soundlessly. Below him, Sagro Prison was clouded in darkness, the island quiet. He gripped his sole weapon, the sharpened handle of a spoon, between his teeth. When he reached the top, he vaulted over and cut the guard’s throat before the man could raise the alarm.
Had to be done.
There was no way around it. He lowered the body to the wooden boards, wiped the warm blood off his fingers and took the rifle, waited.
No siren sounded. He hadn’t been detected. The small Italian prison island was well guarded, but it was no high-security facility.
He lowered himself to the ground where José and Marco crouched in the shadows. He was the boss of the small team, though they were all hired hands, working for a new Colombian drug lord who was trying to break into the European market via Italy, among other places. Except that they’d been caught on this trip.
But he wouldn’t rot in a dank cell, he thought as they crawled their way to the fence where the hole they’d painstakingly prepared and covered awaited. He wouldn’t end up like his brother, Miguel, trapped in a Valtrian prison, then knifed by some local hotshot, dead two weeks before his release.
The drug lord they both worked for was trying to wiggle his way into the European market at multiple points of entry. Roberto had a cousin with a small team in Romania. He wondered how the bastard was faring. Hopefully better than this.
He was the first to reach the unfinished tunnel and head into the darkness. What little they’d left for tonight could be done in an hour. He dug with the flat rock they’d used to get this far, sweated, swore, but never stopped working. When at long last he’d reached the opening, only just clearing the fence, he tossed the stone aside then brushed the dirt from his eyes.
“Hurry,” he said, speaking for the first time. This far out, nobody should be able to hear them.
He came up into a crouch, suddenly dizzy from hunger. All three of them were starving. Over the past few weeks, they’d had to bribe too many inmates with food to get what they needed for the escape. They could have just as easily beaten the bastards into obedience, but fights drew the guards’ attention, and their small team needed to fly below the radar. They had to remain invisible. Then and now.
“Keep low to the ground,” he said as they crossed the narrow slice of flat plateau. Then they unraveled their makeshift ropes, tied them together and lowered themselves down the rock face.
Roberto reached the beach first. When they were all down, they gathered as much driftwood as they could find, then they used the ropes to tie a raft together. Marco was the fastest with the knots, the son of a fisherman, pulling his weight for the first time. They swam out beyond the breakers before climbing on, then paddled with their shoes as best they could—which wasn’t easy at all, as the waves were getting angry.
Real paddles would have helped, but they’d had no place to steal them from and no time to make them. Using their shoes required too much effort for too little result. The three were weak and exhausted, but they would work until their last breath.
They’d all sworn not to go back behind bars. They would either escape today or die trying.
“Get your ass moving.” Roberto snarled at Marco when he slowed. The other apparently thought that having worked on the raft, he was now entitled to a break.
José shook his head and spit into the waves.
Marco got back to the paddling sullenly.
More trouble than he was worth. But they weren’t out of danger yet. Roberto still needed him.
They needed to take the current to the mainland, land in an out-of-the-way spot and disappear deep into the country by morning, when their breakout would be discovered and law enforcement would start their coastal search.
But a storm was coming in and the waves didn’t cooperate. The current seemed to be changing, taking them in another direction entirely.
Chapter Two
In hindsight, they shouldn’t have wasted so much of the daylight on fighting.
Milda wrestled with the tent she’d dragged into the olive grove. She could see Prince Lazlo’s outline a few hundred yards from her. She hadn’t gone too far—was kind of scared of the darkness of the grove, the trees throwing shadows in the moonlight. The island was a nature preserve. Which meant wild animals for sure. She didn’t want to think about that.
“I don’t think that’s how it goes,” the prince called across the distance that separated them. He hadn’t bothered bringing the second tent up from the beach.
“I got it,” she answered over her shoulder. Don’t come over. Please, don’t come over.
If he helped her set up her tent, he would probably expect to sleep in it. With her. She couldn’t handle that.
She glanced toward him. He rested—probably thinking dark, murderous thoughts about her—sitting up, his back against a tree, his shoulders outlined in the dim light. His body was lithe and powerful. He wasn’t her favorite person in the world, but even she had to admit that he was incredibly handsome, with that debonair, devil-may-care attitude.
And beyond his good looks, he was intelligent as well. And a prince. At first, she’d been foolish enough to think that marrying him off would be easy. He’d certainly taught her better since.
She couldn’t pin the man down, not for a second. Like seawater through a fishnet, he ran through her fingers over and over again. He could have made it all work. He had incredible focus when he chose. He owned one of the best speed car factories in Europe, built it himself from nothing but a dream. When he wanted something, he applied himself to the task until he achieved his goal. He could have made her job easy. Instead, he was doing the opposite. He didn’t want anything to do with the Queen’s plans, so he resisted Milda at every step.
Like the damn tent was doing at the moment.
She was going to figure this out. She gathered her last reserves and fitted the poles together at last. And felt triumphant.
Until she tried to get the structure in through the tent’s door. She struggled for at least five minutes before she figured out it wasn’t going to work this way. The poles were probably supposed to be snapped into place inside the tent. She stifled a groan and took it all apart.
“Need help?”
“Almost done. I’ll be ready in a minute.” She looked up to make sure he wasn’t coming over.
But he was still sitting by the tree, his aristocratic profile outlined by the last of the light—a strong chin, straight nose and lips that looked as if they were carved from granite. Aside from the occasional debauchery—or even with that—he could have been one of those heroes of ancient Rome. She could definitely see him at the chariot races. She’d seen him at a modern racetrack, behind the wheel.
He was mesmerizing, had charisma in spades. No wonder women fell at his feet left and right. He certainly spent more time with them than pondering the duties of royalty. To the point that the media had taken to calling him The Rebel Prince. She filled her lungs with the salty sea air and turned away from him, giving the impertinent tent her full attention once again.
“I
