14. Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
The key to Lachlan’s restraints pressed against the skin beneath the bodice of my dress as Dona Teresa escorted me toward my bedroom.
Every instinct screamed at me to run—to get behind my locked door, open the hidden passage, and see what Isabeast had left of him.
Instead, I matched Dona Teresa’s pace and plastered the same pleasant smile across my face that I’d worn through dinner with Father, Isabeast, and a table full of cartel killers.
One nervous glance or slip of the tongue could expose everything and put both Lachlan and me at my father’s mercy.
Father and his senior men were still drinking on the veranda behind us, their voices rising over clinking glasses while cigar smoke and the aroma of coffee and rum drifted through the open arches.
I’d hoped the heavy meal and alcohol would send them all to bed early, but judging by the noise, I wasn’t going to get that lucky.
The entire dinner replayed in my mind as we made our way through the long corridors.
Keeping my composure had nearly become impossible when Isabeast entered the dining room.
She’d arrived late, just as dinner was being served around the crowded table.
Her black hair pulled away from her face left no way to hide the damage to her mouth.
Stitches pinched the corner of her lower lip together, and the swelling around them distorted that side of her mouth, making her look less like the polished New York attorney who’d strutted into the compound before dawn this morning and more like someone who’d lost a fight with an angry dog.
Conversation had stopped the moment she sat down.
One of the women serving dinner had gasped before lowering her eyes. Several of Father’s men had stared openly, unable to hide their disgust. Mateo had stood near the far end of the table with his hands clasped behind his back, his jaw set and his gaze cold.
I’d pressed my lips together until they hurt to keep from laughing at the woman for getting what she deserved.
Isabeast.
The perfect name, roughened by Lachlan’s gravelly Irish accent, had replayed in my mind every time I looked at those stitches.
Lachlan had called her what no one else ever had: exactly what she was.
I could still see Father lowering his wineglass and hear the contempt in his voice.
“You let a bound man do that to your face?”
Isabeast had tried to answer, but the swelling made her words thick.
“I told you to keep him alive and useful,” Father had continued. “I didn’t give you permission to let your appetite make you stupid.”
“He surprised—”
She’d tried to defend herself, but Father was having no part of any excuse and barked, “He was chained to a chair.”
A few of the men had lowered their gazes to their plates.
“You’ve made yourself ridiculous over a prisoner you insisted you could control.” Father waved toward the door. “Leave. I won’t look at that mouth while I eat.”
The humiliation in Isabeast’s eyes had nearly made me laugh again.
She’d glanced around the table, searching for someone willing to stand up for her. No one had. Even the men she’d bought off understood whose table they were sitting at.
She’d slunk away without touching her food.
As we continued to walk, my memory skipped forward to dessert, and the reason the key now pressed beneath my bodice.
Watching Father dismiss her had helped me survive the rest of the meal. It had also kept my hands steady when dessert gave me the excuse I needed to enter the kitchen.
I’d told the women working in the kitchen I wanted to finish the pastel de tres leches myself so the whipped cream would be fluffy and the strawberries fresh. No one had questioned the dutiful daughter fussing over her father’s favorite cake.
The moment their attention shifted toward the dining room, I’d slipped into the pantry.
The dented sardine tin had been waiting at the back of the lowest shelf, hidden behind canned goods no one had touched in months, exactly where Rafael had promised it would be.
I’d barely twisted the false bottom free when footsteps sounded behind me, making my heart slam against my ribs.
My fingers had just closed around the key when Dona Teresa appeared in the doorway.
The suspicion in her voice was impossible to miss.
“What are you doing on the floor?”
I had frozen with the key in my fist. Then I quickly shoved the false bottom into place, pushed the tin behind the others, grabbed a bag of fine sugar from the shelf beside it, and stood.
“The other sugar is too coarse for the topping,” I’d quickly explained.
Her eyes had narrowed. “You’ve already sweetened the cake.”
“This is for the whipped cream. Father prefers it sweetened.”
Dona Teresa’s gaze had moved from the sugar to my face.
The key remained trapped inside my fist. I had no pocket, no basket, and no time to invent another reason for crouching on the pantry floor.
I’d turned toward the shelf as though searching for something else and slipped the key inside the bodice of my dress.
After one last skeptical look, she stepped back out.
“Then finish it quickly. Ciro doesn’t enjoy waiting,” she’d commanded in that nasally tone she always had.
After I’d carried the cake into the dining room and served Father, the conversation had turned to business as one of the women from the kitchen poured coffee.
The final conversation at dinner had left me desperate to reach my room. It was the first proof that Lachlan’s people really were coming.
One of Father’s trusted men had approached his chair and lowered his voice. I’d been standing nearby with the serving plate and caught most of the report.
Someone had traced one of the companies tied to Father’s jet, an airport handler at Comalapa had stopped answering his phone, and foreign security men had started asking about private flights arriving from the United States.
I could still see Father’s angry expression.
“Volkov.”
Everyone at the table had gone silent, waiting to hear his instructions.
“Double the men watching the airport and the roads leading northeast,” Father ordered. “I want every foreign vehicle and private aircraft reported. Find out who questioned the handler and who else they spoke to.”
The news had struck me so sharply that I’d almost lost my grip on the serving plate.
Lachlan’s people were already searching in El Salvador.
He hadn’t promised me an impossible rescue simply because he needed my help. His men were tearing apart the trail exactly as Lachlan knew they would.
I’d carried the remaining cake around the table, serving it to the men without letting any of my excitement reach my face.
Finally, Dona Teresa and I reached my bedroom. I’d never been so eager to be locked inside.
She unlocked the door and waited until I stepped through.
The lock turned behind me. I stood there for a moment, listening to her footsteps fade, before my body finally relaxed.
My recipe basket sat beside the bookcase where I’d left it this morning. I added antiseptic, salve, two clean cloths, and a folded towel to help me tend to Lachlan’s wounds.
Then I waited.
The men remained on the veranda across the broad central courtyard from my window for what seemed like hours.
Their voices carried over the tiled paths, thick garden beds, and trickling fountain, growing louder as the rum flowed.
Chairs scraped across the tile as someone started an argument, and another man answered with a loud, slurred challenge.
I slipped off my shoes and left them beside the bed so my bare feet wouldn’t make a sound in the hidden passage.
Then I paced between the locked door and the vanity, chewing my thumbnail as I imagined what condition Lachlan might be in when I finally reached him.
Every burst of laughter from the veranda tightened the knot in my stomach.
He was trapped below, and the men outside showed no sign of ending their night.
One by one, the voices faded. Doors opened and closed along the guest wing. The last burst of laughter ended somewhere far away.
No sound rose through the grate the entire time I waited, which only made me more afraid of what condition I’d find Lachlan in.
When the main house finally settled into silence, I lifted the basket and entered the wardrobe. Behind the hanging clothes, I opened the false panel and stepped into the narrow passage.
The water, bread, bananas, and wrapped paring knife I’d hidden earlier waited in the shallow niche, and I added them to the basket.
Then I gathered the skirt of my dress and started down.
Each bare foot landed carefully on the old steps.
At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped behind the secret door and listened.
Nothing.
No guards speaking in the corridor.
No chains rattling.
No furious Irish curses.
I pressed the small, hidden release stone. The latch clicked, and I eased the disguised section of wall inward.