by Pam Godwin
“Stop being so goddamn narrow-minded.” His pulse quickened, firing through his veins. “Adversity builds character.”
“And feeds the sadist.”
“Careful, Kate.” He hardened his eyes, gripped by an irrational need to make her understand. “If you love someone and they don’t reciprocate, what happens? You love them harder, deeper, more obsessively. Roadblocks don’t diminish desire. They intensify it. Obstacles heighten the obsession.”
“Fine.” She blew out a breath, sagging in defeat. “I get what you’re saying. Love is insanity. No one can control it.”
“Not even me.” He felt the glimmer in her eyes, the lingering heat and thrill from arguing.
“Just because I gave the devil his due on one point doesn’t mean I agree with your demented methods.”
“I don’t give a fuck whether you agree or not.”
With a harrumph, she tipped her pretty head, studying him. “You’re not…quite what you seem.”
“Explain.”
“Well, you seem to be a romantic, for one. I didn’t see that coming. Wait.” She straightened, staring at him with a startled expression. “Is that what happened to you? You had your own love story and—?”
“Do you actually believe a woman could love a man like me?”
Her lips parted as she exhaled a slow puff of air. “Am I supposed to answer that?”
He grabbed the tequila and empty mugs and rose from the bed. “We’re finished here.”
She touched a nerve, and he didn’t bother hiding it. He wanted her out of his room.
Heading to the bathroom, he set the bottle on the counter and rinsed out the cups.
The sound of her footsteps approached from behind, pausing outside the door. “Why are there no mirrors in the bathrooms?”
They were removed for reasons that were none of her business.
She sighed into the silence. “Can we talk about the elephant in the room?”
The ever-growing burden of what to do with her unsettled his stomach. With his back to her, he mindlessly dried the cups while making a decision.
If he sent her back to her room and waited until tomorrow, she would spend the evening agonizing over her fate. Unnecessary cruelty wasn’t his thing.
He needed to kill her now. No more delaying.
CHAPTER 6
Some murderers claimed that killing was the same as having sex. Others argued it wasn’t about lust. It was about feeling that last breath of life leave a woman, looking into her eyes, and being God.
Tiago didn’t have a god complex. Nor did he derive sexual pleasure from killing. He especially hated taking a woman’s life, but occasionally things happened.
If he had any human qualities left, he would get to know the stunning woman glaring at his back. He would date her, seduce her, and fuck her until neither of them could walk.
Instead, he was contemplating where to dump her body and how badly it would rot before her friends found it.
“You have four options.” Kate’s voice strummed with nervous agitation.
That raised his brow. He turned and rested his backside against the counter.
“One. You can let me go.” She wilted beneath his glare and hugged her waist. “But that would make you appear merciful and weak. Can’t have that.”
He let his silence affirm her words.
Drawing a breath, she released it slowly. “Two. You can keep me locked up. But my friends won’t stop looking for me as long as I’m alive.”
He slid a hand in his pants pocket and fingered the casing of his blade, the only solution.
Her eyes followed the movement, and a tremor rippled through her. “Three. You can kill me, and maybe my friends won’t put a lifetime of effort into hunting you down. Like you said, there are other priorities, stronger passions than avenging my death. But killing me will make them your enemies. It’s a small world, and when you cross paths with the Restrepo cartel, they’ll remember.”
It was a weak argument. His treatment of Lucia ensured that Matias Restrepo would forever be an enemy. “You said there were four options.”
“I can make a phone call.”
“No.”
She cleared her throat and closed her eyes. When she looked at him again, a strange transformation rolled over her, loosening her posture. Her shoulders eased, and she stood taller, lengthening her height with grace and confidence.
“Liv Reed is my closest friend.” She smiled, and it glowed so beautifully across her face it was disarming. “I can convince her I’m safe, that I haven’t been hurt or touched against my will. Since I’ve been here for a month, that’s plenty of time to get to know you.” Her eyes beamed, lashes fluttering flirtatiously. “I enjoy your company. You’re ridiculously handsome and protective, and you make me feel things I’ve never felt. I know it’s crazy, but I want to stay. I need this. It’s a chance to get away for a while and figure out my life. So there’s no need for anyone to look for me. I don’t want to be found.” She released a shaky breath. “How was that?”
Fucking hell, she was good. Not a hitch or tremble in her voice. She sounded and looked so goddamn sincere he almost believed the lies.
“Did Van teach you how to do that?” He prowled toward her, captivated.
As a trained slave, she would’ve received lessons in obedience and decorum so that she wouldn’t embarrass her Master in public.
“Did Van whip you until you learned how to maintain that pleasing disposition?” he asked. “To hold that smile through the godawful pain?”
“Yes,” she spat, all traces of sweetness gone. “I bet that puts joy in your hateful heart.”
“Not at all.” He circled her, stepping so close he felt a shudder vibrate her tiny frame.
“Shall I grab your phone?” she asked warily.
He kept untraceable burners in the safe. If he went with the phone a friend option, what was the risk?
She couldn’t tip them off on anything useful. She didn’t even know her location. If she meant to deceive him and started begging for help while on the phone, he would just end the call and kill her.
Liv Reed would be skeptical no matter what Kate said to her. But a believable performance would leave her friends wondering, hoping. Just hearing her happy, healthy voice would take some of the urgency out of their need to find her.
“Do it again.” He moved in closer, crowding her back and breathing in the gentle scent of her hair. “Talk through the conversation you would have with her.”
With a deep breath, she re-acted the call. Every word and inflection in her voice was just as convincing as the first time. She made references to him throughout, praising his good looks and weaving a tantalizing tale of budding romance and exciting adventure.
Her enthusiasm was so persuasive it drew his body tight, heating his skin and tempting him to touch. The strapless dress exposed her shoulder blades, the top half of her back, and all her delicate arches of feminine bone and muscle. He couldn’t resist.
Sweeping her hair to the side, he rested his fingertips on the soft, warm curve of her nape.
Goosebumps rose beneath his hand, but she didn’t flinch or stutter. It was a testament to how badly she wanted this phone call. She was determined to prove she could do it, with or without distractions.
As he feathered his touch down the sinuous line of her spine, he interjected questions that Liv would ask. Kate answered with quick-witted untruths and seamlessly redirected the conversation.
She could absolutely pull this off.
He drew his hand away and stepped back. Anticipation hummed through his body as he stalked to the safe and removed one of the phones.
Keeping her alive introduced new problems and temptations, but the challenge excited him. She excited him.
He locked the safe and returned to her. “If you’re playing me, there will be repercussions.”
“I’m not.” She picked at her fingernail, avoiding his eyes. “Before I make this call, I need you to promise me two things.”
He could guess her demands. “Choose one.”
“But—”
“Only one, Kate.”
Pressing her lips together, she stared at her bare feet. Crossed her arms. Lowered them. Then she lifted her gaze, decision made. “I need your word that Tate will go free.”
“When Lucia finds him—”
“I want a deadline.” She raised her chin. “Promise me you’ll release him if she hasn’t found him in one week.”
“One year.”
“What?” She gasped. “He’s chained in a shack, sleeping on a dirt floor, without a bucket to shit in.”
“There is a bucket.”
“Please, don’t say—”
“To shit in.”
Her neck went taut, and she gritted her teeth. “One month, tops.”
“Six months.”
“Three months.”
“Six months. I’ll keep him fed and cared for. No harm will come to him.”
Her mouth quivered. “Six months is too long.”
“That, or we forget about the phone call and go with option three. What will it be?”
“Damn you.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, inhaled deeply, and dropped her hand. “If Lucia doesn’t locate him in six months, you’ll release him, alive, and never hurt him or touch him again. That includes you or anyone under your command. Promise me.”
“You have my word.”
She gave a stiff nod, set her gaze on the phone, and rattled off a phone number.
He dialed and put it on speaker.
A dulcet, feminine voice answered on the first ring. “Who is this?”
“Liv? It’s Kate.”
“Kate? Oh, thank God.” Movement sounded through the speaker. “Are you okay? We’ve been worried sick. Where are you?”
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
She ran through her spiel, her voice as strong and mesmerizing as her eye contact. She smiled and motioned energetically with her hands, one-hundred-percent committed to misleading her closest friend. “So you can stop looking for me, okay? I don’t want to be found.”
“Wow, I…” Liv released a heavy breath. “I’m relieved to hear your voice, but we really need to see you. Just tell me where you are and—”
“You’ll what? Check things out to make sure I’m not screwing up? Don’t assume you know what’s good for me.”
Tiago clenched his hand around the phone, his nerves on high alert.
“You’re calling from an untraceable number,” Liv said cautiously. “I know I’m on speaker phone. Is he there? Listening to our conversation?”
“You have every reason to hate him.” Kate gave him a firm look and held up her palm, staying him. “He poisoned Lucia, mutilated Tate’s back, and the thing he forced Tate and Van do together… It’s unforgivable.”
“He told you about that?”
“Of course. He tells me everything. I know he has issues. God, they’re never-ending.”
He narrowed his eyes.
She narrowed hers right back. “But we’re working through them. Together.”
“He kidnapped you, Kate, and it’s not uncommon to become attached and feel affection toward your captor. It’s a psychological response, the mind’s way of surviving.”
“Is that what happened with Josh? You kidnapped and tortured him, so his feelings toward you are just survival tools? Marrying you was his coping mechanism for the hell you put him through?”
“Don’t you dare,” Liv snapped. “You were there, and you know damn well what he and I mean to each other.” Her fuming breaths rattled the phone. “Where’s Tate?”
Tiago hovered a finger over the end button and shook his head.
“I don’t know.” Kate pressed a hand against her breastbone. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she kept the emotion out of her voice. “I love you, Liv, but I’m going to hang up now. Don’t look for me. Don’t worry about me. I’m exactly where I want to be.”
“Kate, wait—”
He disconnected the call and pocketed the phone, monitoring her expression.
The facade she’d maintained for Liv gave way to a heartbroken stare and hunched shoulders.
“She’ll worry. They all will.” She inched backward in the direction of the exit. “But they won’t look for me.”
He let her continue her tentative retreat through the doorway, holding her teary gaze until she turned away in the corridor. When his ears perked to the soft, distressed sounds she tried to swallow down, he stalked after her.
“Kate.” He leaned a shoulder against the doorframe and folded his arms across his chest.
She paused in the hallway with her back to him, her posture curling in on itself. The call to her friend marked the point of no return. A decision that would haunt her until she died.
She made a deal with the devil, and in the end, the devil always won.
“You wanted two promises from me.” He rested a hand in his pocket and touched the finger blade. “The one you chose guarantees Tate’s freedom while sentencing you to a lifetime in captivity. Or worse. Nothing is stopping me from killing you and hiding your body. Your friends will be none the wiser.”
“I know.” Her rigid back contracted with the heave of her breaths.
“That was your second request, the promise you didn’t choose. You wanted my word to keep you alive after the phone call.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t beg or cower. Didn’t turn around to see if death was coming. Instead, she placed one foot before the other, eyes forward, and slowly walked to her room.
From his stance in the doorway, he watched her crawl onto the mattress and curl up on her side. With a strange pinch in his chest, he closed the door to his room and locked it.
Tomorrow, he would release her from the confinement of the second floor.
But she would never be free.
If she tried to run, he would kill her.
CHAPTER 7
The next day, Tiago woke before dawn with a sense of levity pulling at his lips. The pounding in his head had abated. His vision was clear. No signs of dizziness. For the first time in a month, he didn’t feel like an invalid.
More than that, he had something to entice him out of bed. Something beyond the obligations of running a criminal organization.
His gaze clung to the door as he rose to his feet and stretched. Was she still asleep?
He envisioned all that golden hair fanned out around her serene face. As he showered and groomed, he imagined what her fair skin and angelic blue eyes would look like in the daylight.
By the time he slipped on his boots and stepped into the hall, he was starving for a glimpse of her.
The sun had just risen, spilling faint light into the antechamber, where he found Kate on the bed. Not asleep.
The mattress sat on the floor, and she knelt at the end of it. With her back to him, her hair fell in wet tangles from a recent shower.
“Come on, dammit.” She bent over her knees, scrubbing the bed with a towel. “Fucking shit.”
He prowled closer, craning his neck to see around her. “What are you doing?”
Her hands froze, and her head shot up. She didn’t glance back or meet his eyes as he moved to stand beside her.
She returned her attention to the bare mattress and the red spot at the center, working the towel over the blotch. All her huffing and rubbing only made the stain worse.
“What happened?”
“What’s it look like?” She threw the ruined towel aside. “I started my period.”
“Is this the first time?”
She shot him a bland look.
His groin tightened. Her bitchiness did nothing to negate how goddamn striking her eyes looked in the sunlight. Iridescent shades of blue glimmered beneath long, thick lashes. As he continued to stare, her delicate nose twitched, and her full, pouty lips curved downward.
“Answer the question.” He strode to the doorless bathroom and checked the supplies. Sh
ampoo, soap, toothpaste, toilet paper…
She climbed to her feet, watching him rummage through the shit under the sink. “This is my first period since I’ve been here.”
It had been a lifetime since he’d given any thought to a woman’s cycle. “You’ve been here for…”
“Thirty-six days.” She blew out a breath. “Stress fucks with the body, in case you didn’t know.”
Boones would’ve prepared for this, though he’d done a piss poor job of dressing her. She wore another one of those strapless rags, the linen thin enough to reveal the dusky color of her nipples. The style had been practical when her arms were bound, but Christ.
He forced his gaze away, irritated by the distraction.
“We’ll eat downstairs.” He headed to the door and removed the key from his pocket. “You’re free to explore the house and grounds.”
Her eyes bulged, her whisper a halting, disbelieving exhale. “Really?”
“If you try to run or attack anyone here, you’ll pray for death long before I’m through with you. Get me?”
“I get you.” She swallowed. “Does Tate know I’m with you?”
“No.” He unlocked the door and found Arturo waiting on the other side, as expected.
The six guards on-site spoke both English and Spanish. Tiago was fluent in many languages but primarily used English.
“When she’s outside of this room, she doesn’t leave your sight.” He strode past Arturo and took the stairs to the ground floor.
The wooden steps groaned beneath his boots, and dry heat seeped from the cracks in the stone walls. More stone greeted him on the main level. Old and musty, the building was erected to withstand the arid climate, without comfort in mind. It was barely habitable, let alone anesthetically pleasing.
When he purchased it years ago, he updated the utilities and brought in enough mattresses to house an army. The isolation of the desert made it ideal for a temporary hideaway, and its solid stone exterior should hold up against gunfire. Hopefully, the latter wouldn’t be tested during his stay.
A peek through the gap in one of the covered, barred windows confirmed everyone on patrol was positioned appropriately. Spread out around the perimeter, three men vigilantly watched the horizon.
