Page 72 of Veiled Vengeance

“You had emergency surgery to remove a goddamn bullet from your abdomen, and you had two blood transfusions,” Elena scolds me like she usually does Mariela. She puts her hands on her hips like the mother I never wanted her to be.

Avoiding eye contact is impossible in my private room. Everywhere I look, there’s someone staring at me. Gabriel, Mateo, and Diego hover around my bed while still giving room to the nurse and Elena so they can work. These three men haven’t left my hospital room since I woke up. Apparently, they already got their injuries stitched up and don’t need to be in hospital beds. I was also told they were here watching me sleep as well. That should be creepy, but their show of affection wraps my heart in a warm blanket.

“You have no idea what it was like, walking into the OR ready to perform surgery on a stranger, only to find you lying there on my table.” Elena’s lips tremble. “It took three nurses and two doctors just to get me out of the room.”

Guilt claws at my throat as I try to swallow it down.

Dammit.

I know it’s bad when Elena comes close to tears. My sister has always been tough because she’s always had to be. She’s the one who taught me about my period while our mother was busy working herself to the bone to keep a roof over our heads. Elena was the one who would make sure I brushed my teeth and would brush my hair.

“You coded in the ambulance, twice,” Elena informs me.

“Lo siento,” I whisper.I’m sorry.

I know it’s not my fault—Elena knows it’s not my fault. But shock and fear do something strange to us when we come close to losing our loved ones. We all know death is a part of life—you can’t have one without the other. But facing that reality is different.

Elena brushes my hair to the side and tucks it behind my ear. “Nunca me vuelvas a hacer.”Don’t ever do that to me again.She leans in, kissing the top of my head, and I hold my tears back. “I’ll be back to check on you. And don’t you dare think I’m letting you out of here before you fully recover. Your gangster boyfriends can’t threaten me into doing shit.”

I scoff. “They’re not my?—”

“Yes, we are,” Mateo corrects me before I can contradict Elena.

Elena laughs as she and Nurse Amy exit my room. The silence they leave behind is impossible to navigate.

What does someone say after they’ve been kidnapped, shot in the stomach, and rescued by their criminal . . . lovers?

“Boyfriends” feels too generous, and what we did together was supposed to be a one-time thing only.

But they did walk through a hailstorm of bullets to rescue me.

Composing my feelings, I put on my “I could care less” face and direct is at Gabriel. “Shouldn’t you still be in bed?

To prove a point, Gabriel moves easily across the room and takes the seat closest to me, and scoots the chair all the way forward so he can get right in my face. “Worried about me?” He asks with an arrogant smirk.

Rolling my eyes, I scoff. “Hardly. And to be clear, you three are not my boyfriends.”

Gabriel leans in close. Close enough that I can smell the deep manly scent of his skin. “Let’s get one thing straight,mi reina. You belong to us.”

Loud breaths spiral from my nose as my hands ball into fists at my sides. “Youneed to get one thing straight,hombre,” I reply mockingly. “You can’t own me.” I emphasize each word by poking his chest.

Gabriel’s fingers slide into my hair as he grips the nape of my neck and brings my face closer to his. “I don’t want to own you, Carmen. I want to possess you. I want you to know what it’s like to be so obsessed with a person that you’d stop breathing when they no longer exist in this world. Your scent haunts me in my sleep. Your body plagues my dreams. My every waking moment is consumed by you. I want you to know what that feels like.”

My core clenches around air, hungering to remember what it feels like to be pleasured by these men.

Vulnerability isn’t my strong suit, so I don’t know why I show it now.

“What makes you think I don’t know what that feels like?”

Diego sneers. “You have a funny way of showing it—pushing us away, hiding behind fabricated excuses.”

“You don’t understand,” I attest.

“I think we understand perfectly,” Mateo argues back. “We’ve given you everything you’ve asked for, and you go and get yourself kidnapped.”

I slam my fists down on the bed. “I didn’t ask to be kidnapped!”

“Semantics.” Mateo waves his hand derisively.

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