Page 45 of Forbidden Fate

19

ROBIN

Cruz doesn’t say anything when he unlocks the cell. He pushes the door inward, and for one second I just stand there, staring at the gap between the bars and the corridor beyond them.

“Come on,” he says quietly.

My pulse races, but I step forward anyway. I mean, what the hell else am I going to do? We may both be killed if Vega or that creep Zabala find us, and if it’s the latter, I’m pretty sure my fate won’t be pretty.

They can send photos to my family, wait for the Bellamys to cough up a few hundred million. I have no doubt they’ll pay, but I’ll be a shadow of myself if I play along with Vega’s game.

And Vega will forever know he can extort my family for money. You can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube.

Cruz reaches for my hand.

I almost pull back.

Almost.

But he knows this place, and I don’t. He’s the only reason I’m not bleeding on the floor right now. So I put my hand in his, and he leads me out.

We head through a corridor with low ceilings. Cruz moves quickly, but not so fast that I stumble. His grip on my hand is steady, but that means nothing. A steady hand can lead you into hell or out of it.

He takes a hard left, and we walk into a stone labyrinth. Seriously. I feel like I’m in an Indiana Jones movie.

Cruz takes another left and then a sharp right. My shoulder grazes the wall. The passage splits ahead of us, three dark mouths opening in different directions. Cruz doesn’t hesitate. He chooses the middle one and pulls me with him.

My stomach is a mass of nerves. “How do you know where you’re going?” I whisper.

“I just know.”

Not exactly comforting, but who the hell else can I trust? At least this way, if I don’t make it, I have a chance of dying with dignity.

The thought should scare me more than it does. I’m on adrenaline overload.

Maybe this is the part where the heroine in the horror movie follows the one man who seems slightly less monstrous, only to learn he’s been leading her deeper into the slaughterhouse the entire time.

Except I’m not a heroine.

I’m a woman who got cocky.

A woman who thought she could break into someone’s house because she has a rich last name. Someone who thought she didn’t need backup or a trail of breadcrumbs. Someone who didn’t learn her lesson the last time this happened.

Sure, I was trying to help, trying to be useful to my family. Still trying to prove myself to my mother.

Fuck. I hate that thought. Hawk and I have it in common, and it’s led us astray more than once.

I squeeze Cruz’s hand before I realize I’m doing it.

He rubs his thumb against my knuckles. It’s not exactly a caress. Still, I feel it everywhere.

And I hate that I feel it. I hate that my body is reacting to a harmless touch while I’m being led through a stone maze beneath God only knows what kind of criminal fortress.

But this is survival. Or at least this version of it.

I know a lot about survival, thanks to my twin sister. I remember Raven in bed. Thin. Pale. Being ravaged by cancer rather than some cartel psycho.

Cancer took my twin and hollowed her out while the rest of us stood around wishing and praying we could stop it. I remember watching her sleep and being afraid to blink because the sister I shared a womb with, a childhood with, might simply decide she was too tired to go on.