“Fucking bones it is, then,” drawls Dante, breaking the deadlock first.
Joseph nods. “Fucking bones since the day we met. Now get the hell out. I have shit to explain.”
“Don’t bother,” I say angrily, heading for the door.
I need to escape before my newly resuscitated heart starts bleeding out all over the floor.
26
Joseph
I sink back down to the bed with a groan.
“Great moment to grow a fucking conscience, Dante. Maybe next time wait until after I’ve had another morphine hit, or twenty.”
“Make that a double,” he muses, dragging his chair over to my bedside. “That woman shoots like a professional and hits like a boxer. How are you feeling?”
I watch him flex his jaw a couple of times. I can hear the clicking of bone from here, and a swell of pride surges up inside of me. She gave enough of a shit to call him. That’s got to count for something.
“Like someone stuck a lightning bolt through my shoulder. Where the hell are we?” I glance around the cavernous bedroom. “This place stinks of naphthalene and money.”
“Emilio’s old estate in Leticia.” My head snaps back to him in surprise. “Evidently her new friend has an inbuilt homing device.”
“Does Martinez know you’re here?”
“Not yet, but she soon will.” He leans back in his chair and stretches his legs out. “Who shot you? Was it one of Fernandez’s?”
I let out a bark of laughter until the pain muffles it again. “No, Martinez.”
“Let’s start calling her by her real name, shall we?” Dante flashes me that dangerous smile of his. Whoever the fuck she is, she better be praying hard to God right now because that smile is a precursor to murder. “Well, well, well,” he adds, pondering my revelation. “It’s going to be even more of a pleasure to end her bloodline.”
I watch his fingers start straying toward his gun without him even realizing it. He’s been itching to kill her for days, and after this morning’s events I have no fucking inclination to stop him.
“Just do it quick, and don't let Anna see,” I say, gritting my teeth. “Give me an update on where we are with the cartels.”
“Usual anarchy.” He stops toying with fate and crosses his arms instead. “Fernandez is being a trigger-happy cunt, Gomez is being a weak cunt, and the rest of Los Cinco Grandes are putting up the pretense that they’re all blameless cunts, while executing twice as many and siphoning off a shit load of coke on the sly.” He shoots his eyes to the ceiling in disgust. There’s a good reason we walked away from this life, but Colombia will always have her claws in him. He can fight it all he wants to, but it’s pumping through his veins. Split him open and he’ll bleed red, blue and yellow. “We need to restore order before Rick’s distribution channels go up in smoke.”
“Take Fernandez out?” I suggest, shifting position and wincing.
“And replace him with who? Let’s see what the bastard has to say for himself first. He knows I’m here with an army. He knows I’m pissed. If he doesn't turn up for the round table discussions on Friday, he’s a dead man.”
“So, you’re sticking around? Is Eve okay with it?”
“Do I have a choice? Fuck, I hate this house.” He looks around with a sneer on his face. “It makes me want to put a bullet in my past, all over again.”
“That’s because it pricks at your non-existent conscience again.”
He grunts, but doesn’t comment, sliding his hand through his black hair in irritation. “Gabriela’s still here. Tending to her flock of broken whores.”
“Now you’re the one acting like a cunt. You did good giving this place to her. Has Anna guessed she’s Manuel’s mother yet?”
“Why would she care?” he says, looking unimpressed. “They fucked once, right? A long fucking time ago… A dead man is not a rival.”
“Maybe she won't see it like that,” I say, gritting my teeth again.
“You think too much.”
“One of us has to.” My head sinks down into the pillowcase, but I force myself to stay awake. Now isn't the time for rest. Not when all the newly healed cracks in Anna have fractured again. “Listen, Dante—”
“What?” He’s distracted. He’s sensing blood.
“I need two things from you before you go and commit your fucking version of familicide.” I shift position again, feeling my chain slither across my bare chest. Did she see them? Does she remember? “I need you to take that morphine drip and turn it up to the max. Afterward, when the good stuff is kicking in, you’re going to help me out of this bed.”
“What are you, a machine?” He lifts his eyebrows in disapproval.
“That’s why you hired me in the first place, right?” I shoot him a weak grin. “Just do it, Dante… I’ve got a lot of shit I need to put right today.”
* * *
Some places stamp their blueprints into your brain. I haven't set foot in this house for years, but I can still remember where every hallway and staircase leads. Gabriela hasn't changed the décor since Dante bequeathed her the house. It’s still as pretentious as you’d expect from a former cartel kingpin with too much money to burn. Emilio Santiago’s obsession with gold means you still need a pair of fucking sunglasses to walk around.
Emilio was insane. No one disputed it, least of all Dante. The guy’s madness spilled out into every aspect of his life, from his interior design choices to his business decisions, but it was his pathological jealousy toward his brother that proved his undoing. He should have remembered that Dante inherited the higher IQ in the family, even if they shared the same vicious disposition. These days, Eve tempers the worst of her husband, but she’ll never tame the beast completely.
Where are you, Luna?
By a quick process of elimination, I exit the house via the back patio doors and make my way across a courtyard that’s sheltered by a dripping green pergola toward the outdoor swimming pool area. It’s still the same palm tree oasis I remembered, encircling an Olympic-sized pool that’s lined with the finest Sicilian gray marble.
I find her sitting cross-legged by the edge of the water, chewing on her nails and staring up at a melting pot of color that’s sinking slow and steady into the rainforest in the distance. She looks like a child who lost an argument with a bottle of red sauce. Her white T-shirt and denim skirt are stained dark and ugly with my blood, and her wild golden hair has been dulled with dirt and tangles.
She still burns brighter than any sunset.
But it’s the moon she really outshines.
She looks over when she hears me approach and scrambles to her feet. Her delicate face is a mask of shock. Her river-deep blue eyes are unsure and fearful.
“How are you even walking?” she whispers. “Ten hours ago you were dying in my arms.”
“It’s called morphine and a good doctor, sweetheart.” I come to an awkward stop in front of her, breathing shallowly to keep the peaks of pain to a foothill, not a mountain.
“Do they amputate hurtful revelations as well?”
She looks away, but I still see the glass in her eyes.
“Hey.” When she doesn't respond, I catch her chin between my fingers and jerk her back to me. “Do I still make you feel?” I demand, ignoring the pull across my freshly stitched wound; needing the hurt of her confirmation more. “Like that time in the motel room. Tell me, Luna.”
“I’m nothing but a guilt fuck to you.”
“You have never been a guilt fuck to me.” Letting go of her chin, I get right up in her face. She seems so small and fragile with my great shadow overwhelming her light. “Answer my goddamn question. Do I still make you feel?”
“Yes, you still make me feel,” she admits reluctantly, refusing to break eye contact because that’s how fucking brave she is. “But it’s the worst kind now. It’s hurt and betrayal; it’s lies and confusion.”
“I still feel you too, Luna,” I tell her, impressing my words on her so forcefully she
has no choice but to accept them. “I feel you so deep and so hard that sometimes, when you breathe, it’s my fucking oxygen that you’re stealing.” I watch her eyes widen as she takes a step back, stumbling in the face of my own revelation. “Shall I continue?”
“Why didn’t you tell me what happened six months ago?” She takes another step back, and then another, as if she’s scared of my answer.
“Because I chose to make amends instead. Because I chose to hunt down every single man who took you and hurt you, and kill them as slowly and painfully as possible. I had no fucking idea how deep my sadism ran until I had those men in a room with my knife.” I follow her step for step until I have her pinned up against the side of the house. “Because I made that shit right.” I say, repeating my life mantra for the second time today, as if it’s somehow going to fix everything between us.
“But you didn’t,” she says sadly. “I needed the truth. I needed it to heal, and you withheld that from me.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” It feels like someone just shot me again. I’m in blinding agony thinking I may have contributed to her pain.
“Maybe if I’d known about the Russians, about what they did to Dante’s daughter, about why you were hunting them, about why they targeted me, I could have come to terms with everything. I could have moved on instead of being stuck in some hellish purgatory screaming ‘why me?’ at the walls every day.”
She’s crying now, but she’s refusing to wipe her tears away. She’s making me drown in her anguish, and I am. By fucking Christ, I am.
“Do you want to know what they did to me, Joseph? Do you want to know every dirty, sordid detail? Would it help you to understand how hard it’s been for me? To fully grasp the peace you denied me?”
“No.” I turn away, shaking my head furiously, not wanting to hear a single word, but she keeps on talking anyway. I forced my veracity on her and now I need to listen to hers.
“They tied me down to a dirty mattress in a basement, Joseph. They pissed on me; they threw their drinks on me. When they got bored, they took turns fucking me, over and over again, to see who could make me bleed first. Truth or dare,” she sobs, her face collapsing under the weight of the memory. “Truth or fucking dare. Do you want to know what my version of that game was? Do you want to know which one they made me play? My truth was them choking and beating me until I passed out. My dare was seeing how many of their cocks I could take at the same time.”
“No!” I roar, as all my walls come crashing down. Every emotion I keep locked away inside is yelling out for attention. “No!”
“Yes, yes, yes!” she screams back, forcing me once again to accept her pain. Still, I throw my hands above my head, ramming the crooks of my elbows against my ears to block her out. “Do you feel me now, Joseph?” I hear her demanding. “Are you going to keep on deluding yourself, or is every part of you finally realizing what I am?”
Broken.
Unlovable.
The same fucking things I see when I look in the mirror.
I drop my arms and swing back around. “You think any of this makes you less of a woman to me?”
“Yes!”
“Never!” I take her face between my hands, ignoring the torture that’s splitting apart my shoulder and crash my lips down onto hers. I drive my tongue so deep into her mouth it’s as if I’m exorcising her demons. I drink her tainted sweetness like it’s an elixir. I feel her arms form a chain around my neck, her soft breasts pressing tight against the most damaged part of both of us, and I know I’m close to losing my mind for her. “Give me your pain,” I say harshly, breaking away. “Give me your fucking pain, Anna. Every nightmare. Every moment of doubt. Every scar… I want them all, and then I’ll heal them with my truth. I won’t stop healing them, because you are my truth, Anna. Your flaws are so fucking flawless. Forgive me, and I will make this so right you’ll wonder why you ever gave the past so much power in the first place.”
This time when I take her mouth, I temper my pace and violence, savoring the taste of her more than my possession.
“I thought I’d lost you in the car,” she says, clinging to my neck as we go down together. “I thought you’d died in my arms.”
“You will never lose me, Anna.” I take her jaw between my hands again. “You can never strip the light of her shadow, not unless you choose to let the darkness in. But you burn too bright and too brilliant to allow it, sweetheart. For as long as you want me to, I will walk this earth with you, protecting you—”
“I can’t give you what you want,” she confesses, her face breaking all over again. “Sex… I’m so scared. I may never be able to—”
“Then I’ll wait. I’ll wait a thousand lifetimes,” I tell her, meaning every word. “I will love this body whole again, but only if you allow it… Will you allow it, Anna?”
She nods, eyes wide and frightened, but trusting. So fucking trusting, that I want to take that fragility and build a fortress around it, and then hire a couple of fire-breathing dragons to patrol the airspace for eternity.
I follow the curves of her jaw with my fingertips, gathering up her loose tears on the way, smoothing strands of gold from her face. And then I kiss her one more time. As soft and gentle as a man like me can manage, which is still forceful enough to make her moan into my mouth. She’s the twister I’ve been waiting on, Cash. I’m so fucking sure of it.
It’s basic.
Deep-rooted.
Her rightness just sealed the fucking deal.
27
Anna
I can sense the stillness in a moment again. How could I have existed without it for so long? The notes are longer, thicker, and less staccato. All the bad stuff can’t touch me in here.
My body’s not used to it, though. My muscles keep twitching with inactivity, and my brain’s like an overexcited child. Yet, here I am. Lying in a white bathtub, in a dead devil’s lair somewhere in the middle of Colombia, watching the steam rise and the water turn from clear to opaque—recognizing that I’ve been running scared for too long, and that maybe I need to accept it and appreciate the silence, and then roll in it like catnip for a while.
My last thought makes me smile. I don't care about the chaos awaiting me outside these walls, or the list of my wrongs to make right that are daunting and endless. I only have this stillness, this moment, his words…
My God, his words.
How can a man as damaged and dangerous as him spin lines like Shakespeare? I believed in every cadence. I rebuilt from them; I forgave him. He reached inside of my chest, took a firm hold of what was left of me, and then sculpted it in his image.
Right now, I have no expectations for the future, and my past is a haze shade of gray. I just want to stay in this bathtub forever with him fast asleep in the bed next door.
That’s a lie.
I want to crawl into that bed with him and continue my moment there, wrapped up in his sticky warmth and watching his chest rise and fall to the beat of my newly formed heart.
Washing the conditioner out of my hair, I rise from the water, light-headed and drunk on him. With a towel wrapped around my body, I step into the bedroom that Gabriela showed us to earlier. The sun has all but set, purging the white and gold room and its four-poster with the palest of pinks. The cicadas outside are even louder than my thoughts.
Joseph’s shirtless again, sprawled out on his back, with one elbow tucked behind his head, still and silent. I stand in the doorway, appreciating his body even more now that the imminent danger has passed. The man has a set of abs to die for, with a dusting of dirty blond hair that leads me down the happiest of trails. His belt buckle is undone and top button of his blue jeans lies open giving me a glimpse of his black briefs. Skimming the huge bulge pushing against his zipper, I move lower still, down the long length of his legs to his boots with their trailing laces.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I lift one hand and measure it against my own. It’s nearly twice the size of mine, tanned and s
carred—
“How was the bath?”
I jump as his fingers close around mine. “Shit! You scared me!”
“I’m a light sleeper, even jacked up on all this morphine.”
My gaze strays to the darkening red stain in the middle of his bandage.
“It's fine, Luna,” he says, sitting up and curling his other hand around my neck. “You smell…delicious.” A knot of panic tightens in my stomach as he burrows his face into my neck. He must have felt me stiffen because he lets go of me right away. “Lie down. Let me hold you.”
He shifts sideways to make a space for me, moving slowly because his chest must hurt like hell. I curl up in the warmth left behind by his body, my back to him and still wrapped in the fluffy white towel. He doesn’t say a word. He just places a heavy hand on my hip as our breathing falls effortlessly in time with one another’s.
It’s another moment. Another perfect moment. So much so, that I find myself reaching down and interlocking our fingers again. After another couple of seconds, I shift backward, and then again, until the hardness and heat coming off his body is scorching me through the fabric of the towel. But still, it’s not enough.
“If you go wriggling on my dick like that again, sweetheart,” he warns, “we’re going to have ourselves a problem.”
“Make me feel safe,” I beg him.
“I’ll make you feel everything.”
His fingers slide from mine to reach for the edges of my towel. With one quick jerk, it falls open to my jagged intake of breath. Rolling me onto my back, he pulls the loose material apart, like he’s unwrapping a precious gift.
“Christ, you’re beautiful.” The rawness of his expression causes my hand to fly out and cover my naked pussy, but he tugs it away. “Tell me you’re nearly a quarter moon.” He cups my breast, rubbing his thumb across the hardening nub of my nipple, before palming the hollow of my stomach with his fingers splayed out. My waist is so tiny and his hands are so large, he conquers the whole terrain.
Shadow Man: Grayson Duet: Book One Page 16
