Chapter 22
The skeet range was carved into the cliffside. Stone shooting platforms hung suspended over the rolling surf far below, warm wind and open sky stretching in every direction. The beauty was undeniable, but so was the corruption beneath it.
Guards lined the perimeter, spaced deliberately, the bulge of sidearms noticeable beneath their jackets.
An attendant waited near a small table with pastries and chilled champagne, each glass garnished with fresh fruit.
The six other contestants had stepped back, partaking as they watched the field shrink to two.
álvarez stepped to the line, adjusting his gloves.
He held out a hand for his reloaded rifle, irritation flashing when the attendant wasn’t quick enough.
The man moved as though the island wasn’t merely his domain but an extension of himself.
And why not? Everyone tied themselves in knots to accommodate his will.
A target burst into the sky. álvarez fired, clean and decisive. The clay shattered in a cloud of dust.
His superior smile brimmed with satisfaction as he lowered the barrel. “Alas, it’s not a real pigeon. There’s something deeply satisfying about breaking anything foolish enough to think it can fly free.” He stepped back, inclining his head. “This is more gentlemanly, but less sporting. Si?”
Rhys didn’t answer as he moved to the rail, his focus already narrowing to the mechanics—stance, grip, sightline—the discipline that steadied him when everything else, especially the vile man beside him, demanded violence.
Another target soared. Rhys fired, imagining álvarez’s face on it. A perfect strike.
“You shoot well, Mr. Blackwood,” he said, glancing sideways. “Do you do it often?”
“Sufficient to hit what I aim at,” Rhys replied.
They settled into a steady rhythm, shot answering shot, neither missing. The other contestants murmured approval. A few placed wagers.
They paused again to reload. álvarez stood back, waiting for his rifle to be reloaded. Rhys handled his own without help. He felt the other man’s gaze on him.
“You surprise me, Blackwood. You’re satisfied with one. Most men who admire beauty want more. Always more.”
Rhys closed the barrel with a snap and looked up at him. “Enough is a concept some men never learn. It’s usually what costs them everything.”
This brutal truth revealed a crack in Blackwood’s mask. But Rhys heard a faint whirr and distant buzz from over the water. The sound would have been ominous if it were meant for him.
álvarez paused mid-motion, frowning slightly. The others shifted uneasily, some glancing skyward. Then the sounds resolved into the roar of speedboat motors and rotor blades.
Five helicopters broke over the ridge like thunder. At least a dozen boats, white wakes kicking up behind them, converged on the dock. Conversations died mid-sentence. Champagne flutes froze midair.
álvarez lowered his rifle slowly. For a heartbeat he simply stared, as though the sky itself had betrayed him. Then his gaze snapped to Rhys.
“You did this.”
“Your empire falls today,” he replied, not denying it.
Something in álvarez broke. With a sudden, almost clumsy motion, he swung his rifle toward him, a guttural shout ripping from his chest.
Rhys moved instantly, catching the barrel and shoving it skyward as he pulled the trigger.
The blast rent the air. Birds exploded from the cliffside. Men shouted and scrambled for cover.
álvarez stumbled back, breath ragged, eyes wild. “You think this changes anything?” he snarled. He looked around for his guards, spit flying as he barked, “Do something, you idiots! Seize him!”
They didn’t all obey. Two men sprinted for the stone steps, fleeing from the black shapes dropping from the sky like mechanical predators. But there were still plenty for Rhys to deal with.
The first guard came at him, pistol raised. He fired, but the shot went wide, pinging off the rock face behind them. Rhys and álvarez ducked as the bullet whined away into open air.
“?Imbécil!” the older man roared. “Don’t shoot. You’ll hit me!”
The guard hesitated, then surged forward. Rhys met him halfway, driving a brutal elbow into his throat. It sent him reeling back, his weapon clattering across the stone.
A second lunged from the side. Rhys caught his wrist, twisted sharply, and felt bone give. The scream of pain vanished beneath the thunder overhead as he drove the guard facedown onto the platform with a knee between the shoulder blades.
Movement flashed in his peripheral vision. Two more guards rushed him at once.
Rhys pivoted, shoving the first into the second hard enough to stagger them both. A savage uppercut snapped one man’s head back, dropping him cold. The other recovered in time to catch a shoulder driven into his ribs. He folded with a choking grunt.
Around them, chaos raged. Guests scrambled for an exit. From the ridge above, gunfire ricocheted off stone and steel as a desperate handful of guards tried, futilely, to repel the assault force.
With four men down and another closing in, Rhys couldn’t afford to track the confusion beyond the platform. His lungs burned, breath coming fast, but he forced it steady. The threat approaching on the platform became the priority.
This man was bigger than the rest. A wall of muscle and scar tissue. Not a bodyguard, but a fighter. He drew a knife, smiling, like he’d won already.
They circled as the helicopters roared overhead, the downdraft whipping up dust and sand, snapping Rhys’s shirt violently against his back. But he couldn’t lose focus facing down álvarez’s goon, who taunted him by tossing his wicked-looking blade from hand to hand.
The big man struck first, his reach longer than expected.
Rhys twisted. But not fast enough. The blade sliced through fabric and skin along his ribs.
Searing heat flared, then vanished beneath adrenaline.
He dropped below the next swipe, trapped his wrist, yanked him forward, and drove his forehead into the guard’s nose.
Bone cracked, and the man roared in pain. But he didn’t let up.
They grappled, boots sliding, bodies colliding hard enough to knock the breath from them both. His wound and the guard’s broken nose made their hands slick with blood. The knife slipped, giving him an opening.
He shoved the man hard, slamming him against the rail. Rhys pinned him there. A forearm across his throat, arching the guard over the top rail.
“You can’t save them all,” the goon snarled, teeth bared.
Rhys leaned in, voice low and deadly calm. “Watch me.”
With a roar, the guard surged upward, pushing him back. Rhys’s feet slipped on the stone. At that moment, just as he was losing his edge, voices cut through the smoke and chaos.
“FBI! Drop your weapons!”
“OIJ! ?Suelten las armas!”
Footsteps thundered and guns came up on every side.
The guard froze, but Rhys didn’t. He slammed the man’s hand onto the rail with brutal force and watched as the knife tumbled end over end into the surf below. Then, not bound by arrest protocols or excessive force rules, he drove a fist into the man’s face.
Rhys stepped back, watching as the man swayed, a stunned look on his ugly, sex trafficker’s face, then he dropped hard onto the stone. His only regret was that it wasn’t álvarez lying unconscious at his feet.
But he hadn’t gotten away. He was cowering in a corner, Keene, Price, and an OIJ agent’s weapons trained on him.
Price cuffed him, none too gently. “Sebastián álvarez, you’re under arrest for human trafficking, conspiracy, and a host of other crimes you’re about to hear in exquisite detail.”
álvarez laughed, high-pitched and without humor. “You think this ends here?”
“I absolutely do,” Keene replied. “Your empire crumbled today.”
“His Majesty didn’t believe me when I told him the same thing,” Rhys drawled. “Your money can’t buy your way out of this one, álvarez.”
He shot him a hate-filled look, then winced, whining, “Not so rough,” when Price thrust him into the waiting hands of two Costa Rican agents.
Price didn’t miss a beat. “Maybe we should give you the same tender treatment you gave your muses.”
The older man went white beneath his tropical tan, shrinking visibly as the agents hauled him away.
Keene’s gaze cut to Rhys. “His Majesty?”
“A long, disgusting story,” he replied.
Price came up then. “You’re bleeding, Langston.”
Rhys looked down at his sliced, saturated shirt and pulled it aside. The bleeding had already slowed. “I’ve had worse.”
“Where are Gaby and the others?” Keene asked.
Rhys’s blood went cold. “I’ve been tied up here. She and Mateo went searching for her sister.”
Both agents swore softly.
“What?” Rhys demanded.
“The house isn’t contained,” Keene said.
“Neither is the fire,” Price added, delivering the hardest blow.
Already moving toward the steps, the Blackwood mask fell away. He was just a man running toward the woman he refused to lose.