by Karin Tabke
“I will repeat, never underestimate Dumas. As head of Reconquista, he will do whatever is necessary to maintain control of his empire. Including removing anyone—blood or not—who defies him. Fatima’s refusal of me portrayed him as a weak father in the eyes of the cartels. If he cannot control his daughter how can he control an empire? He had no choice but to remove her.”
Mateo got it. He had crossed lines he never thought he’d cross to get to Dumas. He’d cross more in his quest to destroy the cartel leader.
“So Fatima refused you, her father disposed of her for her defiance and the dishonor to the family, and Sophia, not wanting to end up like her sister, agreed so she wouldn’t be disposed of as well?”
“Yes.”
“Why you?”
Bertram stiffened indignantly. “I am the eldest son of Victor Bertram, head of the Sinolean familia, second most powerful cartel in Reconquista. Once the bloodlines were merged there would not have been a more powerful cartel in the world.”
“But you want no part of that?”
Dropping his head, Bertram said, “I’m done.”
“Dumas is only seventy, why not take another wife?” Johnny asked.
“Prostate cancer twenty years ago. Fried his balls,” Bertram said.
“So you’re to service his daughter to produce an heir and a spare?”
“Yes.”
“How does Sophia feel about this?” Mateo asked.
“Her feelings are irrelevant.”
“That’s barbaric.”
“To understand Dumas’s power and how he achieved his position at the top of the cartel food chain, you must understand that he lives by the sword and dies by the sword. Unlike the other cartels, he is honorable to his ways, which are old and steeped in the feudal system. And because he lives by the rules, he will always honor them.” Bertram removed his silver-studded black leather vambraces from his forearms and slid them across the table to Mateo. “To the victor go the spoils.”
“What are you saying?” Mateo asked, not touching them. He understood the symbolism of the vambraces. Much like a captain’s bars or a general’s star, it signified rank, and these were of the highest in the cartel, subordinate only to el patrón.
“Since the day Fatima refused me, el patrón keeps Sophia under lock and key. Those are the key to her prison.”
Mateo didn’t comprehend the significance. Bertram leaned in and spoke again. “Everything that was mine is yours to claim. Including the boss’s daughter. Alexander cannot refuse you.”
Mateo’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you doing this?”
“I love Ana. I don’t want my child brought into a world where he is slave to a tyrant.”
“What if I fail?”
“Then we all die.”
chapter one
One week later
Sophia exhaled as she pulled five-year-old Jesús Balderama’s finger out of his left nostril. Along with his grubby finger came a gooey green booger.
“Oh, Jesus, that’s gross,” she said, squeezing his hand as his finger gravitated toward his mouth. Quickly she snatched a tissue from the box on her desk and whisked the booger off his finger, then tossed it into the trash can.
“Go wash your hands, with soap!” She nudged him toward the sink and shook her head as she turned back to the craziness that was her kindergarten class. Twenty-five five-year-olds. What was she thinking when she thought teaching would be easy?
“Are you sure you won’t take me up on the invite? I mean, I am only going to be single for another month and will only have one bachelorette party,” asked Arabella, Sophia’s trusty teacher’s aide and friend, as she wiped Kendall Tegan’s hand before the little girl licked the paste off her open palm.
Sophia held her finger up, asking for a minute, then turned to the kibitzing kids. “Okay, class,” she said in her I-mean-business voice. “Time to put our things neatly away in our cubbies.”
Per usual, the kids continued to focus on their own endeavors. Sophia clapped her hands and said, “Now, children.” They got to it. They knew if their names were put on the board for not listening they would not get their end-of-day treat. And today she had something very special for them: fresh-baked churros from Tia Alma’s kitchen.
Thirty minutes later, as the last parent picked up their cherub, Sophia collapsed into her chair at her desk.
“You need to get out of here, girlfriend,” Arabella said, shaking her bright red head. And Sophia’s fiery friend lived up to the redhead stereotype. She was blue-eyed, fair-skinned, feisty and energetic. Sophia would give anything to trade places with her for just one day.
Sophia nodded. She needed to do a lot of things. But unfortunately she was not like most women her age. “I can’t.”
“You can,” her friend and assistant said. “Come party with me and my friends tonight. Live a little for once in your life.”
She was probably right, but the consequences, if she was caught, would be disastrous for Sophia.
“Tell your father I’m not feeling well and say you’re coming to stay the weekend with me,” Bella pushed.
Lie to her father? Suicide.
“Right.” Even if she did manage to sneak out, she’d be followed electronically via her cell phone, or out in the open by a fistful of bodyguards.
“He’ll let you, especially since—well, since . . .”
“Javi’s death?” Sophia asked, looking up at the petite redhead.
“Yes. You’ve been quiet all week. I know he wasn’t the love of your life, but he was your fiancé. Tell Daddy dearest you need to get away.”
Arabella assumed Sophia was devastated by Javi’s death; she had no idea how loathsome the idea of marrying a man who was as vicious as a rattlesnake, not to mention a virtual stranger, had been to her. And Bella was even more clueless about the happy dance she did when she learned of his death.
Then why did Sophia still feel trapped in her own life?
“You’re free for the time being, Sophia, take advantage of it. Be the girl you always wanted to be, just for a night.”
“I don’t know who I want to be.” She scoffed at herself for not knowing that very important fact. She had lived in the shadow of her family’s power all her life. She understood her role as the youngest of four children was not as strict as that of her older siblings. Sophia had been indulged, allowed to be a kid. But that ended the night her mother left her, a decade ago. All those years gone without a word. Sophia had spent those ten years wondering, hoping, praying the one person she felt the safest with would return. But that didn’t happen. And she knew in her heart it never would. Now, as the last living blood offspring of the great and powerful Alexander Dumas, Sophia was destined to a life of few freedoms.
“Live a little, Sophia,” Bella pleaded. “Just one night, have some fun before you can’t.”
Arabella’s words stirred the rebellious streak that ran a mile wide inside of Sophia but which she dared not reveal. She was an obedient daughter to a tyrannical father who lived and died by an archaic code of honor. And as twisted as it was, she respected him for it. Her spine stiffened despite her fear of repercussions.
But damn it, she was twenty-four, a virgin and finally free from having to marry a man she did not love! She shivered and made the sign of the cross.
Sophia Esperanza Dumas did not have the luxury of re-creating herself. She had been born into a family of antiquated traditions that was ruled by tyranny disguised as honor. Even crazier was her sense of loyalty to the tyranny. It was who she was.
She wasn’t a genius but Sophia was smart enough to know that her freedom would last only as long as it took her father, who made every decision for her, including who she would marry, to pick another husband for her. As it was, she was “in mourning” and so long as she milked it, she figured she could squeeze out another month or so before
her father announced his next choice. As the great patrón’s only surviving child, it was her job, an “honor,” her father had said, that she produce the next heir to the throne.
Sophia let out a long, pensive sigh. Though Papa was barely seventy, he was a healthy, robust man. Yet he would demand she marry within the next few months and bear him a grandchild within the year. And with motherhood she would be restricted from any extracurricular activities. She would in effect be an ornamental broodmare with no purpose but to see to her husband’s and children’s needs. A prisoner in a beautiful jail. Just as her beautiful, spirited mother had been.
She didn’t dare rebel. For two reasons. One: it would dishonor la familia and in that dishonor, weaken them. Second: no one defied Alexander Dumas, including his children. Her oldest brother, Xander, had vehemently disagreed with their father on business in front of several powerful competitors, going so far as to side with them against Papa. He was banned from the family and never heard from again. Her other brother, Stefan, had stepped into Xander’s shoes—and been assassinated two months later. And then there was her sweet elder sister, Fatima, who refused to marry a man she did not love because she loved another. In her father’s eyes, she had disgraced the family, and because it was such a public disgrace, she too was banished.
Since her sister’s refusal to marry Javier Bertram three months ago, Sophia had become a virtual prisoner. She hated it. As the baby, Sophia had always been given more freedom than her half siblings—maybe because she wasn’t considered crucial to the continuation of the bloodline. Her mother was American, not the Old World blood of Papa’s first wife, the blood of Reconquista.
Sophia shivered. As much as she hated her current situation, she didn’t want to defy her father. She was all he had left and he was counting on her. So, when Arabella insisted she come along for her bachelorette party in the city later that night, Sophia could not accept.
“I can’t, Bella.”
Her friend shook her head, disappointment clearly visible on her pretty face. “If you change your mind, call me. I’ll come get you.”
Sophia watched her friend walk as free as a bird from the classroom. Not a care in the world. She’d give anything to walk out that door with her. Just this once.
Half an hour later Sophia walked into the enormous courtyard of the vast three-story hacienda she shared with her father and an army of servants and extended familia. As she was halfway up the wide, sweeping stairway, she was abruptly stopped by her father’s commanding voice. “My study now, Sophia,” he called from the courtyard. Then, in a more congenial tone, added, “Por favor.”
Hiking her backpack over her shoulders, Sophia exhaled, knowing he wanted something she was most likely not going to want to give. “Coming, Papa.”
When she entered the lofty room, she found him standing beside his massive, carved black cocobolo desk. Her father was still impressive at seventy. Tall, large-framed, with thick silver hair that had once been jet black and equally black eyes. He was handsome in a strict sense. Since she could remember, he scared her. But being the youngest of four, she had known him to be more fatherly to her than he had been to her brothers and sister whose mother had long since passed away. Sophia’s mother, Felicia, his second wife, had been the buffer, but like Sophia’s half siblings, she was gone.
“Sit down, mi hija, we have a decision to make.”
Her eyes widened. What was this? Was he taking her into his confidence? Nervous excitement trilled through her.
She sat on the large shagreen seat in front of his desk. The sharkskin chair and its mate sitting adjacent to the cold fireplace across the room were trophies of sorts. The story that went along with the procurement of the skin was part of what made her father a larger than life hero in Sophia’s eyes.
As the story went, her father had gone deep sea fishing off the Baja coast, one of his passions, and hooked a tiger shark. They fought for hours. When he had finally had enough, armed only a knife, her father dove into the water and swam out to the man-eater and with the precision of a surgeon, he drove the blade into the shark’s brain rendering it incapacitated.
With the trophy in tow he swam back to the boat, hauled it aboard and made the state dinner for the Mexican president that evening in Mexico City.
She loved him, respected him and was terrified of him. Theirs was a complicated relationship. One that she wished were more normal. But Alexander Dumas was not an ordinary man. He moved to the edge of the desk, opened the small humidor she had given him several years ago for his birthday and carefully selected a cigar. Once selected, the cigar was carefully trimmed, then lit, the rich, aromatic fragrance wafting lazily in the air. She liked the smell of a good cigar and always associated the smell with him.
“I have narrowed down my choice of husband for you to two: Salvador Vargas or his younger brother, Miguel.”
Her jaw dropped. The Vargas brothers? They were repugnant predators! How could he? “Papa, they’re—”
He put his hand up, stopping her cold, but his dark eyes were sympathetic. “I understand your reluctance, Sophia, truly I do. But as husband and wife you will live under my roof and I swear to you, I will forbid any impropriety.”
Impropriety was the least of her concerns.
She had never wanted to run more than she did at that moment. The Vargas brothers were not much older than she, and no less than a dozen times between them they had attempted to force themselves on her as if they had some right to her. Sophia had watched Salvador, “Chava,” the eldest, torture a stray puppy until she’d intervened. His brother, Mikey, was worse. He’d been sent out of the country three times because of his penchant for young girls. Why would her father pick one of them? They were nothing but twisted thugs. Where was the honor in that?
“Why not look to Tony to continue the line, Papa? The bloodline will still be Dumas.”
“How dare you suggest it?” he demanded, his tone shifting from congenial to confrontational. “Your blood is not polluted by that whore my brother married.”
“If pedigree is so important how can you ask me to mix mine with Vargas? Of the families their blood is tainted!” She refused to back down now. “I accepted Javier even though he was big, mean and ugly, but he was not a pedophile or an abuser of animals like the Vargas sons.”
“Sophia,” her father said, his tone patient again, “I’m not blind to their ways, but their lineage is honorable. And while the Vargas familia is not as powerful as Bertram they are a respected and valuable part of Reconquista.” He took a long puff from his cigar before continuing. “Times are different now. If I am to maintain the volume of business that keeps us all safe and prosperous, I need them.” He took another puff from his cigar and began to pace his office. “Javi may have been hard to look at and older but he was an honorable man from a powerful family. I am saddened on many levels by his assassination. I will personally destroy the man who killed him.” He looked at Sophia, his dark eyes glittering with vengeance.
“I won’t marry a Vargas, Papa.”
He slammed his hand down on his desktop. “You will!” he roared. “Now pick one! Or I will pick one for you.”
Sophia blanched at his deadly display. But held her ground. “No.”
He slapped her. Stunning her with such a violent act against her. She’d never been struck before. Hot tears sprang to her eyes. “Papa,” she sobbed as she gingerly rubbed her warm cheek and looked up at the man who had given her life. Did he have no compassion? She stood, wanting to run but not daring to.
He caught her shocked stare and his eyes softened. “Please, Sophia. You are the future of Dumas.” He reached out and gently took her hands into his big warm ones. “Give me two grandsons and I will see to it that you are made a widow and as such allowed to live the remainder of your life quietly taking care of my grandchildren.”
Sophia’s jaw dropped. This could not be happening. Didn
’t he love her? Care about what she wanted? Pulling her hands from his she backed away from him. As much as she loved and respected her big sister for standing up to their father, Sophia was not as brave. “You give me the choice of either an animal molester or a child molester?” She picked up her backpack and hoisted it over her shoulder. “If my choice means nothing to you then yours means less to me. You decide.” She turned then and walked toward the door.
“Your wedding date stands, mi hija. One week from tonight you will exchange vows and take a husband to your bed.”
An overwhelming sense of hysteria swept through her. Her life was not hers. What little control she once had was now gone. The urge to run had never been so strong. Sophia swallowed hard and nodded, then exited the study. As she hurried to her room, she fought back the rush of tears welling in her eyes. Pulling out her cell phone, she called Arabella.
When her friend answered, Sophia said, “I don’t have anything to wear to a nightclub, but I—”
Squealing, Arabella said, “Oh, don’t you worry about any of that, chica! I have plenty of clothes and shoes to share. I’m coming right now to pick you up before you change your mind. I can’t wait to doll you up!”
“I’ll be outside of the north gate waiting.”
“We’re going to have so much fun, you’re never going to want to go back to your old life.” In a twinkling Bella hung up, but her words lingered.
If there was a way she could walk through the compound gates without fear of being hunted down, then what? Punished for defying her father? Sophia’s resolve stiffened. If she defied her father, he might punish her but he would not kill her, because with her went his bloodline. And that he would never jeopardize—at least not until she popped out a few grandsons.
Sophia slowly exhaled. Nervous excitement buzzed through her. She could do this. She would do this. Tonight she would live like she was dying and do all of the things a normal twenty-four-year-old woman should be doing.
Dancing. Having fun, and maybe finding a man who she chose, even if it was for only one night.
