Page 44 of A Queen and HER Bad Boy (Spies and Royals #4)

“You should be thanking me for this opportunity.” Aggie’s conversational tone circled through her woozy brain as he choked her husband out with clinical detachment.

“We’ve got great plans for you.” Her vision cleared enough to catch his predatory grin.

“Yes, a very special mission for a very special boy. Won’t that be fun? ”

Achilles’s eyes rolled back under Aggie’s chokehold. The fight was draining out of him with each passing second.

Raw desperation crashed through her as she plunged her hands into the frigid surface. Feeling frantically underwater, her fingers closed around a long brass pole—part of the rope barriers that had fallen when the crypt flooded. She hefted it like a club, water streaming from the gleaming metal.

Achilles was unresponsive. Was she already too late? She’d better not be! She lunged forward with all her strength, swinging the brass pole in a wide arc that connected with Aggie Mnon’s skull with a satisfying crack.

He growled out and spun around, using the strength of his movement to punch her.

Never feeling such raw power used against her, she fell backward.

Her body dropped into the deeper water between two ancient tombs.

The sounds faded from Aggie’s heavy curses and Yiorgos’s screams to the smooth rush of water as she sank beneath the surface.

No, no! She wouldn’t leave this world without a fight!

Every fiery piece of her temper connected to her heart, and she exploded back through the water, gasping, seeing Aggie advancing on her again with murderous intent written in his dead gaze.

Blood seeped from his hairline, down his face and he was too crazed to notice.

“Well, well, dear cousin, so delighted to finally meet you in person. You’re every bit the bratty little hellcat I expected.

Your devoted husband can watch you drown like one,” he promised with a snigger, even as she backed away from him, unable to move faster in this water.

“I’m sure he won’t mourn long—he’s got new conquests waiting for him. ”

The monster was taunting her with Charisse while preparing to kill her?

Remorseless psychopath! Every rumor she’d heard about Aggie was terrifyingly true!

He snatched her arm and dragged her closer while she fought him.

“Nothing personal, you understand. You wouldn’t cooperate with our plans. Now we go to Plan B.”

And just like that, he shoved her head back under the frigid water. Through the stream of bubbles, she watched Yiorgos’s terrified face above the surface, his enormous brown eyes wide with horror as he clutched that textbook like his life depended on it.

Those kids sure loved those books.

What? Were these seriously going to be her final thoughts?

No! Yiorgos was just a child—he couldn’t watch her die this way!

She kicked the malicious Myrdon prince in the knee with her heavy work boot, feeling the satisfying impact against his leg.

He staggered back—enough for her to wrench her head free.

She managed a few desperate gasps of air while he laughed at her struggles.

He came at her again, and she clawed at his face, leaving bloody furrows across his pale white cheek.

Let him keep that to remind him of her! He grabbed her wrist with an animalistic snarl.

The crushing grip made her cry out in pain, and then seemingly from nowhere, the heavy textbook slammed into Aggie’s skull with a wet, meaty crack.

He toppled backward into the dark water.

Achilles stood behind Aggie’s floating body, breathing hard and swaying on his feet, the government textbook dripping in his bloodied hand. He’d finally found good use for the propaganda!

He dragged her out of the water, pulling her against his chest, despite his bleeding arm. “Aggie’s always been a pretentious liar,” he breathed. “You’re my bratty little hellcat. You got that?”

She melted into his embrace, feeling gloriously alive as he tightened his arms around her. The warmth of his blood seeped into her wet clothes. Sucking in her breath, she pressed her palm against his wounded arm where the bullet had torn through muscle and sinew.

“It’s nothing serious,” he insisted. His voice was strained with pain. She didn’t believe him for a second.

More echoes drifted from above—multiple whispers this time, heavy running—they listened as more pursuers tracked them down to the crypt.

The freezing water had risen to their chests by now, leaving barely three feet of breathing space between the surface and the stone ceiling.

Yiorgos perched high above on the tomb while the carved faces of ancient Tirrojan kings and queens watched their descendants’ struggle for survival.

“How absolutely poetic.” A woman’s voice reached them from the circular staircase above, cold and acidic.

Something familiar about its tone made Bris’s blood run cold, though her exhausted mind couldn’t immediately place where it belonged.

“You’ll be buried alive with the other failed royal pretenders. ”

“Get some new material!” Achilles shot back, his voice tight with pain and frustration. “Ask the last maniac who tried those lines on us.”

“What did you do to him?” The woman sounded panicked now.

Good question! Where had he gone? Turning with sudden dread, Bris searched frantically for her fallen cousin.

He had to be somewhere in these thick silty depths, ready to spring out like the ghoul he was.

But did it really matter if he was the one who came back to finish them off?

Judging by the urgent sounds and shouts above—they weren’t going to survive this next attack.

Well, Bris wouldn’t.

Her fingers tightened around Achilles, and she savored the strength of his arms—all of his power focused on keeping her alive. Would losing her really be that hard on him? It would be an easy way out of this marriage—he could drown his sorrows with Charisse after she was gone… but no…

She’d never seen such fierce protectiveness in his eyes, such raw, tortured emotion radiating from every line of his body.

What would losing her do to him? She hadn’t truly believed the depths of his feelings until now, but…

he turned to her, his heart hammering against hers.

“Bris, listen to me… whatever happens next, just remember I’ve always loved you. ”

Always? “Like a sister,” she confirmed.

“No!” His eyes blazed with frustration. “Far from that… there’s nothing brotherly about how I feel for you!”

Her stomach clenched with a painful mixture of joy, terror, and hope that threatened to overwhelm her completely. She didn’t understand how this was possible—and yet, after hearing the declaration she’d dreamed of her entire life, their future was about to be brutally cut short.

Stone ground against stone with an ancient groan.

Behind an ornate sarcophagus, a hidden section of wall swung open above the waterline.

Nestor emerged, gasping and completely soaked, his white hair plastered to his skull.

After Aggie Mnon’s failure to kill them off, he’d come to finish the job?

She’d thought he’d been too much of a coward.

Achilles recoiled like a snake, his whole body stiff and ready to strike.

“Quickly! Through the old citadel tunnels!” Nestor’s eyes were wide with genuine panic as he reached for Yiorgos, scraping him off the tomb, like he was actually there to help them! “Not all the passageways are closed off! Move!”

They’d be swimming through pitch-black water toward an unknown destination…

and was the priest actually their ally, or was this another trap?

Glancing over at Achilles, she saw he wasn’t about to argue with this unexpected rescue.

They had no other choice except to follow the priest into that black pit.

The attackers’ voices and splashes echoed louder as they closed in on them.

Achilles’s strong hand pressed against her back, lifting her up and out of the deadly water as he practically threw her into the narrow tunnel opening behind Nestor.

She immediately plunged into what felt like a black abyss, sinking until the frigid water on the other side reached her neck in the confined stone passage.

Seconds later, Achilles joined her, working frantically to seal the hidden door behind them.

Achilles’s profile glowed, droplets of water glittering under Nestor’s heavy-duty flashlight that sent powerful beams dancing across the tunnel walls, revealing multiple branching passages.

They’d be hopelessly lost in this underground maze without their guide.

Hopefully, their pursuers hadn’t noticed their escape route under those bright fluorescent lights in the burial chamber. It was a fragile hope at best, and she left her doubts unsaid as she followed after the priest to go deeper into the ancient tunnels.

The stone walls pressed close on all sides as they half-swam, half-crawled through the flooded passageways that had been built centuries ago.

Bris tried not to think about what else might be sharing this space with them—Rats?

Water snakes? Abnormally large spiders that had been washed from their cobwebbed homes?

Okay, what she really needed was for her mind to stop going there.

But within moments, she knew exactly what kind of creepy-crawly thing shared this space with them.

The sound of scraping stone was mingled with the woman’s hysterical screams when she discovered Aggie’s body.

“Can you hear me? Talk to me!” The voice was filled with desperate emotion. Who was this, Aggie’s girlfriend?

“Don’t just stand there like an idiot—” Aggie was still alive and venomous as ever. The woman screamed again—this time in surprise. Was the psychopath actually immortal? “Go after them!”

Her followers were only too eager to take over where Aggie had left off, and the sounds of splashing and scraping pursued them.

And was she imagining things or had Aggie actually recovered enough to join in the hunt?

She listened to his snarls: “This is your fault! If you’d held back, they’d never… ”

His words disappeared under the woman’s angry shrieks. “Oh no, you don’t! You’re not blaming me for your incompetence.” Again, Bris couldn’t shake the feeling she knew that shrieking voice. And again … she couldn’t place whose it was in her panic.

The ceiling rumbled over them. She cringed, the vibrations shaking her body as something massive crashed down in a thunderous splash that made the water surge behind them—part of the ceiling collapsed behind them, sealing off their pursuers’ route to them.

“Is that bad?” she shouted over to Nestor.

He turned his head slightly. “Not for us, child. Those murderers, however, will be trapped inside the tunnel.”

Disturbing thought. Still carrying Yiorgos protectively above the water level, Nestor made the sign of the cross over his heart and murmured a quiet prayer for the souls of their enemies—nothing was saving Aggie Mnon’s black soul, of course, though it remained to be seen whether he was truly trapped or would find another way out.

As they climbed steadily higher, the tunnel turned dryer, the water level dropping from their waists to their knees to their ankles until finally, they emerged through another hidden door, gasping, shocked, and dripping with water.

Had they truly survived an encounter with her lethal cousin?

She could scarcely believe it, seeing they’d entered a warm, brightly lit space that felt like stepping through a portal into another world.

Blinking around her at the sudden brightness, she realized they were standing in the palace kitchens, dripping like survivors from a shipwreck.

The kitchen staff stared at them in complete astonishment—four drowned rats, one of them their future sovereign, a prince, a priest, and an urchin emerging from what appeared to be a solid stone wall.

Achilles motioned to the nearest woman in a chef’s hat. “Call the authorities. The princess’s life is in danger. Aggie Mnon is on the loose—they can find him trapped in the tunnels.”

The room erupted into activity. Under the noise, Nestor threw something into Achilles’s hand, a cracked phone.

“Years ago, I made a vow to protect you children after—after the Myrdons stole your parents,” his voice was thick with emotion.

“When Clysta was taken and Bris’s mother…

fell during the attack.” His voice broke over the grief he could no longer contain.

He set Yiorgos down, his shoulders set. “I would die before I let anything happen to you… I swore I’d never repeat the mistakes I made during those dark days. ”

Bris covered her mouth, looking from him to her husband, her mind exploding with questions.

First and foremost, if Nestor wasn’t behind this, then who was working with Aggie Mnon?

Someone had to have orchestrated his jailbreak, and it wasn’t Atreus Mnon—that psychopath’s father had lost all his connections and backing after what had happened on Scheria, which was why he’d pushed this arranged marriage in the first place.

And secondly…, most importantly, her husband had declared with such fierce, unquestionable certainty that he loved her. So why was she still afraid to believe it?