Blood and Vows.

Chapter 15 - Counting the Roads

The air outside smelled different the moment Alex slipped from the belly of the jet. Mexico was not home, and its heat was heavier, sticky with dust and diesel. She crouched behind the baggage cart while ground crew shouted in Spanish, pulling leather bags from the hold. The fluorescent vest still hung on her shoulders, the cap shadowing her eyes. Nobody looked twice. Nobody ever did, not when they believed they were watching routine.

Routine was the best disguise.

The convoy waited beyond the fence, three SUVs aligned in the private apron’s shadow. Black paint swallowed sunlight; mirrored windows offered no hint of who sat inside. Engines idled with the patience of predators.

Alex’s throat tightened when she saw Samantha being ushered toward the first vehicle. The banker’s hair was pinned high, a silk scarf looped at her throat, the picture of fragile control. One hand clutched a leather tote—the same bag Alex had bugged hours earlier. She clung to it as if it were ballast.

Two men flanked her, both tall, both in suits that looked too light for the heat. They were not chauffeurs; they were walls. One opened the SUV door with the deferential sharpness of a soldier. Samantha ducked inside, and the door sealed behind her with the hush of money.

Alex exhaled slowly. She had a decision to make. Stay in the shadows and track the convoy from a distance, or risk slipping inside the movement itself.

Distance was safer. Distance meant she might never see the villa, never find the truth.

She chose the harder road.

When the ground crew wheeled the final luggage cart across the apron, Alex fell in behind it, matching their stride. The cart rattled past the first SUV, then the second. She let her body sway, as if the cart’s weight pulled her. At the third SUV, one of the handlers peeled off toward a fuel truck, leaving the cart half-blocking the lane. The rear passenger door clicked open.

A woman’s laugh floated out, light and sharp. Not Samantha. Someone else inside, distracted. Perfect.

Alex slid along the SUV’s far side, crouched low, and pulled the door a fraction wider. The air inside was colder—conditioned, scented faintly of leather and lime. She slipped in, shut the door, and flattened herself against the floor mat behind the driver’s seat.

The man behind the wheel swore softly in Spanish at the handler blocking his path, then leaned on the horn. Nobody noticed the extra heartbeat hiding at his feet.

The convoy rolled.

The airport fell away in mirrors, steel fences giving to scrubby fields, then to the edge of highway. Alex kept her body curved against the shadows, every muscle still. The road noise covered small sounds: her breath, the faint shift of fabric.

She counted.

First, the turns. Out of the airport gate—left. Onto the main road—straight for half a mile. Onto a ramp—right, sharp, dropping onto a wider highway.

Then, the patterns. The SUVs rode close, too close, like vertebrae in one spine. Each driver matched the next down to the brake lights, an organism instead of separate cars. Military precision.

She’d seen convoys before—politicians, diplomats, warlords. This was no different.

Except it was.

Because at the heart of it sat Samantha Barnes, who thought she was here for business. And circling her, like blood through an artery, was the family that owned Sebastian’s name.

Alex pressed her cheek against the cool leather of the seat base and let memory tighten her chest. Jacob’s voice came unbidden, words from a night on a different road: Count everything. Not because you’re paranoid. Because memory is your only map when the lights go out.

So she counted.

Mile markers: green, white numbers. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty-one.

Exits: a half-broken sign toward a village, another with a gas icon slashed by graffiti.

Curves: slight right bend after three minutes, slight left after another five.

Her pulse became the metronome.

The farther they drove, the thinner the city grew. Apartment blocks fell away to warehouses, then to farmland. Dust rolled in lazy spirals beyond the ditches. On the horizon, pale mountains sat like waiting teeth.

Alex shifted one palm to ease the cramp in her wrist. The driver muttered into a handheld radio; the voice that answered was clipped, confirming positions. She caught fragments—kilometer marker, east road, villa approach.

Villa.

Her stomach coiled.

They weren’t circling within the city. They weren’t angling for some hotel or conference suite. They were leaving civilization altogether.

The trap wasn’t just possible. It was certain.

She bit the inside of her cheek, grounding herself with the pain. Options flickered through her head: bail at the next slowdown, roll from the SUV into the ditch, vanish. But then Samantha would vanish too—into Selma’s grip, into Sebastian’s silence.

Not yet.

Alex closed her eyes and counted again. The rhythm steadied her, each remembered detail a rung on the ladder she’d need when the time came to climb out.

Left fork at the fuel station. Two miles of straight. A narrow bridge over a dry riverbed.

Every line became a survival thread.

By the time the convoy took its next hard turn—right, onto a road with cracked asphalt and no markings—the sun was tilting low, washing the horizon in brass.

Alex risked the smallest glance above the seat. The lead SUV’s brake lights glowed faint red in dust haze. Beyond it, the road unspooled in long, merciless straightaways bordered by citrus groves. The smell reached her even through the vents: sharp, sweet, alive.

And beneath it, the stink of something older—power rehearsing its cruelty.

Alex’s hand curled into a fist.

Trap or not, she would walk in with her eyes open.

She would count. She would remember. She would survive.

The convoy carved deeper into the countryside, each SUV holding its place as if bound by invisible chain. The road narrowed until citrus trees brushed close to the shoulders, their branches heavy with fruit that glowed faintly orange in the fading light. The sweet scent thickened, a perfume masking steel.

Alex forced herself to breathe shallowly, quietly, her ribs tight against the floor. Every vibration of the tires traveled through her cheek pressed to the mat. She could hear the driver’s breath too—steady, unhurried, a professional accustomed to long escorts.

Another mile marker flashed by. She counted. Sixty-nine.

She marked the sound of gravel as they left asphalt for a stretch of patched road. The SUV jolted, suspension thudding. Her teeth clicked together, but she didn’t make a sound. Ahead, a gate swung open on command—she glimpsed it in reflection, a rust-colored metal frame manned by two guards with rifles slung lazy across their chests.

No hesitation. The convoy rolled through.

Alex’s chest tightened. They were no longer on public ground.

Inside the SUV, voices stirred. The woman in the back seat—someone she hadn’t identified before—spoke on the phone in rapid Spanish. Sharp, economical words. Alex picked out fragments: checkpoints, delay, east approach. Orders, not conversation. Whoever she was, her role carried weight.

The driver nodded once at her instructions, then adjusted his speed. Alex tucked that detail away. Hierarchies mattered. If she lived through this night, she’d need to know who commanded whom.

Samantha rode in the lead SUV, but Alex pictured her clearly: shoulders tight, knuckles pale around her tote. Samantha thought she’d walked into an exam, one where her composure and financial brilliance would be graded. She didn’t yet realize she was a pawn on Selma’s board.

Alex clenched her jaw. Pawns broke first.

The trees ended suddenly, spilling them into open scrubland. A low sun threw long shadows across cracked earth. Alex risked lifting her head a fraction, enough to glimpse through the tinted glass: a vast compound walling itself against the horizon, pale stone catching gold light. Watchtowers perched at corners, black silhouettes of guards already visible.

The villa.

Her stomach dropped as if the ground had tilted beneath her.

The SUVs slowed, tires crunching over gravel as they approached the first checkpoint. Armed men swarmed, efficient, rifles angled low but ready. One stepped close enough that Alex could see the scuffs on his boots, the ink curling along his wrist. He rapped on the hood, exchanged words with the driver, then waved them through.

Alex forced stillness into her bones. A twitch now would be death.

The convoy curved onto a broad lane lined with citrus trees in perfect rows. Someone had designed this approach like a stage—beauty framing menace. Lanterns hung from branches, already lit though dusk still lingered. They cast long lines of light across the gravel, gilding each SUV as if parading trophies.

In the floor’s shadow, Alex’s heartbeat ticked louder than the engine. Every instinct screamed at her to escape, to roll out into the orchard, vanish into trees before walls closed fully behind. But she stayed. If she left now, she would lose sight of Samantha—and with her, the chance to reach Sebastian’s core.

She made herself whisper the count again. Turns. Distance. Exits. Her only lifeline.

The SUV stopped. Doors opened. Boots hit gravel.

The woman in the back seat left first, phone still at her ear, her tone calm and authoritative. The driver stepped out to hold the door.

For three heartbeats Alex remained flat, lungs burning. Then she slid beneath the seat, shifted low, and pressed herself against the frame as the driver leaned back in to collect something from the footwell. His hand brushed close enough she smelled leather and salt.

He withdrew without looking. The door shut. Lock clicked.

Silence.

The convoy moved again, slower now, rolling the last meters toward the villa’s east gate.

Alex exhaled into the dark. She had made it past the first circle.

The east gate yawned wide, lanterns mounted high above it like false stars. Guards lined the entrance, weapons glinting in low light. Through a narrow slit between seat and door, Alex caught flashes: Samantha stepping from the lead SUV, guarded on both sides. Her head turned slightly, scanning, searching for something—maybe reassurance, maybe escape.

Beside her, Sebastian appeared. His suit immaculate, stride unhurried, expression carved from stone. He placed one hand at Samantha’s back and guided her forward. Not tender. Not cruel. Controlled.

The image struck Alex harder than she expected. The way Samantha leaned toward him, desperate for his gravity. The way he allowed it, calculating distance with surgical precision.

Selma’s test. His words echoed from the bug’s recording.

Alex shut her eyes. Every part of this road had been counted, but the path ahead no longer belonged to numbers. It belonged to survival measured against power.

As the convoy idled inside the gate, Alex prepared. Her muscles ached from stillness, but her mind ran sharp. The villa loomed closer, windows glowing faint amber, music faint behind thick walls. A trap wrapped in silk.

She had made it inside the convoy. She had followed the roads to their end.

Now came the harder part.

Staying alive inside the lion’s den.