CHAPTER 13
MARGARITA
The world dissolves into absolute, obliterating white noise.
The explosion doesn't just happen. It consumes every molecule of oxygen in the room.
I am thrown from the bed like a ragdoll, the air violently sucked straight out of my lungs as the entire eastern wall of the bedroom disintegrates into a massive, choking cloud of pulverized concrete.
Before the debris even has a chance to settle, a crushing weight slams into my spine.
Damon. His massive, heavy frame pins me flat against the floor, his body transforming into a living, breathing Kevlar shield against the jagged rain of shattered glass and red-hot shrapnel tearing through the space where we were just lying.
My senses are completely wrecked. I am entirely naked, deafened by the blast, and blinded by stinging grit.
It is a total and absolute loss of autonomy as his sheer mass grinds my hips into the jagged floorboards.
I frantically scrape at the floor with my fingernails, desperate to find any kind of purchase on the slick, dust-covered marble, hacking and coughing out a disgusting mouthful of gray powder.
"Stay down!"
I can barely hear him over the high-pitched whine of tinnitus screaming in my ears. The smell of burnt ozone and pulverized stone is making me gag.
"Don't breathe the dust," Damon barks, his voice a distorted rumble against my skin. The searing heat of his body against my bare back is the only anchor I have in this unhinged chaos. "Margarita! Look at me!"
I can’t. I think my eardrums have legitimately ruptured. The silence beneath the ringing is more terrifying than the blast itself. I feel like a medical specimen pinned under a microscope, completely exposed, just waiting for the next strike to turn us both into a smear on the floor.
Damon shifts his weight off my spine, rising to a predatory crouch while keeping one heavy hand buried deep in my hair to force my head low.
He’s shouting something else, his broad chest vibrating right against my bare shoulder, but I can’t make out the words over the roar inside my skull.
He scans the jagged, smoking hole where the wall used to be, his dead eyes tracking movement in the smoke-filled night outside.
The orange glow of a fire starting in the heavy drapes flickers across his face.
He looks down at me. He reaches out and wipes a wet streak of blood from my forehead with his thumb. The touch is unexpectedly heavy. Possessive. In the middle of an active warzone, he’s claiming real estate on my face.
"Can you hear me?" he demands, leaning in close enough that I smell the copper and sweat on him.
I manage a jerky nod.
"Don't move until I say," he orders. His jaw flexes. "They're inside the perimeter."
The cold wind whipping through the blown-out wall hits my bare skin like a physical assault.
The freezing air makes me hyper-aware of my nakedness, shrinking me down into a piece of prey.
Damon doesn't give me time to process the humiliation.
He yanks me upward by the arm, not helping me stand so much as hauling me off the ground like a piece of luggage.
His grip is absolutely going to leave bruises.
He snatches a pair of his own heavy tactical boots from the debris-littered floor and shoves them against my chest. Through the smoke, I look at his face.
The man who had his hands all over me in that bed a minute ago is completely gone.
Wiped from existence. What’s left is a mask of cold, predatory rage.
He is a warlord calculating the body count.
"Put them on. Now!" he snaps.
My hands are shaking so violently I can’t even pull the thick laces. My fine motor skills are totally shot from the adrenaline dump. Damon issues a guttural growl, drops to his knees for a split second, and jerks the laces tight himself with brutal efficiency.
"I don't care if they fit," he mutters, standing back up and hauling me with him. "Move your hands, Margarita!"
The rough leather of the boots swallows my calves. The sharp sting of concrete dust in my eyes forces me to blink rapidly, finally bringing the sound of distant, rapid-fire popping into my range of hearing. Gunfire.
Damon pivots to a concealed wall safe that somehow survived the structural collapse.
He punches in a code, wrenches it open, and pulls out a compact submachine gun.
He tosses it onto the mattress, then turns and throws something hard against my chest. My medical bag.
He snatched it from the wreckage without me even noticing.
Before I can process that, he swings his heavy tactical jacket over my shoulders.
The oversized fabric smells intensely of gun oil, expensive suit fabric, and his sweat, completely swallowing my small frame.
I hug the worn leather of the medical bag to my chest like it’s a bulletproof vest, my fingers digging into the straps until my nails turn stark white.
It’s the only thing that makes me Margarita Brooks right now.
Without the trauma kit, I am literally just a ghost haunting Damon Locke’s collapsing fortress.
"Take the bag," he says, racking the bolt of the SMG with a metallic clack. "Zip the jacket up."
I fumble with the zipper. The taste of copper coats my tongue from biting my own lip.
Damon grabs my chin, forcing me to look at him. "If I tell you to run, you don't look back."
Shadows shift in the thick dust beyond the breach.
Damon doesn't wait to see their badges. He steps squarely into the line of fire, his weapon spitting hot lead in short, disciplined bursts.
I drop back to the floor, watching the harsh strobe of the muzzle flash illuminate the hard planes of his face.
The bastard is a master of this shit. He moves with a fluid, terrifying grace, leaning into the recoil like he was born holding a trigger.
He uses his heavy boot to viciously kick a solid oak dresser across the floor, pushing it right in front of my position as a barricade without ever taking his eyes off the hole in the wall.
"One down," he says, his voice dead flat. The rhythmic thud-thud-thud of the suppressed weapon echoes over the ringing in my ears. The smell of cordite floods the small room. A red laser dot dances across the pulverized debris a few inches from my boots.
"They're using thermals," Damon notes, firing another burst into the smoke. "Keep your head down!"
I press my face into the leather of my bag. I’m waiting for a bullet to rip through the dresser and end it. It’s feral logic, but sitting here in the dirt, I realize I’d rather be his captive than their corpse.
Damon drops an empty magazine, slams a fresh one in, and grabs me by the scruff of the heavy jacket. He hauls me out of the bedroom and into the main hallway.
The fortress is dying. It’s a tomb of cracked concrete lit by strobing red emergency lights.
The ceiling groans like a dying animal, shedding heavy flakes of plaster like toxic snow.
We run down the brutalist corridor, our boots crunching loudly over shattered glass and spent shell casings. The entire structure feels unstable.
I trip over a fallen fluorescent light fixture, my oversized boots catching on the metal framing. I pitch forward, but Damon catches me mid-fall, his massive hand wrapping around my ribs with enough force to knock the wind out of me.
"Don't stop," he barks, shoving me forward again.
"I'm trying," I gasp, my medical brain automatically cataloging the structural damage around us like a trauma patient. The fissures in the load-bearing concrete are deep lacerations. The exposed, sparking wires bleeding from the ceiling are severed arteries.
"The east wing is gone," he says, his eyes scanning every dark corner as we run. "Follow my shadow."
We round the corner toward the main stairwell, and a mercenary in full black tactical gear swings out from behind a concrete pillar, his rifle already raised.
Damon doesn't even break stride. He shoves me violently against the wall, throwing his own body in front of mine as a buffer. He fires two rounds point-blank into the man’s throat before the guy can even get a scream out.
The mercenary drops like a stone, arterial blood spraying the cold gray concrete in a vibrant, sickening fan of crimson.
A single, hot drop of the man's blood hits my cheek.
I freeze. I don't wipe it off. I just stare at it in the reflection of a cracked decorative mirror on the wall beside me.
Carotid artery. He bled out in four seconds.
My medical training reacts clinically, dissecting the physics of the kill, but my survival instinct is entirely paralyzed.
"Eyes on me," Damon snaps, grabbing my shoulder and shaking me once.
I blink, looking away from the dead man’s thrashing legs.
"He's dead, Margarita. Keep moving," Damon orders, completely unbothered by the corpse. "Close your mouth and breathe."
We duck behind a massive support pillar near the stairwell doors so he can reload.
In the flickering red light, I see a dark, wet stain spreading rapidly across the side of Damon’s shirt, directly over the spot where I dug a bullet out of his liver.
The sutures have torn. He is actively bleeding again, the fresh blood soaking entirely through the thick bandages I applied.
My hands move before I can think. I reach out to press against the wound, to stop the hemorrhage, but Damon violently bats my hand away. His eyes are wild, locked onto the hallway behind us.
"You're bleeding through," I tell him, my voice tight. I calculate the blood loss based on the rapid saturation of the fabric. He’s pushing his physical limits. He is running on pure adrenaline and spite.
"It doesn't matter," he dismisses, racking his weapon.
"You're tearing the fascia—"
"I'll stitch it when we're dark," he cuts me off, his tone leaving absolutely zero room for debate.