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Only this time, there was blood on the blouse, a dead cartel boss at her back, and an Irishman she’d spent two days trying and failing to break.

Marcela drew herself upright and took one slow step away from Mateo, as though moving closer to us would remind everyone she was the person in charge.

Then she looked down at Isabella.

I knew that move.

She couldn’t intimidate me, so she went looking for somewhere softer to attack.

“Don’t tell me you’re turning me down because that bleeding heart of yours found another damsel in distress,” Isabeast said. “Jesus, Lachlan, you’d think you would’ve learned that lesson after me.”

Isabella lifted her head.

“Don’t,” I warned.

Isabeast ignored me.

“You should put what you are to better use. All that muscle, all that stubborn resolve, all those powerful friends willing to cross borders looking for you.” Her lip curled as she glanced down at Isabella. “Wasting it to save some weak little cellar rat is beneath you.”

Rat.

That almost pissed me off enough to laugh.

Isabeast had no fucking idea who she was looking at. Isabella had more courage in that quiet little body than most of the armed men in this compound, and enough patience to survive years waiting for the right chance to escape.

But Isabella didn’t think of it the way I did.

I saw Isabeast’s words cut into her. Her shoulders drew in, and she lowered her head a fraction, taking the insult instead of dismissing it for the bullshit it was.

Of course Isabeast noticed.

“Did she tell you where she’s been living all these years?” she asked me. “Her beautiful little bedroom was directly above Ciro’s dungeon. She heard everything that happened down there. Men screaming until their voices broke. Bones cracking. The wet choking when somebody fought to breathe through blood. Men begging Ciro to kill them before his animals started again.”

Isabeast tsked.

“And women. She heard them too. Crying. Screaming for someone to help them. Begging men not to touch them while Isabella lay in her bed one floor above and listened.”

Isabella’s face went white.

“Sometimes it went on for hours. Sometimes the same person was still down there days later. She heard people vomit, sob, pray, and finally go so quiet that only the occasional groan made it through the floor. And when everything downstairs went quiet, she knew exactly what that silence meant.”

Her voice dropped, becoming almost intimate in its cruelty.

“And do you know what your brave little cellar rat eventually learned to do, Lachlan? Sleep through it.”

Isabella flinched as if Marcela had struck her.

“She learned to roll over and close her eyes while somebody else screamed themselves hoarse beneath her floor. Then she’d get up the next morning, put on one of her pretty dresses, walk across the courtyard, and eat breakfast while Ciro’s men cleaned the blood out of the room below her.”

Isabella went completely still beside Rafael.

I looked at her.

Those pale blue eyes met mine and stayed there.

She didn’t look away or start searching my face for the response she needed. There was none of the quick calculation I’d watched in Isabeast’s eyes whenever one lie stopped working and she needed another.

Eyes never lie, and Isabella’s were fucking full of guilt.