by Julia Sykes
I also started styling my curls at fifteen, I recalled. That little act of asserting my independence and individuality had saved me from myself.
Well, my curls, my music, and a lot of expensive therapy.
Against my better judgment, I ran my hands over my hair. My chest tightened when I felt the frizzy mess.
I took another breath and forced my arms to my sides, pushing my palms flat against the mattress.
I’m not going to lose my shit just because I can’t style my hair. That’s insane behavior.
I forced myself to focus on whatever inane sitcom was playing out on the TV, pretending I didn’t notice how tight my skin felt. How much I itched to move, to scream, to run. To do something that I could control.
My gaze drifted toward the bathroom, but I quickly snapped my attention back to the TV.
Not that, I told myself firmly. I’m not doing that.
I heard the soft click of the lock disengaging, but I didn’t bother to turn to look at Mateo. He was going to ask me if I was ready to comply with his demands. And I wasn’t going to.
If I couldn’t control anything else, I could control this: I didn’t have to cave and help him smooth over my sudden absence from school.
He could keep me in miserable isolation, but now that I’d found the only tiny thing that I could control, I wouldn’t surrender it for any reason. It was the only thing tying me to sanity.
“You didn’t eat your lunch,” he noted, his voice heavy with disapproval.
I simply shrugged, choosing not to respond. I’d moved from guilt to numbness at this point, and I no longer felt the stupid impulse to apologize.
He sighed. “Well, you will eat your dinner.”
The rich scent of lasagna hit my nose, and I finally turned to face him. “And what happens if I don’t?” I asked, all bitterness and no fire. “Will there be more consequences?”
He took a moment to consider his answer, his eyes studying my face. Whatever he saw in my expression, he didn’t like it.
His mouth pressed to a thin slash, and he nodded curtly. “Yes, there will,” he confirmed. “So, you’d better eat every bite.”
“Whatever you say, warden,” I mumbled, but there was no force behind my antagonistic comment.
This morning, I’d felt playful with Mateo. Even when I’d been mad at him, I’d felt like I could express my feelings. Yelling at him might not have been very nice, but at least I’d been engaging with him on an emotional level.
Whatever I’d felt for him then was gone now. I felt hollowed out, and all I had left was my grim determination to cling on to my one last shred of control with a death grip.
I took the plate he offered me without really looking at him. He watched me eat in silence, which I would have found weird if I weren’t so focused on not telling him anything about my contacts at school. If I kept him locked out completely, he couldn’t manipulate me into surrendering.
He took the plate back when I finished the final bite.
“I’m guessing you’re not ready to cooperate with me,” he said, his resigned tone telling me he already knew my answer.
I simply shook my head and laid back on my little nest of pillows, turning my attention to the TV.
“Sofia.” He said my name slowly, his tone tense with uncharacteristic uncertainty. “I don’t like how you’re reacting to this, but I can’t just change the consequences. I have to be consistent.”
“No one’s asking you to change anything,” I said dully, refusing to engage.
“I’ll stay in here with you,” he announced, as though he’d arrived at a solution. “See? I can compromise.”
“I don’t want you in here. Just go away, Mateo.”
If I let him stay, he might put his tender hands all over my body and break down my resistance. I refused to let that happen.
He hesitated, so I rolled over onto my side, facing away from him; the physical equivalent of fuck off.
“We’ll talk more tomorrow,” he said. It sounded like a command.
If he thought I’d get all melty if he bossed me around and called me his good girl, he was mistaken.
When he’d invaded my space and my senses with those dark words this morning, I’d felt far happier than I should have, given my circumstances. I could see now that I’d just been allowing him to distract me from my miserable situation. As soon as Mateo reminded me that he was part of that misery, I severed any emotional bonds I’d been forming.
I might have harbored an intense crush for years, but now, I didn’t feel anything for Mateo. Not anymore.
Chapter 7
Mateo
Fuck. I tossed my Xbox controller aside, giving up. Had I really thought that playing a mindless video game could distract me from the disturbing image of Sofia’s hollow stare?
When she’d ignored me at lunchtime, I’d assessed that she was just sulking. But by the time I took her dinner, the giggling girl I’d played with this morning had been replaced by a cold, emotionless woman.
I’d thought confining her to the bedroom was the mildest punishment I could impose on her. When she’d accused me of being an untrustworthy criminal, it had been all I could do to cling on to control. The stinging insults were too venomous coming from my sweet Sofia.
My immediate impulse had been to take her over my knee and give her a sound spanking until she agreed to obey me.
But the shred of conscience I possessed acknowledged that I would be acting in anger. That impulse had more to do with my feelings about losing her trust than it did about her disobedience.
And if she thought I was a bad man for demanding her phone contacts, she’d think I was a complete monster if I spanked her for upsetting me with her pointed accusations.
Sending her to her room had seemed like the most restrained option available to me. I’d chosen that punishment because I thought I was being cautious with her.
Maybe that had been a mistake. She’d responded so well to my touch this morning; she obviously thrived on physical contact. I’d thought depriving her would be an effective way to drive home the lesson I was trying to teach her.
Instead, simply a day in isolation seemed to have broken her spirit far more thoroughly than I could have managed with a sound thrashing.
I ran a hand over my face, frustrated. If I didn’t actually care what Sofia thought of me, this wouldn’t be so difficult. Spanking her until she submitted would have been the obvious course of action. But I’d decided that she wasn’t ready for me to push her that far. I’d decided I wanted her to obey me because she trusted me, not because she feared me.
Despite everything I’d done to her so far—drugging her, abducting her, and imprisoning her in my home—she hadn’t looked at me with true fear. I never wanted that to change.
My fists clenched at my sides as my indecision tore at me. She’d told me to leave her alone, but she was my captive. I didn’t have to honor her wishes. I could do whatever I wanted.
And I wanted to hold her and pet her until she snuggled into me and smiled again.
Forcing myself on her wouldn’t earn her smile.
My phone pinged, and my stomach dropped. That tiny little sound was my unique alert that someone had set off my security system. I quickly opened my app and determined that the breach was located at the back of my property. Someone had made it over the walled barrier I’d hidden in the tree line behind the house.
There was only one person who would be desperate enough to dare to assault my home: Caesar Hernández. Sofia’s father had sent men to retrieve her.
Possessive rage ripped through my body in a torrent I’d never experienced before, driving me to action before I fully considered a plan or assessed the risks. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have sent a message to Adrián for backup, and I would have stationed myself as close to Sofia as possible to shelter her from a defensive position.
As it was, mind-numbing fury propelled me toward my enemies, my muscles straining with the imperative to
rip apart anyone who was foolish enough to try to take her from me.
I could have grabbed one the many Glocks I kept stashed around my home as I dashed to the back door. But using a gun to dispatch the men who threatened what was mine wouldn’t satisfy me. Vicious, primal instinct urged me to mutilate them with my bare hands.
Based on the heat signatures provided by my security system, there were three of them.
An easy number to handle on my own. Caesar had opted for a stealthy extraction rather than a full-on assault. I almost wished there were more attackers for me to punish. Only three might not be enough for me to vent my rage.
I pressed the button on my app that activated the floodlights behind my house just before I dropped my phone onto the grass. I wanted full use of my hands for this.
The assailants cursed when the sudden wash of light seared their eyes. Their seconds of blindness provided all the time I needed to launch my attack.
I put one man down with a punch to the throat. The second man’s jaw shattered beneath my fist. The third tried to aim an assault rifle at me, but I ripped it from his hands before he could get his bearings.
Satisfied that the other two were incapacitated for a few minutes, I decided to take more time with this one. I whipped the rifle around and slammed the butt of the gun into his ribs, hard enough to ensure they cracked, but not hard enough to puncture his lung.
None of them would be allowed to die for several more hours, at least. Once my rage was sated by their blood, I could dump whatever was left of them at Caesar’s doorstep as a warning to never fuck with me again.
“Sofia is mine,” I snarled into the man’s face as I tackled him to the ground, pinning him with my hand around his throat.
“Wait,” he choked, his fingernails scrabbling at my wrist.
I squeezed, cutting off his air supply. His eyes bulged, and his face turned purple. Just as he started to go limp beneath me, I eased off.
“You don’t get to die yet,” I seethed. “Did you really think you could come into my home and take her from me? I’ll send you all back to Caesar in pieces.”
“We didn’t come…to take her.” The man struggled to speak through heaving breaths. “Just a message.”
I flexed my fingers around his throat. “You expect me to believe that you broke into my property armed with assault rifles just to deliver a message?”
The man held his hands up, desperate to placate me. “Precautions. Caesar knows…” He coughed and gasped. “Attacking you will mean war. He wants to make a deal.”
“And why couldn’t he just call me?”
“Would you have listened?” he rasped.
I growled down at the man, because I knew he was right. “I don’t have to make a deal with Caesar,” I ground out. “I have Sofia. He has to prove his loyalty to Adrián if he ever wants to see his daughter again.”
“He knows this. But he wants… She’s engaged. The alliance with Pedro Ronaldo. Caesar can’t back out. It will upset the balance of power with the Mexican cartels.”
My hand tightened around his throat, and I barely retained the presence of mind to prevent myself from crushing his windpipe. “I don’t give a fuck about the Mexican cartels. If Caesar thinks I’ll give Sofia to Ronaldo, then he doesn’t understand what I’m really capable of.”
The man’s mouth opened and closed. I loosened my grip enough to allow him to breathe. I wasn’t nearly finished with him.
“You might not…care. But Adrián Rodríguez does,” he persisted. “Ronaldo expects to marry a virgin, and if you—”
Bone and cartilage crunched beneath my hand, and the man’s face went slack.
I threw my head back and roared out my fury. He wasn’t supposed to be dead yet.
The other two were still alive, though. I could hear them groaning behind me.
I pushed to my feet, stalking toward them. They cowered in my shadow.
I could kill them so easily. I wanted to kill them. They’d tried to take Sofia away from me.
We didn’t come to take her. Just a message. I recalled the dead man’s words. You might not care. But Adrián Rodríguez does.
I jerked my hand through my hair. I couldn’t do something that might start a war. Not without talking to Adrián first. I wouldn’t make a rash decision that would drag him into bloodshed and mortal danger.
“Get up,” I snarled at the two assailants who were still breathing.
Barely.
“Take your dead friend and get the fuck off my property.”
They struggled to their feet, and the man with the broken jaw swayed before dropping back to his knees.
“You can walk out of here, or I can throw your corpse over the wall,” I threatened.
The prospect of a gory death provided the man with enough adrenaline to get moving. I followed them the short distance through the tree line to the defensive wall, watching to ensure that they actually left. They struggled to scale it with the ropes they’d used when they’d broken in. But my silent menace gave them the strength they needed to coordinate climbing over and dragging the dead man with them. They didn’t even hiss in pain when the barbed wire they’d cut to access my property sliced at their skin. Fear was a powerful drug.
Once I was sure that they were in full retreat, I walked back through the trees and retrieved my phone from where I’d dropped it on my lawn. My fingers shook slightly from residual rage, but I managed to put in the call to Adrián.
“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately, knowing I wouldn’t call at this hour unless there was a problem.
“Caesar sent men to break into my house.” My words were so roughened with unspent fury that they were barely intelligible.
Adrián seemed to understand. “They came for Sofia?”
I recognized his deadly calm tone all too well. My sadistic boss was prepared to mete out some punishment of his own for this threat to his control of the territory. Caesar had always been a reluctant associate. He’d been in charge of the Rodríguez cartel’s west coast operation before Adrián’s father had exiled him from Colombia and posted him here in California. Adrián had ruthlessly wrested power away from Caesar years ago, subjugating him.
“They said they came to deliver a message,” I said, managing to regulate my voice to something slightly more civilized. “Caesar thinks the arranged marriage between Sofia and Pedro Ronaldo still stands. He wanted to make sure I don’t…” I gnashed my teeth, too enraged by Caesar’s demands to say them out loud.
“I see,” Adrián replied coolly. He was already aware of Sofia’s engagement to Ronaldo, and he understood what a promise like that entailed in our world.
Ronaldo would be expecting a virginal bride.
“I won’t give her to him, Adrián,” I vowed. “I can’t give her to him.”
“I know,” my friend said heavily.
If I were simply another lackey in his employ, Adrián wouldn’t permit any rebellious shit from me. He would expect me to fall in line and do what was best for our organization, or I could take a bullet to the brain instead.
But we were as close as brothers, even if he was my boss. I worked for him because I was happy to get paid obscene amounts of money to watch his back. Protecting him didn’t feel like a job.
“I’m going to call Caesar and smooth things over,” Adrián promised. “But under no circumstances are you to fuck Sofia. I’m going to have to give him my word that she will remain a virgin for as long as you have her as your hostage.”
“You’re going to let Caesar keep his deal with Ronaldo?” I demanded, incredulous.
Before I could snap at my friend that I wouldn’t comply with his order, he continued on. “Yes, I’m going to let Caesar keep his deal with Ronaldo. For as long as Ronaldo is alive, and he won’t be for much longer. I owe Stefano Duarte a favor, anyway. I’m sure he’ll be eager to help me take out his main rival for trafficking our product through Mexico.”
“You’ll support Duarte over Ronaldo?” I knew all
too well that Adrián owed Stefano Duarte a huge favor—the brutal drug lord who liked to style himself as a gentleman criminal had helped us rescue Valentina from her abusive husband and smuggle her safely back to California.
Duarte and Ronaldo both profited off their friendship with the Rodríguez cartel as they trafficked our Colombian cocaine through Mexico and into the States. But Duarte had decided to bet on Adrián, while Ronaldo had cozied up to Caesar.
The uneasy peace we’d brokered since Adrián had stolen Valentina for himself was about as stable as a house of cards. And mishandling the situation with Sofia could bring the whole thing crashing down.
“I can’t openly support Stefano Duarte,” Adrián said. “Things are tense enough without me assisting him with a full-on assault on Ronaldo. But I can start working with Duarte to support his efforts to choke off Ronaldo’s business and bleed him dry. Someone will kill him soon enough if he’s not bringing in money. A wedding date hasn’t been set yet, and Sofia has another year before she finishes college. Ronaldo won’t be a problem by then.
“In the meantime,” he continued, his tone sharpening, “Sofia’s virginity has to remain intact. If I’m going to give my word to Caesar, you will have to honor it.”
“I know,” I agreed. Adrián’s word was everything. His power and his control of this territory relied on pervasive fear, but also stability. If Adrián made a promise, he had to keep it. Otherwise, he’d get a knife in the back quickly.
I wouldn’t be the one to put his safety at risk by making a liar out of him.
A year. I could last a year without taking Sofia’s virginity. There were other ways to take my pleasure from her that didn’t involve breaking her hymen.
“I mean it, Mateo,” Adrián warned. “You can do whatever you want with her, as long as she remains a virgin. But keep your cock in your pants. No penetration of any kind. No loopholes.”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” I snapped, knowing full well what he was referring to. I might have fantasized about claiming every one of Sofia’s holes for myself, but I wouldn’t tolerate anyone else talking about her so crassly, not even my best friend.
