Chapter 19
ELENA
My chest tightened violently.
“No—”
My voice came out broken, too quiet to even echo in the confined space.
The trunk felt smaller.
Hotter.
The air thinned with every passing second, growing thick and stale, pressing against my lungs as if it no longer wanted me to breathe.
My head swam.
The combination of blood loss, shock, and fear began to blur everything together.
My thoughts scattered.
How would Vincenzo ever find me now that my phone was dead?
Where were these Spanish rebels taking me?
Was this the moment my life took yet another cruel turn?
My chest constricted as panic set in.
Time stopped making sense.
Seconds stretched. Or collapsed.
Minutes bled into each other.
I couldn’t tell anymore.
I lost track of everything except the sound of the engine.
Then—the car jerked.
Hard.
The tires crunched over gravel—then dirt.
The sound changed.
We were slowing.
Stopping.
My pulse spiked instantly.
Every nerve in my body snapped to attention.
The vehicle came to a complete halt.
Silence followed.
A heavy, suffocating pause.
Then—the trunk lid flew open.
Light exploded into the darkness.
Blinding.
My eyes burned instantly as the sudden brightness stabbed through the blackness I’d been trapped in.
I flinched hard, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to shield myself from the overwhelming glare.
“?Rápido!” someone barked.
Hands seized me again.
Too many. Too rough.
They grabbed my arms, my shoulders, pulling me out of the trunk with no care for my injuries, no concern for the damage they were inflicting.
Pain flared instantly as my body was dragged into the light.
Air rushed in.
Hot. Dry.
Overwhelming after the suffocating darkness.
My legs buckled the moment my feet hit the ground.
I collapsed immediately.
My knees slammed into the dirt with a sharp, grinding impact that sent fresh pain surging through my entire body.
My palms hit the ground instinctively, scraping against sharp stones and loose gravel.
Blood welled up instantly from reopened wounds, warm and thick against my skin.
I forced my eyes open.
Blinking. Struggling.
Tears mixed with the glare of the sun, distorting the world in front of me as I tried to focus.
Through the haze—
I saw them.
Men.
Surrounding me.
Masks still on.
Ten.
Twelve.
More.
Black balaclavas concealed their faces, but their eyes—sharp, alert, calculating—were visible beneath the fabric.
Tactical vests hugged their torsos, rifles slung across their chests, fingers close to triggers without quite touching them.
They stood in a loose semicircle around me.
Controlled. Ready.
The ground beneath us was cracked concrete, stretched wide and uneven, leading toward a massive fortified compound that loomed in the background like something carved out of war itself.
High stone walls.
Barbed wire coiled along the top.
Guard towers at each corner, already active—figures moving within them.
Floodlights swept in slow, deliberate arcs, even in the late afternoon sun, as though the place refused to rely on daylight alone.
This wasn’t some abandoned warehouse.
This was a fortress.
A stronghold.
Spanish-controlled.
Built with intention. Maintained with power.
I tried to count them again.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four—
But the numbers blurred together, slipping out of focus as my body refused to cooperate.
My arms felt like they belonged to someone else.
My legs trembled violently just trying to keep me upright on my knees.
Even if I could stand—even if I could fight—even if I could land one clean hit—
I wouldn’t survive long enough to make it count.
A low groan broke through the tension.
I turned my head sharply to the left.
The soldier.
The one who had driven me.
He was being dragged forward between two masked men, his body barely able to support itself.
His uniform was in ruins—torn, soaked through with dark crimson across his chest and shoulder.
Blood matted his hair, and one of his eyes was already swollen nearly shut, forcing him to squint through pain.
They shoved him down.
Hard.
Forcing him to his knees directly in front of me.
His head lifted.
Slowly. Painfully.
And for one brief second—our eyes met.
There was something there.
Regret. Apology. Fear.
But also—acceptance.
Like he knew what was coming.
Like he’d already accepted it.
Before he could speak—before I could—
A gunshot cracked through the air.
Sharp. Final. Deafening.
The soldier’s body jolted once.
A harsh, involuntary jerk.
Then collapsed forward into the dirt.
Still.
Silence followed.
Blood began to spread beneath his head, dark and thick, seeping into the ground in slow, obscene patterns.
My breath caught.
Completely.
My chest locked.
My body froze.
For a moment—I couldn’t process what I had just seen.
Then it hit me.
Hard.
My heart seized so violently I thought it might stop entirely.
I whipped my head toward the source of the shot.
Two men emerged from the shadowed archway of the main building.
The first—Matteo.
Violet’s father.
Mid-fifties.
His dark hair streaked with silver, though it didn’t dull his presence in the slightest.
His suit was tailored, immaculate, entirely out of place in the chaos surrounding him.
But he wore it with ease, confidence and control.
He walked like a man who had never been questioned in his life.
Like a man who expected obedience from the world.
The second—
I couldn’t breathe.
My lungs locked instantly.
Impossible.
My mind rejected what I was seeing before my eyes could fully process it.
Vasquez.
My father.
The same sharp jawline.
The same cold hazel eyes.
The same faint scar cutting through his left eyebrow—the one he’d gotten in a bar fight when I was seven years old.
He wore a simple black shirt.
Sleeves rolled to the elbows.
A cigarette rested between his lips, smoke curling lazily upward as though nothing around him mattered at all.
He watched me.
Not with urgency. Not with concern.
But with detached amusement.
My breath hitched violently.
My entire body went rigid.
“No...” I whispered under my breath.
It wasn’t possible.
It couldn’t be.
He was dead.
He had to be dead.
My family had died in a plane crash just days before I turned sixteen.
I remember the moment clearly—I was in the backyard of my father’s house, kneeling in the grass, when the news came.
I screamed until my throat burned raw. I cried until my chest ached.
I had lost my mother, my little brother, and my father all at once—a heartbreak that shattered me completely.
And yet... here he stood.
Alive.
Smoking. Smirking.
Watching me like I was nothing more than a curiosity.
Matteo stopped a few paces away.
Close enough that I could smell him.
Whiskey.
Sharp. Burning.
It clung to his breath, mixing with the faint scent of expensive cologne and dust, like a man who didn’t care how he carried himself anymore—only that he was seen.
He glanced over his shoulder toward my father and smiled.
“Surely,” Matteo said smoothly, his voice carrying easily across the open space, “seeing your father again after over a decade isn’t what you expected, Elena.”
The words settled into my chest like something heavy.
My throat tightened.
My voice came out broken, fragile.
Barely audible.
“Dad?”
Just that one word.
Soft. Raw.
A plea I hadn’t realized I was making until it left my mouth.
Vasquez’s expression hardened instantly.
The warmth I had been searching for—the ghost of the man I remembered—vanished.
His eyes darkened.
“Don’t,” he said, voice low and lethal, “Ever call me that.”
The word hit harder than any physical blow I had taken today.
My chest caved inward as if something inside me had been struck and shattered at once.
My breath caught.
Stuck somewhere between inhale and exhale.
For a moment—I couldn’t move.
Couldn’t think. Couldn’t process.
After everything.
After years of believing he was gone.
After mourning him.
After building a life around the idea that I had lost my family—this was what waited on the other side of that grief?
This?
I stared at him.
Searching.
Desperately.
For something.
Anything.
A flicker. A memory.
The man who used to lift me onto his shoulders so I could see fireworks.
The one who taught me how to shoot before I could spell my own name.
The one who used to ruffle my hair and tell me I was stronger than I looked.
There was nothing.
No recognition. No warmth.
Just contempt.
Cold and absolute.
Vasquez took a slow drag from his cigarette, watching me like I was something beneath him.
Then he exhaled through his nose.
Smoke curled upward.
Like a dragon breathing out something poisonous.
He took a step forward, crushing the cigarette beneath his heel.
The motion was deliberate.
As if he was stamping out more than just ash.
“Still reeling from the shock of me being alive?” he said, smirking.
“Your whore of a mother made me disown you—and your sister—ages ago.”
The words landed like a blade.
My breath hitched violently.
The ground beneath me felt less real.
The betrayal cut deeper than anything I had endured today.
Deeper than the agony I felt when Vincenzo had tried to tear my heart from my chest for Violet.
Deeper than the countless blows his men rained down on me.
Deeper than the pain of being dragged from that overturned car, bloodied and helpless.
My own father.
My blood.
Looking at me with pure, unfiltered hatred.
I searched his face again.
Harder this time.
Frantically. For something.
Anything that would remind me this was a mistake.
That he would soften.
That he would say my name differently.
That he would look at me and see me.
There was nothing.
Just disgust.
Cold and unwavering.
My hands trembled against the dirt.
I forced myself to stay still.
To stay upright.
Even as everything inside me cracked open.
Everyone hated me.
Vincenzo.
The man who couldn’t decide whether to destroy me or save me.
Violet.
Who wanted my heart carved out of my chest.
And now—
my father.