Chapter 32

ELLA

Before the guard could get as far as examining the boxes in the trunk, Andrea had jumped out of the car and shot him dead before aiming at the other five guards who had come to inspect the car.

Before the first even hit the ground, they were all dead.

“Get down, Blanca,” he ordered, and I ducked behind the car as a whole fleet of Gustavo’s men over on the bridge flooded out of the border control buildings and opened fire on us.

It was about thirty against one, and when Andrea stopped shooting momentarily to reload, he barked something into his walkie-talkie.

I heard the whip of bullets flying through the air and the clank of them hitting the car or the chime of them bouncing off the tarmac. It could only be so long before Andrea ran out of bullets, and we’d be totally fucked.

But just as he threw his second gun onto the ground, completely rid of ammunition, and ducked behind the car next to me, half a dozen or so trucks rolled in behind us.

Andrea smiled to himself and then to me as men jumped out and began shooting out toward Gustavo’s men.

“We’re getting out of here, Blanca,” he said, putting his hand on my knee. “Stand up,” he added as one of the men threw him a new gun and a set of car keys.

I slowly got to my feet as Andrea shot but kept my head down below the car.

“You see that truck with the shattered window?” he asked, pointing to one a hundred or so meters away with one of the side windows completely broken by a bullet. “That’s where we’re going.”

“Juan,” he shouted to one of the men, “cover us!”

The man nodded, and Andrea turned to me.

“Run,” he ordered, and I locked my eyes on the truck and raced through the bullet shower as fast as my legs would go.

Juan stayed behind the cover of the lilac car, targeting any guards aiming at us while Andrea shot too.

I could hear his footsteps running right behind me until suddenly about two-thirds of the way I couldn’t.

I snapped my head around to see him on the ground, clutching his leg in pain. The bullets were still raining down on us, and I paused, unable to run farther from him. He looked up to me, right in the eye.

His face suddenly seemed so young and helpless as the bullets hit the ground all around him, but he lay unable to move. His chances were already slim, but if I didn’t do anything? Zero.

I couldn’t even begin to explain why I did what I did next.

I turned on my heel and ran back to him before hauling him up to his feet and supporting him as we battled on to the car. He groaned in pain, and I groaned from his weight on me, but we made it.

I took the keys from him, helped him into the car, got into the driver’s seat, and as soon as I could turn the ignition on, we were away and fast. Faster than I’d ever driven before.

After a few minutes, when we were safely away, he cast his eyes up to me as he breathed heavily and through his pained grimace. I saw a smirk creep onto his face. “You just saved my life, Blanca.”

I gripped the steering wheel and kept looking forward, no idea what to say.

“Why?” he asked. “You had a chance to be free of me, and you didn’t take it…”

“I…,” I began. “You had the keys. We would both have ended up dead.”

Andrea shook his head.

“You just can’t stop yourself from helping people, can you?” he replied. “You couldn’t just leave me there to die, could you?”

“You can thank me if you like,” was all I said.

There was a pause.

“Thank you,” he replied in a genuine tone.

I nodded and gave him a half smile.

I drove for hours, Andrea telling me which way to go. The bleeding in his leg eventually stopped.

When we pulled up in front of a house on the edge of Bogotá, I helped him limp into it before a man standing guard at the door took over.

When he was sitting down on the sofa, I grabbed a first aid kit and knelt down on the floor and got a proper look at the damage done to his leg.

He’d already pulled the bullet out rather gruesomely in the car, so I at least didn’t have to deal with that.

“The good news is that the bullet wasn’t wolfsbaned,” I began, examining the wound on his thigh. “It’s already healing, but it’s deep and is gonna take a while.”

“How long is a while?” he asked as I finished cleaning it with antiseptic. “I got stuff to do.”

I shrugged. “Healing is different for everyone. For you, I’d guess it would be fast so long as you get rest and eat and drink well. So no beer or smoking and you’ve gotta give yourself a break.”

“How do you know so much about this?” he asked, running his fingers through my hair as I wrapped a bandage around the wound.

“I trained as a medic to help my mate’s army. True, I’ve never nursed a bullet wound before, but I’ve done arrows and knives,” I explained.

He looked down at me for a few seconds and grinned.

His expression then dropped. “Why do wolf packs still live in the seventeenth century? Why hasn’t your alpha thought to train his men to use guns?”

“Because it’s not our way of life,” I replied, fastening the bandage and looking up into his eyes. “Guns are horrible, violent things.”

“Well so long as you keep that view, I’ll always have the upper hand,” he said with a condescending smirk.

“Can I remind you that you almost died today?” I asked. “There’s an artery right here,” I added, pointing to his leg. “Had the bullet been two inches to the left, you’d have bled out before we even got to the car.”

He grinned arrogantly. “But it wasn’t. So luckily for you, I get to live another day.”

And for that, I only had myself to blame.