There’s a voice trying to reach me. It’s urgent and scared. Something blunt and persistent is tapping at my shoulder but I don’t want to open my eyes just yet. There’s a dream down here waiting for me, and it might be the best one ever. He’s smiling. I’ve never seen him do that before, and it’s a good smile, an easy smile. There is no dark now, only light. It’s just him and me together.

“Señorita Eve… please oh please wake up, my princesa. They’re coming, they’re coming!”

The voice is growing ever more insistent. It’s getting impossible to ignore. Please go away I plead but the pressure on my arm is starting to bruise. With a moan of frustration I force my eyelids open.

I can tell something’s wrong immediately. It’s nighttime. My room should be shrouded in darkness, fringed only by a sliver or two of light. Instead, the walls are flickering with red and amber shadows and my nostrils are filled with a sharp and pungent odor.

Fire!

The compound is burning!

I sit up in fright as the noise of gunfire shatters the stillness all around me. At the same time the silhouette of a small figure flings herself onto my chest and starts smothering my face in a glossy river of hair. She smells of lavender and her cheeks are damp with tears. I can feel the wetness against my skin.

“Oh señorita. Oh thank god!”

“Sofía? Stop… I can’t breath!” I wheeze, pushing at her shoulders. She releases her hold on me and crouches down on the floor beside the bed. My mouth is dry and my head is still thick with sleep. I smack my hand against the nightstand searching blindly for my water and the lamp switch. “Let me just–”

“No!” she hisses, wrenching my hand away and I can feel her body trembling beneath her grip. “They’ll see us, we must stay hidden in the dark.” The next thing I know she’s thrusting my glass at me so violently that the water spills over the sides, soaking my arm and the bed sheet.

“Shit! Who will? What’s happening?” I peer through the gloom to where she’s kneeling next to me. I can’t see her expression but I can smell the acridity of her fear beneath the lavender. She’s clutching what looks like a wooden rosary in her right hand and she keeps twisting the beads around her slender fingers.

“We have to hide. Terrible men are coming to hurt us!”

Fear grips at me tighter than her embrace.

“They’re evil men, señorita. You must get up.”

Oh my god.

I jerk my legs out of bed and spill more water, this time down my naked breasts. I’m fueled on pure adrenaline now. I can feel it pumping through my veins, as strong and intense as any drug.

What bad men? Does she mean Dante’s enemies?

There are sounds of an explosion in the distance and angry shouting before another fresh round of gunfire in unleashed. This time it’s coming from the beach close to my balcony. Moments later there’s a loud crash against my bedroom door and we both scream out in fright.

“It’s me, Manuel,” cries a voice and the young guard bursts into the room, a machine gun slung around his left shoulder, another weapon strapped to his hip. His dark eyes are glittering in the darkness, soaking up the fiery colors from outside my window. “We go now,” he urges, “we have minutes, if that.”

He takes another step closer and I let out a cry of horror. The light is casting a low glow over the rest of his face now. I can see heavy bruising around both eye sockets and all the way down one side of his jaw.

Please tell me that wasn’t Dante’s doing.

Oh god, where is he? Where is he?

Manuel glances down at my nakedness and then looks away in haste.

Embarrassed, I grab the loose sheet and yank it against my body.

Dante’s definitely going to murder him for that.

“Please hurry, señoritas,” he repeats, keeping his head turned. “They are nearly at the house.”

“Who are, Manuel?” I beg him, refusing to budge.

“Later… when you are safe.” He’s agitated and he’s losing patience. Now isn’t the time for my tenaciousness.

“Sofía – I need a bra, a t-shirt and a skirt.”

She springs to her feet and dashes across the bedroom to the wardrobe. I promised Dante I’d keep safe but is he keeping safe for me? She returns with the items and Manuel spins around so I can dress. I snap my bra into place and yank the t-shirt over my head, all the while my thoughts are scattering like atoms. I have no stream of collective consciousness, just broken fragments of phrases and words:

Must hide… Dante… this is just a bad dream… I want to go home…

At the last minute I grab his flick knife from the nightstand and tuck it into the front of my bra like he showed me, trying not to shudder with revulsion when I feel it pressed tightly against my heart. Was that only yesterday? It seems like another lifetime ago. Maybe he’s right… Maybe I’ll never know what I’m truly capable of until someone tries to steal my life from me. I hope to God I don’t have to find out tonight.

“Come,” Manuel says, jogging towards the door. “There is a place we can hide.” He touches Sofía’s arm as he passes. “Rodrigo just told me about it, I’m to take you straight there. It’s Señor Dante’s underground bunker.”

“Dante has an underground bunker?” I say in surprise.

He nods. “The entrance is downstairs through the library.”

“Are you sure? I know every inch of this place, Manuel. I’ve been locked inside this prison for days. There’s no entrance to a bunker there.”

He frowns at the uncertainty in my voice. “Only Señor Dante and Señor Grayson knew about it. Señor Dante revealed its’ existence to Rodrigo yesterday, right before he boarded his aircraft.”

I grind to a halt again and the soft bulk of Sofía smacks into my left shoulder.

“Sorry señorita,” she gasps.

Is this where Dante’s been hiding his clothes and possessions from me?

My heart starts beating out a wild, staccato rhythm. How could I have lain so close to his secrets and not known anything about this place? All of a sudden my thirst for knowledge is superseding everything. I need to unmask my enigma for who and what he is. “Take us there,” I order the young guard, rushing over to him.

“We go now.” He beckons for us to follow him as he steps out into the corridor, unslinging his gun from his shoulder and unclicking the safety. Another explosion rocks the foundations of the house. Sofía lets out a strangled sob and Manuel curses.

“Get down,” he hisses and we fall to our knees in unison.

“Who’s doing this, Manuel?” I plead again. “Who’s attacking Dante’s compound?”

He doesn’t answer but in the gloom of the corridor I catch the tail end of a look between him and Sofía.

“I said, not now.”

My eyes are beginning to adjust to the lack of light as we make our way downstairs, keeping our bodies low and discreet, like creatures slithering against the wall in the darkness. Crossing the lobby, we enter the second of four doors – the entrance to Dante’s library. Here, I have a clear view of sector six from the double windows. What I see opens up my eyes to the perilousness of our situation. There are flames licking at the roof of the nearest barracks, darkening the corrugated ridges with their scorching intensity.

Dante’s enemies will show me no mercy.

Like Dante will show no mercy to them.

Shutting out my thoughts, I hurry over to join Manuel and Sofia by a large bookcase that covers the length and breadth of one wall. I can hear him whispering instructions to her in Spanish as they run their fingers along the tip of each shelf.

“What are you looking for?” I ask.

“A button, a lever… some sort of mechanism.”

“Here, let me help you.”

Manuel whips out a small torch from his back pocket and hands it to me. “Keep the light down, below the level of the window,” he says, crouching next to me to start searching the lower shelves.

“Are you sure this is right?” I can hear the doubt in my voice again as I run my fingers along the wood and find nothing out of the ordinary. There are no indentations, no telltale fissure. There’s absolutely nothing to suggest that a door is concealed here. Has Manuel been given the wrong information? Sofía seems to be thinking along the same lines. She starts gabbling away at him in panicked Spanish. We need to hurry. The gunfire is right outside the front door now.

“How many men did Dante leave behind?” I say, choking down my own panic, the soft torchlight bouncing off the polished mahogany as I hurry to find this elusive switch.

“Twenty,” comes the bleak response.

Only twenty?

Someone knew our situation.

Someone’s taking advantage...

At the same time my fingers encounters a smooth, metal disc set deep within the wood of the third shelf along. Holding my breath, this has to be it, I press my finger down and a low mechanical hum sounds. It’s like it’s coming from behind the bookcase.

“Watch out,” Manuel yelps, grabbing my arm and pulling my backwards as a narrow door swings outwards in my direction. I’m thankful for his lightening-quick reflexes. The door is metal-plated and at least ten inches thick, and he manages to grab hold of it right before it hits me in the face. There’s no time to lose… Unfamiliar voices are inside the house now and I can hear their heavy footsteps on the stairs. Outside, the gunfire is waning. It’s sporadic and unfocused, like the dying embers of a flame. Dante’s men are losing this battle. Our only hope of staying alive is in this bunker.

I feel a hand on my shoulder guiding me into the darkness as my small torch jerks and then steadies to reveal steps leading downwards to a short, stone passageway and a pair of metal-plated elevator doors. Behind us Manuel is still swinging the concealed door back into place. I feel a sharp frisson of panic as the locking mechanism connects with a soft clunk and the damp walls start closing in on me.

“Quickly,” he says, bounding down the steps and ushering us towards the elevator. He smacks his hand against a button set back into the wall and the doors spring open. Bright strobes flicker on over our heads and, moments later, we’re plunging downwards into the great unknown.

I glance at my fellow passengers on this strange, wild ride. Manuel is standing tall with his gun cocked and ready and his fingers held lightly on the trigger, every inch a brave soldier. His battered face looks even worse in this harsh light. Sofía is still wearing her nightdress and is shivering like a leaf left out in the storm. Her pretty face is streaked with mascara and her eyes are glistening from unshed tears. She looks much younger than I initially thought, no more than twenty. No one says a word. I know they’re both avoiding my gaze.

“Ok guys, start talking,” I say, breaking the strained silence, my voice surprisingly steady considering what the hell is going down right now.

Sofía just stares at the floor. Manuel tries to grit his broken jaw and winces.

“Tell me!” I shriek as my fear and exhaustion collide in a raw, mess of emotion. This isn’t my war but Dante’s chosen to put me frontline of it anyway. I need to know what’s going on. I need to know everything.

“Señor Dante’s brother,” mumbles Manuel earning himself a sharp reprimand from Sofía. “We need to tell her, Sofía.”

She shakes her head at him violently. “You heard what Señor Dante said… He’ll kill you this time, Manuel.” I can see her pleading with him with wide, scared eyes.

“What did Dante say?” I focus on Manuel who’s clearly the looser-lipped of the two.

“That we were to never speak about what this place is. Not around you.”

I digest this with more than a trickle of apprehension. “Tell me about Dante’s brother.”

“Señor Emilio?”

“Emilio? The guy in Colombia?”

Manuel just shrugs.

“Ok,” I breathe, trying to hold onto the last semblance of my patience as the elevator begins to slow its descent. “Why does Emilio want to destroy Dante’s compound?”

“He’s a bad man, Señorita,” squeaks Sofía, piping up. “All bad. Not just a little bad like Señor Dante.”

A ghost of a smile touches my lips. It’s touching to hear I’m not the only one who thinks so. “But isn’t he meant to be halfway to Colombia to meet with him…?” I trail off as a terrible realization dawns.

Oh my god.

“Emilio’s double-crossing Dante!”

Manuel nods and curses and I see rage flaring behind his dark eyes on behalf of his betrayed boss. By the time Dante lands in Colombia and realizes what’s happening his compound will be decimated.

“What does Emilio want? His weapons?”

He gazes back at me steadily. “No, señorita, Señor Emilio is here for the one thing that Señor Dante prizes most of all. He is here for you.”

An icy shiver ripples through me. “Me? But how could he possibly know about… Valentina,” I wail suddenly. “She was working for him, wasn’t she?”

“Señor Dante and Señor Emilio are… were… business partners.” The elevator crawls to a stop.

Business Partners?

For some reason these words scare me more than anything else has this evening.

Another silence fills the small space between us, clawing and suffocating me as I fight to quell the tide of panic rising up inside. “Manuel,” I say, rounding on him again as the doors finally slide open. “I need to know what business they partnered together. Was it mercenary contracts?”

He shakes his head at me, and the icy shivers increase, tenfold. “They are big bosses, Señorita Eve... Cartel bosses from South America.”

“What did you say?”

My voice sounds little more than a rasp, a fading cry from a bird with a broken wing.

“Narcotics, señorita … cocaine.”

I reel sideways and slap my hand against the side of the elevator to stop myself from falling down. I can hear the blood rushing in my ears. “No that’s wrong, he’s a mercenary,” I counter weakly. “He told me he was a mercenary.”

Did he?

Oh my god this can’t be happening.

I can’t bring myself to ask it. I can’t bring myself to put forth the one question I’d do anything to escape the answer to but, to my horror, my lips start moving of their own accord.

“What is Dante’s surname?” I hear myself whisper.

I already know what they’re going to say. It’s like I’ve known the truth all along but I chose to tuck it away in the darkest recesses of my mind and allow myself to be swept up in all his Machiavellian beauty. It’s been there, staring at me right from the very beginning: the money, the hired guards, the lavish compound, the Colombian connections...

“Santiago, señorita,” Sofía mutters, dropping her eyes to the floor again. She can’t bear to witness the utter devastation in mine for a second longer.

“His name is Dante Santiago.”