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With my thoughts elsewhere, drowning in my panic, I didn’t realize I’d turned down the wrong road, right into standstill traffic.

And right into the back of the car in front of us.

“Mia?”

Reid’s voice filtered through the harsh ringing in my ears, her hand curled around my upper arm. But I couldn’t tear my frightened stare away from the mangled trunk in front of me.

“Mia, hey!” she called, her voice a little frantic. “Look at me.”

I turned to look at her, my breaths too shallow, too quick.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes searching my face and body for any apparent signs of injury.

I nodded, the movement stiff and jerky.

I couldn’t feel a thing.

Nothing except the stifling panic stuffing itself into my lungs and throat.

Reid unbuckled her seatbelt and hurried out of the car, her phone already at her ear.

She dashed around the back of the car and suddenly my door swung open, and she kneeled there.

She tucked her phone between her shoulder and ear as she unbuckled my seatbelt and inspected my legs and feet. Her hands fluttered over my body, squeezing my ankles and pulling them away from the pedals.

I heard the words she spoke into her phone, no doubt to emergency services, but my body shook too hard to focus.

“Come here,” she said gently, helping me out of the car.

I stood on shaky legs, when a new, furious voice cut through my panic.

“Que porra?!” he screeched, storming towards us, his face ruby red with anger.

His eyes zeroed in on me standing beside the driver’s door, and he seethed.

All I could see was Donnie’s anger, the memory of his hands on me turning me to stone.

“Claro que é uma puta de uma mulher,” he spat, and my chest seized.

“S-sorry, I’m so sorry,” I breathed, my mind in shambles. My mother tongue suddenly felt foreign and terrifying.

He raised his hand, pointing an accusing finger at me, his mouth open to hurl more insults at me. But Reid stepped between us, her hand gentle on my hip. And she spoke. But the words that left her mouth weren’t English.

Without realizing, I curled my fingers into the material of her jacket, disbelief slicing through the terror.

Reid was speaking Portuguese.

I stared at the back of her head, hanging onto every word that slipped from her lips. It was jangly, her accent painfully obvious, but she was speaking Portuguese.

I could have laughed in surprise.

Her hand anchored me as she spoke to the man I’d rear-ended. When I managed to tear my gaze from the back of her head to look at the man, he looked far from impressed, but he took Reid’s card.

And his face lit up.

Well, that was settled then.

Sirens wailed in the distance as they rushed toward us, and the man ambled back to his car, jabbering away on the phone.