Love and vengeance

drowning the sprawling grid of Medellín in a suffocating gray haze. It was the kind of storm that cleans

art was rumor rather than fact.Matteo adjusted his grip on the leather steering wheel, his knuckles whitening slightly as the heavy wiper blades struggled against the downpour. In the passenger seat, his primary enforcer, Esteban, sat with an assault rifle resting casually across his lap, his eyes scanning the gloom through night vision goggles.We should have taken the highway, Boss, Esteban muttered, his radio crackling with low static from the tailing security detail. The lower roads near the river freeze up with mud during downpours like this. It's an ideal spot for an ambush.Let them try, Matteo replied, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that carried no warmth. The Cárdenas cartel is too busy buryi

rld shattere

edal and turned the wheel sharply to the left. The four ton armored vehicle skidded across the hydroplaning road, its tires screeching against the slick asphalt like a dying animal. The heavy vehicle shuddered violence into the frame, but physics proved merciless on the wet slope.The front right bumper clipped her with terrifying force.A sickening, metallic thud echoed above the sound of the engine, followed by the soft, terrible sound of a body hittin

ical team members spilled out, forming a defensive perimeter with weapons raised toward the surrounding tree line.Matteo paid them no attention. He slid down the muddy slope into the gutter.A young woman lay twisted in the mud. Her pale skin stood out against the dark earth, her yellow sundress torn and ruined by grease and gravel. Her breathing was shallow, ragged, and wet a sound Matteo had heard a hundred times on the battlefield, but never like this.He knelt beside her, sinking his tailored trousers straight into the mud without a second thoug

ainst wet skin. She couldn't have been more than twenty two. But it wasn't her youth or her beauty that stopped the heart of Medellín's most feared carte

her voice barely audible over the roar of the storm.Matteo looked down at her fingers gripping his sleeve. His mind raced, calculating the catastrophic risks of what he was about to do. Taking her to a public hospital would mean police reports, investigations, and spotlighting his location to every cartel hunting his head. Leaving her meant she would bleed out in the mud within twenty minutes.He scooped her u

door of his secondary escort SUV. Tell him to prepare the surgical room at the hacienda immediately.At the

art hammering against his ribs for the first time in years.I know exactly who she is,Matteo murmured softly to himself, his voice swallowed by the thunder a