Chapter One
Gino came awake with a start. His heart pounding, sweat pouring from his body, and an urgent sense that something bad was about to happen. He took a few swift deep breaths, desperately trying to gain control of his panic, his gaze darting around his hospital room, looking for the danger that felt heavy in the surrounding air. The light from the glass windows over his door cast the room with enough of a glow to prove that whatever the danger was that he felt, it wasn’t in the room. The clock on the bedside table told him it was close to three-thirty in the morning.
With a groan he couldn’t hold back, he pushed to sit up and swing his legs over the side of the bed. His ribs, his arms, his face, everything throbbed with pain as he moved. Hell, his left hand felt like it was on fire, and the missing finger burned like fuck. He’d had no idea something like that was even possible, that something that wasn’t even there could hurt like hell, but his doctors explained they were phantom pains and had warned they would come. It felt all too real at that moment.
Gritting his teeth, he removed the drip from the port on the back of his hand and stood up, fighting nausea and a wave of dizziness. He waited for it to ebb before he stepped toward the door. Each step hurt, but he had to move to the door. He had to see what it was that had every survival instinct he possessed screaming within him, and he cursed the fact no one had left him with a damn weapon.
As quietly as he could, he opened the door slightly, blinking his eyes to get used to the bright warm light that lit the corridor. He could see one of their young enforcers, a man named Nico, sitting in a chair down the hall from his room. He was slumped in the chair and fighting sleep, but still awake.
Taking a quick look back down the other way and seeing it clear, he stepped out into the hallway. Nico caught the movement and spun in his direction. When he saw Gino walk out, or more accurately, shuffle out, slightly bent over, his eyes widened in shock and he jumped up.
“Damn, Gino,” Nico said as he hurried in his direction. “I don’t think you should be walking around, man. Or even standing.” Nico reached him and gripped his arms, helping him to stand upright. “Gavriil is down in the doctor’s lounge with Abby sleeping. I’ll go get him.”
The last thing Gino needed was for Gavriil to walk into whatever the hell it was his instincts were telling him was coming. “No, leave them there.” Gino’s voice was harsh, but there was an urgency in his tone. “Does he have a guard? Who else is here?”
Nico went on alert, his gaze sweeping the hall. “Leona is down the hall to the left, and Tony’s with her. He’s armed to the teeth, and Finn is outside their door. The woman that was found with you, she’s across the hall here.”
The hair on the back of Gino’s neck rose at the mention of that woman. “She still in there?”
“She hasn’t left the room and I’ve been in this hall all night.” Nico suddenly frowned and his gaze slid to the side. “Except…”
“Tell me.”
Nico grimaced. “There was this nurse, and I talked to her for about fifteen minutes down at the nurses’ station.” Nico pointed to the reception area behind him, not far from where they stood. “She’s gorgeous, and I got her number. But I swear to you, Gino, I never left the hall.”
Cursing, Gino stepped away from the younger man and pushed the door open, knowing before the light from the corridor cast over the bed what he would find. The woman was gone. He stepped into the room, his gaze going to the machines by the bed that were flashing, no doubt because they were no longer connected to anyone, but had been silenced somehow. He caught the scent of rain on the air and noticed the curtains in the window moving.
He stepped over to the window to slide the curtain aside and stood staring out at the night from the second-floor window, that sense of panic still riding hard within him. He took as deep of a breath as his abused ribs would let him and wondered at the sense of loss he was feeling. She’d left. The woman he’d stepped in to save then had saved him in return at great cost to herself. She was gone, and he had no idea what her name was.
He closed his eyes, remembering how scared she’d been the day before, but baiting Tito to get his attention off Gino and on her despite his protests. She had been prepared to die, may have even welcomed the release death may have afforded her. He’d seen it in her eyes. She—
His eyes flew open as he was suddenly struck with insight. Shehadbeen prepared to die. He spun from the window and ran past a surprised Nico. He moved as fast as he could to the elevator bank. She wanted to die, and she was an intelligent woman. Jumping from the second floor wasn’t guaranteed to kill her. But the roof was a different matter entirely.
****
“Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos.” Rosa Hernandez heard the tremor in her own voice and felt the tears streaming down her face, but nothing could sway her resolve. “Santificado sea tu Nombre, Venga tu reino.”
She continued to recite the Lord’s Prayer, her eyes locked on the concrete parking lot ten stories below her. When she’d stood before her hospital room window, contemplating this very act, she’d known she had to be higher. Now, once she’d recited the prayer herabuelahad taught her as a child, she would step from this roof and join her in the afterlife. Her heart stuttered. Maybe. She’d been brought up to believe that suicide was not acceptable in the eyes of God, that she wouldn’t find her way into the arms of the Lord if she did this. But she figured, surely, if He knew what she’d lived through over the past eight years, he would forgive her.
“Como nosotros perdonamos nuestros deudores, y no nos dejes caer en al tentación—” Rosa stopped, her mind going blank. “Y no nos dejes caer en al tentación—si—sino”
“Sino que líbranos del malo.”
Rosa gasped at the male voice that spoke from behind her, and she spun on the narrow ledge of the building, throwing her arms wide to hold her balance.
“Dio no!” Gino, the man she’d helped to be tortured yesterday, shouted from ten feet behind her, his arms reaching for her, but not taking another step forward. “Please, stop. It’s okay.”
Rosa inhaled sharply, her body tense, her heart pounding so hard, she thought it might actually burst free. “What do you want?”
Gino was breathing hard, too. She could see his muscular chest, obscured behind a swathe of bandages, moving rapidly. “I want you to step down off the ledge and walk over here to me. Can you do that,cara?”
Rosa felt a moment of warmth at the endearment he used before the ice-cold of shame quashed it. “I’m sorry, Gino, but I can’t do that.” She turned to look over her shoulder. “You should go back downstairs.”
“No, don’t turn away from me!” Gino shouted and when she turned back to look at him, he’d taken a few steps in her direction, only stopping when she threw him a panicked look. “I won’t come closer,cara, just stay there for a minute and talk to me. Don’t take those beautiful brown eyes off me. Just stay.”
Rosa bit back a sob. He actually sounded like he meant it. Like he cared.
“I c–can’t stay,” she whispered. “There’s nothing here for me. They—they’ll come for me. I know … stuff. But I won’t go back. I won’t.” She inhaled, steeling her resolve once more.
