by Pam Godwin
Her mouth parted, her eyes bright and watchful. He knew she’d wondered why he’d dressed up. The fact that he answered her unspoken question surprised him as much as it did her.
“I’ve been straight with you.” He rolled up his sleeves, taking his time with each one. “Your life is forfeit. A penalty paid for Tate’s stupidity. It’s in my best interest to kill you quickly.”
She fell unnaturally still, her gaze focusing on nothing. He wasn’t sure she was breathing.
Then she blinked and locked onto his eyes. “Do you have anything to drink?”
Her calm response gave him pause, and in that unexpected moment, he found her…spellbinding.
“There’s a bottle of tequila in my bag.” He nodded at the luggage. “Cups are in the bathroom.”
“I’ll pour us some shots.”
As she stood, her arm wrapped around her stomach where he’d kicked her, her face etched in pain.
He should’ve killed her the moment she entered his room.
Why didn’t he just do it now? As long as she was alive, her friends wouldn’t stop looking for her.
She shuffled through the small space, grabbing the tequila and pulling his concentration along with her. The white-gold of her hair, the unintentional sway of her ass, the irresistible flex of muscle there—the sight of her made him burn, hardening him until there was nowhere to go in his fitted trousers.
He deserved the discomfort, had earned the torment of looking at her without touching. Twelve years ago, he made the gravest mistake of his life and lost everything that made him human. But he still had a working dick, and the damn thing wanted out.
She returned to the mattress, watching him watch her. “Why is killing me in your best interest?”
There were many reasons, but he gave her the one that would hurt her most.
“You said it yourself.” He lifted the tequila from her hand, filled the cups, and handed one to her. “Your army of dangerous friends is looking for you.” He took a hearty draw from the mug, hoping the alcohol would numb his perpetual headache. “I’ll leave your body where they can find it.”
She tossed back the tequila, gulping it down between hacking coughs.
“Sit.” He motioned at the mattress.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, sat at the farthest end, and held out the empty mug. “If you kill me, they’ll come for you.”
“Not with the same urgency or persistence.” He refilled her cup. “What will they sacrifice to avenge your death? How long will it take before they refocus their efforts on those they can save? That’s what they do, right? They free human slaves.”
She averted her eyes, jaw clenched, and looked back at him. “You don’t know them.”
“When Van Quiso and Liv Reed ran a sex trafficking ring, you were their seventh slave. But they put all that behind them, and now they co-parent the child who came out of their twisted relationship. Van married Amber. Liv married Josh, and they’re all one big fucked-up family. You are not their priority.”
“Where did you get that information?”
“Then there’s Lucia’s sister, Camila Dias. She’s not only the leader of your little army. She also happens to be married to the capo of the Restrepo cartel. She made quite a leap from Van’s attic. Or a fall, depending on how you look at it.” He finished off his tequila and poured another. “While Matias Restrepo has the resources to take me out, his focus is and always will be on Camila. If she died by my hand, he’d tear the universe apart in his fury to make me suffer. But I took you, and you are not his. You’re not his priority. Not his concern.”
“Whatever you think.” She lifted a shoulder, and the trembly motion ruined her attempt at indifference.
“As for the men you lived with, they’re currently seeking refuge in Colombia, under Matias’ protection.”
“They’re afraid you’ll come after them. If you kill me, they will retaliate.”
“Which roommate were you fucking? Martin? Luke? Tomas? All of them?”
He’d investigated the entire crew the moment he discovered Tate Vades sniffing around his domain. While he didn’t know who was fucking who in Tate’s household, he’d learned enough to determine that Kate was the ideal target.
She wasn’t married. Didn’t have a romantic partner or monogamous lover. There was no one in her life who would travel to the end of hell and back to avenge her death. And that was where he was headed after he killed her. Back to Caracas. Hell on Earth.
“All your assumptions can fuck right off.” She guzzled her drink and shoved the cup aside.
“Your friends might be outraged by your death, but they don’t love you. Not the way a man loves his soulmate. You are no one’s other half. No one’s number one.”
She closed her eyes, tucking away her reaction. But he felt the moment his words penetrated. The mattress shook beneath her perch on the edge, her body quaking so loudly and intensely he marveled at the strength of her despair.
Her gaze moved to the exit. Would she make a run for it? If she did, she wouldn’t make it past the antechamber. The door to the stairway required a key from the inside, which he kept in his locked safe.
He poured another drink, stalling the inevitable task. She wouldn’t be the first life he took. Nor was this the first time he hesitated.
As if she sensed the direction of this thoughts, she turned and gave him her full attention.
Perspiration formed along her hairline, her breaths choppy and rough. “I don’t want to die.”
CHAPTER 5
Smooth tequila, a gorgeous woman, and the thrum of rain on an old roof… Tiago hadn’t felt this relaxed in a long damn time.
He didn’t want to kill her. Not tonight.
Maybe the month he spent in this room softened more than his muscles. With a grumpy old man as his only visitor, he ventured to guess he was lonely.
He hadn’t seen his guards since he arrived. Even though they’d been carefully vetted and handpicked for this job, he didn’t trust them in his personal space, let alone his headspace.
He longed for conversation, and Kate wanted answers. He could give her that much.
Wetting his lips with a sip from the mug, he let his mind drift to the past. “Eleven years ago, my men pulled a smuggled slave out of a deadly crash in Peru.”
“Lucia,” she breathed.
“They found her chained in a truck with a twisted piece of metal protruding from her abdomen.”
By some miracle, she’d survived. But barely.
The same could’ve been said about him at the time.
“When they brought her to me, I knew I’d have to kill her. It was the easiest solution.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I hesitated.” He reached for his boot and untied the laces. “It wasn’t a matter of morals. I’ve been taking lives since my early twenties.”
Killing was a job requirement, then and now.
Her face paled. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
Fifteen years her senior.
She touched her throat, eyes round with shock. “You’re older than I thought.”
He felt old. Too fucking old and jaded to have a meaningful conversation with a girl from the suburbs. But he wanted to tell her about Lucia, needed to get it off his chest.
Removing his boots, he leaned back against the wall, with his legs stretched off the mattress. “Lucia came to me at a time when I needed a distraction.”
It had been the worst year of his life. He’d lost everything, moved halfway across the world, changed jobs, and stripped his identity down to the black remains of his soul. All he had left were nightmares and chaos, and he needed to balance that with something constant, something he could control.
And there she was. A woman he could save.
“Boones and his medical team operated on her,” he said. “She went through several surgeries and a long recovery.”
“He has a medical team?”
&n
bsp; “Three other doctors. They followed me to Venezuela twelve years ago to work for my organization. But they’re old, older than Boones, and it was time for them to go home. They left the night Boones transported me here.”
“Where is home?”
Tiago didn’t originate from Eritrea like Boones and the others, but their quiet African village on the Red Sea was the only place he ever called home.
His chest constricted. What bound him to Eritrea was a collection of pervasive, melancholic memories. His life there ran the gamut from extreme joy to unendurable tragedy. None of which he was inclined to talk about.
When her gaze dipped, he realized he was scratching the scars on his forearm.
Lowering his hand to his lap, he skipped over her question. “I didn’t keep Lucia alive out of the goodness of my heart. She’s attractive and ferocious, and I wanted to mold those attributes into a weapon I could use.” He chuckled in remembrance. “She became an invaluable spy, but it took years to tame her.”
Kate stared at him as if he just told her he ate the hearts of human babies.
She wasn’t far off the mark.
He was a self-made felon, feared and abhorred by all walks of life. “I could’ve killed her. Maybe I should have. Had she fallen into the hands of another drug lord, that’s exactly what they would’ve done. Let’s not forget, she was found in a truck full of slaves, destined for a life much worse than the one I gave her.”
“She was taken from her home by those slave traders. How did you keep her from running back to her family?” She absently rubbed the red marks on her wrists. “Did you tie her up for eleven years?”
“I poisoned her.”
He unraveled the details of his deception—how he’d secretly tainted Lucia’s food and made her chronically ill, how he counteracted it with daily injections of the antidote, and how it led her to believe she had a disease that only he could cure.
“My medical team monitored the poison, ensuring the doses weren’t fatal,” he said.
“That’s sick.” Kate shook her head, her face scrunched in revulsion. “And unacceptable.”
“It was more humane than keeping her in shackles.”
“You could’ve let her go.”
He didn’t expect this naive girl to understand. Her ordeal with Van Quiso was nothing compared to what existed in the bowels of the criminal underworld.
“I assume she figured out you were poisoning her,” she said. “Is that why she attacked you?”
“No. Matias Restrepo was the catalyst for the recent chain of events.”
“Matias? How?”
“A week before I took you, Tate initiated contact with Lucia. He approached her in a sex club and fucked her. Or maybe it was the other way around.” He smirked. “I knew about their hookup but didn’t consider him a threat until her routine changed. She started acting cagey. That’s when I dug deeper and discovered his connection with the Restrepo cartel.”
“You didn’t know Matias was Lucia’s brother-in-law?”
“No, and neither did she. It changed the stakes. I was no longer dealing with some clueless American sneaking around my turf. Tate’s presence was attached to a cartel, a notoriously ambitious one. I didn’t know if they meant to wage war against me, try to seize control of my smuggling routes, or something else. So I took you.”
“As payment.”
“And to send them a warning.”
Kidnapping and murder, business as usual.
“Matias isn’t interested in taking your business.” Her breathing accelerated. “Lucia is his family. He just wanted her back.”
“To that end, he would’ve gone to war.” He cocked his head. “He sent men to the states to gather everyone close to Tate and bring them to Colombia. But when they arrived at your diner to collect you, they were an hour too late. You were already in my possession.”
A whimper left her before she cut it off.
“The night you disappeared,” he said, “was the same night I captured Tate and Van.”
While she was being transported from Texas to Venezuela, he was putting Tate through eight brutal hours of trials and torture.
He gave her a graphic account of the evening—the icepick through Tate’s arm, the carving on his back, and the forced sodomy between him and his former captor.
“What?” She gasped, her cheeks damp and bloodless. “You made Tate fuck Van? Why?”
“Justice is rarely pleasant, and Van had it coming.”
“How is that justice? Tate wouldn’t have wanted that. He’d already forgiven Van.”
“Are you sure? Have you made peace with Van?”
She glanced away. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t like him.”
Van was a reflection of himself. Scarred. Splintered. Heartless. There was a reason he never looked in a mirror.
“Is Van still alive?” she asked quietly.
“Yes.”
He detailed the events of Lucia’s incursion with the dumbbell, her escape with Tate and Van, the gunfight, and car chase. “After they fled, Arturo found me on the floor in my room. By the time I woke, your friends were already recaptured.”
“How could you orchestrate that with your head smashed in?”
“Boones arranged things on my behalf, leveraging the police on my payroll. Lucia and Van went to prison, and Tate was taken to the shack as part of the original plan.”
“You didn’t let her go.” She ground her teeth.
“She’s free, right now, because I allowed it. While she sat in prison for a week, I could’ve had her executed or returned to me at any time.” He tapped a finger on his thigh, questioning this compulsion to explain himself. “She escaped prison, and I allowed that to happen. I let her go. Her and Van both.”
“Why? I mean, I’m happy they’re safe, but I don’t understand the change of heart.”
“I want her to find Tate.”
“Then release him! It makes no sense.” She tucked her limbs close to her torso, keeping her legs covered by the thin dress. “You poisoned her, tortured him, and separated them when all they want is to be together. Do you hurt people just for the hell of it?” A swallow bobbed her throat. “Because you get off on their pain?”
“You want to know if I’m a sadist.” It was a query he didn’t mind examining. “I suppose the label fits. Delivering pain is an expression of art. It’s inspiring, inherently satisfying, but only when the hurt has meaning, when it serves a purpose beyond cruelty.”
She slowly drew her head back, shrinking away from him. It was a sane reaction. Sitting within arm’s reach of the man who would end her life, she was probably crawling out of her skin to run far, far away.
He’d told her she had no opinions here, but that was bullshit. He couldn’t control the thoughts in her head, and after talking with her, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. She was a good listener and spoke her mind, even if he didn’t like what she had to say.
It was refreshing.
Her stare lasered onto his, narrowing, analyzing, before traveling down his arm to linger on his scars. “Your cuts are self-inflicted.”
“Hm.” He didn’t move his eyes from her face.
“The lines on your left arm are straighter, cleaner. Because you’re right-handed.”
Impressive.
She glanced at his head wounds and returned to his arms. “When you asked how bad your injury looked, I thought you were concerned about infection or something. But that’s not it at all. You regard scars the way a painter beholds a painting.”
He leaned forward, hanging on her words.
“Delivering pain is an expression of art. That’s what you said.” Her nose twitched. “I assume that means you prefer to be the giver of scars, not the receiver. But you gave and received those.” She nodded at his arms. “I don’t know what to make of that. Do you?”
He could explain it, but he chose not to.
At his silence, she drifted closer, inspecting his welted skin with those hu
ge blue eyes. “The designs are incredibly detailed. I can make out a few of the abstract shapes, like the sunset and mountain range. Some of the symbols are animals, but the other marks… They’re esoteric.” She looked up and met his gaze. “Every cut means something to you.”
“Yes.” He felt himself warming to her, wanting to give her more than a night to live.
“The image you put on Tate’s back…” Her neck stiffened. “I couldn’t see it clearly. What is it?”
He described the illustration of the double gate hanging between pillars and the woman floating through the opening. “Lucia was there when I carved it into his back. When she realizes it’s a picture of the location where he’s being held, she’ll find him.”
Kate’s jaw fell open, her glare livid. “Why won’t you just let him go? That’s a whole lot easier than cutting a map into his body.” She speared a hand through her hair and pulled at the strands. “What you’re doing to them… It’s insanity.”
“Love is insanity.”
She blinked. Blinked again. “Okay?”
“Tate and Lucia were an experiment. I wanted to learn the limits of how far they would go for each other. As it turns out, the thing between them is unstoppable. He’s alone in a shack under the assumption she’s dead, and his only request is a tattoo of her on his arm. She hasn’t seen her sister in eleven years, but instead of going home, she’s scouring the country day and night. I’m certain she won’t give up until she finds him. It’s fascinating to watch.”
“You’re playing God.”
“I’m helping them.”
“Helping? Jesus Christ,” she muttered under her breath. “You’re interfering in destiny. Manipulating it.”
“Destiny is a power far bigger than my mortal reach. I’m simply providing obstacles for them to overcome, to make them stronger.”
“Sounds like a veiled excuse to deliver pain.” Emotion leaked into her voice, raising it a few octaves. “Does their agony inspire you? Do you get hard thinking about it?”
