila's body hitting the hot pavement would haunt Ryan in his nightmares. He knew it the moment it happened, like a damn omen, that he'd be cursed to nights of restless sleep, waking up screaming in a cold sweat just like he'd done for years after the last mission in the elite forces that went FUBAR. Except this time, it would be nightmares of her, of the thud of her body, the life leaving her eyes. 

He hated her more in that moment than he had when she'd turned him over to Carlos Sinaloa. He hated her more than men who'd hunted him for years. If she died this way--with a Sinaloa bullet aimed for him lodged in her perfect olive skin--he'd haunt her for the rest of her goddamn afterlife. She thought she'd been kept by her father in a gilded cage? 

She hadn't seen a damn cage compared to what Ryan had in store for her. 

Another bullet buzzed beside Ryan's head and his vision went red. Time slowed, his heart turned to solid, subzero ice as he grabbed the gun beside Camila's collapsed body and stood to his full height, taking out eight men in quick, easy succession. With Camila bleeding out on the ground, death was no longer a fear dangling over his head. The need to keep her safe, to stay alive to keep her alive, no longer mattered.

His aim was perfect, practiced, and concise. He was violence personified. Cold, calculating violence. An angry, wintry god among men. 

People often called the cartel kings like Carlos Sinaloa, El Diablo. The Devil.

But they'd been wrong. The devil wasn't a power-hungry, bloodthirsty Mexican drug-lord. 

It was a cold-blooded American ex-solider. With his worst fear laying directly at his goddamn feet. 

The highway went deathly quiet, the sound of firing bullets noticeably absent as the sun's heat bared down on Ryan's sweat-coated skin. Without looking at her, Ryan dropped to his haunches and easily lifted Camila's dead weight into his arms, wrenching open the door of one of the cartel men's cars and sitting her as delicately as his trembling hands would allow in the backseat. He grabbed the two duffle bags from the bullet-ridden Tacoma truck and slammed them into the passenger-side seat before putting the car in drive and hitting hard on the gas, the distant echo of police sirens sounding in the distance. 

If he wasn't preoccupied with the body in his backseat he'd actually be pleased with the ambush outcome. It would look like they'd been killed or taken, their truck destroyed. That would throw off the Mexican police who were no doubt in Carlos Sinaloa's pocket, ordered to report on anything that may be of interest to the kingpin.

But Ryan didn't give two fucks about any of that. 

She'd moved in front of that bullet. It had been aimed at him--Camila was no doubt wanted alive and unharmed--and yet she'd moved. She'd fucking moved in front of him like a goddamn shield. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a coincidence. 

Either she'd wanted to die, or she'd wanted him to live more than she valued her own life.

Both options were simply unacceptable. 

Ryan's fingers clenched around the steering wheel as he wove dexterously in between highway traffic at one-hundred-and-twenty miles per hour. He imagined the leather wheel to be the smooth column of her neck, squeezing tighter and tighter until her full, kissable lips turned lavender.

He'd told her. He'd commanded her. She wasn't going to die on anyone's terms but his. 

And she'd fucking defied him. His former special forces men had never, not once, defied him that way. If he told them to stand down, they fucking stood down. If he told them to run into a fire, they sprinted toward the flames.

But Camila? She broke every rule of his. Even the ones she didn't realize she was goddamn breaking. 

Ryan pulled his DEA cell from his pocket, his hand splattered with blood. He caught a small movement in the rearview mirror, Camila's body writhing slightly, the sight bringing such a violent wave of relief to his veins that he resented her even more. 

"Agent Jack Brockwell?" 

"Need a hospital that's off the books. Now."

"Agent McCallister? Were you shot? We just got news of a highway shooting--"

"No, I have a splinter, you fucking idiot. Now track my goddamn location, and tell me where I can pull the fuck over." 

Ryan heard Agent Brockwell's surprised intake of air, could imagine a bead of sweat breaking out on his freckled temple. Desk agents. Fucking idiots. He made a mental note to clock Brockwell in the jaw after dealing with Jacob and his inadequate background intel on Camila--aka Mercedes fucking Benitez.

After a few stuttered replies, Agent Brockwell rattled off the address of somewhere three exits away, Ryan's foot slamming on the gas pedal, not willing to turn back and assess whether Camila had three exits worth of time.

He simply demanded that she did.

Ryan threw the car in park, leaping out before it even fully came to a stop and lifted Camila from the backseat, still refusing to look at her face. As long as he didn't he could half-imagine she was someone else, an innocent, random woman caught up in the highway shoot-out crosshairs.

God how he wished she was.

Ryan rammed his fist against the door of the run-down looking auto shop, flashing an image of his DEA badge on his phone before the woman who answered could even get a word out. Her eyes widened in fear at the sinister look on Ryan's face as she took in his badge and quickly stepped aside. 

If the time spent during the shoot-out with Sinaloa's men felt like slow motion, the next few minutes went by in a mind-whipping blur. He only remembered small fragments, like partial shards of glass in his hand, not enough to make anything whole. 

Ryan did remember the feeling of lost weight in his arms when DEA employees dressed in all white scrubs took Camila from his arms, trying to convince him to let go, to calm down, in words that Ryan couldn't hear like they were being yelled from a car speeding past him on the highway.

He did remember the burn of whiskey down his throat as he drank straight from the bottle, the concerned, wide-eyed stares as people gave him a wide berth, not daring to step within hitting range of the Sangfroid-gone-mad agent.

He did remember wandering the walls, nearly growling at anyone he came across to direct him to where Camila's bed was, having to describe her since no one even knew her by name. 

He did remember seeing her asleep in a hospital bed, a monitor hooked up to her arm, the steady pulse of a live heart beat blinking rhythmically on a black monitor. 

But he didn't remember storming out of the building before punching a hole clear through the wall. He didn't remember nearly killing the brave --and frankly idiotic--DEA agent who came outside and tried to wrangle him to the ground. 

And he didn't remember the sting of a needle jabbed into the back of his neck, his limbs held down by so many hands--hundreds of them it felt like--he swore he was being dragged under stormy ocean waters by the hands of everyone he'd ever killed. Dragging him to hell.

And the only pair of hands he wanted to feel against his skin--the only pair he didn't--were Camila's.