Hate Crush (Filthy Rich)

by Angelina M. Lopez

  He startled when he felt her lips brush against his ear. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  He’d barely felt the needle slide into his side when he started suffering from the effects.

  He slumped in Manon’s arms.

  “Whoa, I got you, buddy,” said the hotel worker, grabbing on to Aish, hauling him toward him. “I’ve always got you, man.”

  That voice. Aish knew that voice.

  It sounded like his own.

  Aish mumbled against his shoulder, trying to call out, his limbs useless.

  “Shh, shhh, don’t worry, I’m going to take care of everything,” the hotel worker said as he picked Aish up. Aish felt like a bag of bones as he was flung into the laundry cart. “You know I never let you get in your own way.”

  Then the man, that unknown face with that lifelong familiar voice, hovered over him as everything else started to go dim.

  “Or let you get in mine.”

  September 28

  Part Two

  Crunched up into the corner of Roman’s couch, Sofia punched Decline on her mother’s incoming call for the second time in ten minutes. Whatever harassing, cruel, mocking thing the queen wanted to say could wait until Sofia returned to the Monte.

  With her one-way flight out already chartered for the next morning, she planned on that being months, maybe years, away.

  Carmen Louisa pulled the phone and empty wineglass from Sofia’s hands and then tucked the blanket tighter around her as if strangling her would keep her in the kingdom. She refilled Sofia’s glass and then downed half of it herself. Sofia held her hand out, but Carmen Louisa stood in her white button-up shirt and figure-flattering jeans and stared down at her.

  “Just stay until the press conference,” she said, the strain of the last few days showing around her pretty hazel eyes. “See how people react.”

  Sofia retracted her hand and pulled the blanket back around her shoulders. “If it goes well, then Bodega de la Gente will benefit.” That’s what she told the growers they should rename Bodega Sofia. She was already calling it that—winery of the people—in her head. “If it doesn’t go well, I won’t be here to make it worse.”

  The grower couldn’t get it into her head that Sofia was leaving to save her.

  To save all of them.

  Carmen Louisa had shown up an hour ago at Roman’s mountainside home with Namrita and Devonte so they could tell her that Aish was going to throw himself on the pyre. He was going to take full responsibility for the plagiarism and the release of the flash drive. He was going to swear that Sofia had nothing to do with it, that she’d been an unwitting victim of his dastardly plan.

  They had threatened to call Mateo when they heard Sofia’s response. She wasn’t going to change the press release scheduled to go out the next morning that relinquished all her rights to and involvement with the newly christened Bodega de la Gente. She wasn’t going to cancel her departure.

  And, she’d told them, if they tried to sic Mateo on her, she’d just leave early. She didn’t want the Monte’s future king—the kingdom’s only hope—anywhere near her.

  She’d made herself numb to the dejection on Namrita’s face when the woman left—she’d worked so hard to save the unsalvageable—but Carmen Louisa had stayed.

  Sofia rested her temple on her knees and blocked her friend out. Carmen Louisa paced away with a frustrated sigh.

  She could let Aish take the fall for the debacle that her winery launch had become. But now she understood how temporary a solution that would be. Aish wasn’t the illness. Sofia was, Sofia and her vast unquenchable need to be needed. She’d tried to satiate it with her mother’s attention, Aish’s affection, and her people’s devotion. Each attempt had been slapped away, making her more and more desperate. What had it led to this time? Positioning herself as the savior of her people and insisting everyone bow to her ideas. And when no one was convinced, she sank her kingdom into this ludicrous, devastating scheme. What crazy thing would she do next to prove she was essential?

  She would take her desperation away so that it could no longer hurt the people she loved.

  Sofia jerked as the blanket was shoved down, her hand pulled out, and her wineglass slapped into it. The violence of the movement sloshed the contents of the nearly full glass on her shirt.

  “¡Joder!” She looked up at Carmen Louisa looming over her, fiery-eyed. “¿Qué pasa?”

  “What?” her friend shot back. “You don’t want to do anything but sit and drink. So there. Sit. Drink. Get on a plane tomorrow. Abandon us again.”

  “Abandon you?” They’d all been walking on tiptoes around her. Carmen Louisa’s anger was shocking. “That’s not what I’m—”

  “No? You’re fleeing the kingdom. Again. What would you call it?”

  Again. She snapped down her glass, kicked out of the blankets, and stood. “I’d call it killing the bacteria before it can spread.” What did she want from her? “I’m trying to help you.”

  “How?” Carmen Louisa had never accepted a no in her entire stubborn life. “By taking away the best winemaker the Monte has? By removing our princesa’s warmth and encouragement and making us stumble around in the dark?”

  She felt herself twitch at the description of herself. “That’s not what I’m...”

  “All this time, you think you’re not essential, Sofia?” Aish’s words flickered punishingly. “Look at me, look around you, look what you’ve done for your people.”

  “You’re this kingdom’s life force,” Carmen Louisa said. “You make us strive to be more than a sleepy village in the mountains. You make us thrive. And everyone can see that but you.”

  Sofia bit down hard on her lip. How dare she? How dare she sketch out everything Sofia had ever wanted. But her outrage evaporated when she saw Carmen Louisa angrily swipe at her eyes.

  She never wanted to make her cry.

  She reached for her. She took her hand.

  “When I left...before...” Sofia was whispering. She didn’t know why. Roman was in the next room, but she didn’t fear him. “You had Mateo back. You had Roxanne.” It was a wonder she could hear her at all. “You didn’t need me anymore.”

  When Sofia had taken Carmen Louisa’s hand, she thought she was doing it as her princesa. But when Carmen Louisa gripped it back, she knew she needed the sure handhold of the best mother she ever had.

  “We weren’t going to continue tormenting our young princesa, with her own hopes and aspirations, with our problems. But while your brother has planted the seeds, you’re the light that helps us grow.”

  “Mi estrella,” Aish had groaned in the lamplight against her skin, almost fully clothed yet indescribably naked for her. “So strong and bright...”

  No. No. No, regardless of the career he said he would sacrifice.

  “But...” She flapped her hand at the village lights seen through Roman’s living room window. “This mess. It’s all my fault.”

  “And would you have said success was all your doing?”

  “Of course not,” she said instantly.

  “Then how can one be true and not the other?”

  Carmen Louisa was better than any soul alive at leaving her without a response. The grower stared with soft, hopeful eyes. “Stay, princesa,” she said. “Fight.”

  “He’s staying and fighting and that’s the last thing I expected from him,” Henry had said about Aish. “And you’re stronger and warmer when he’s around. That’s the last thing I expected from you.”

  Both women jumped when a heavy hand pounded at the door. Roman poked his head out of the kitchen doorway—looking for the all clear from them—before striding across the living room.

  “¿Qué pasa?” Carmen Louisa asked in wonder as the fist continued to pound.

  What now?

  Roman opened the door and Henry pushed past him
, leading a pale-faced Queen Valentina into the room.

  Her mother wasn’t wearing makeup. Her mother always wore makeup. It startled Sofia enough that she said, “Reina,” urgently, stopping her mother short. She never called her queen.

  They stood and stared at each other. “What’s happened?” Sofia finally asked.

  The queen put her hand over her heart—she was out of the castle in her exercise clothes, a tank top and yoga pants, her platinum hair in a haphazard ponytail—and although she opened her mouth, nothing came out. Her dishevelment, the fear in her eyes, her inability to say one cutting word, had Sofia gripping her hands into fists. “What’s happened?” she demanded again.

  “Mi hija,” the queen finally choked out in Spanish. “He’s taken Aish.”

  Sofia understood the words individually. Together, they made no sense. “What?”

  “He... John. John is alive. He’s kidnapped Aish. I don’t know where he’s taken him.”

  Sofia suddenly found herself sitting back down on the couch. She saw Henry and Carmen Louisa rushing toward her. But her mother got to her first.

  Her mother was down on a knee in front of her, a steadying hand on her arm, another on her leg. “Mi hija, I’m so sorry. I had no idea he would go this far.”

  Sofia stared into her mother’s face as Carmen Louisa translated for Roman and Henry everything her mother just said. An unplugged part of herself noted that she’d never had her mother’s undivided attention this way before.

  “When?” Roman barked.

  “She thinks in the last couple of hours,” Henry said, all trace of her good-times-and-brewskis friend gone as he relayed the details, as daunting as Roman at his most soldierly. “The family is at the castle; they’re on lockdown. God only knows what else this asshole is gonna pull. Security has already started searching the hospedería. Manon snatched a rental car and left an hour ago.”

  “Manon?” Carmen Louisa gasped.

  Sofia turned chilling eyes back on her mother. “What did you do?” she asked.

  Sofia suddenly realized that everything she’d lost in the last twenty-four hours might only be a drop of what she could potentially lose.

  Her mother’s eyes were naked wounds on her face. But she lifted her chin and took her hands off Sofia. She folded them in front of her like she didn’t have the right to touch her daughter. “I didn’t instigate it. Juan Carlos came to me. He wanted to stop you. He said it was for the good of the Monte. I wanted to stop you because...because you are everything I can never be.” Sofia was stunned to watch her mother struggle to swallow her tears. Tears were usually her best weapon. “Juan Carlos didn’t recognize John when he approached him. He’s had—” she waved her hand in front of her face “—work. But he said he would help us if we gave him information, access. He had one of your interns under his thumb before she arrived.”

  “Manon broke into your room the night of the party and stole the drive,” Henry said. Then he shook his head, his bone-crushing hands on his hips. “That whole fucking break-in at the winery was just a diversion. They wanted to minimize the security at the castle so she could sneak through without gettin’ caught.”

  “Dios mío,” Carmen Louisa said, her eyes stricken. “I’d taken her on a tour of the castle earlier in the week.”

  “You didn’t know,” Sofia replied commandingly as she looked at them both. She refused to have one more person feel guilty in all of this. “How could any of us have known?”

  Manon. Manon had been working with John, sharing detailed information of the internship with the press, using her media experience and contacts to spin everything and make it reflect negatively on them.

  “How did they know about the drive?” Sofia asked her mother.

  The queen settled back on her heels, crossed her arms over herself as she looked away. “I like spending time in your room. I like to imagine brushing your hair as you tell me about your day. Sometimes I pretend I’m Roxanne or her—” she sniffed at Carmen Louisa “—when the idea that my own daughter would talk to me seems too farfetched for imagination.” She shrugged and dropped her gaze to the wood floor that had to be uncomfortable on her knees. “I found the box. I’d go through it and make up stories you would tell me about the things in it, if I’d been different. If I’d treated you differently.”

  Sofia was astonished to discover that her mother, too, wished things had been different between them.

  “I never knew the significance of the flash drive until John asked about some proof he’d heard you mention while you were in the cellar with Aish.”

  In the cellar. With Aish. The only time she’d been in the cellar with him was when she’d fucked him. Her skin crawled at the idea that John had been there, in the dark, listening. Listening to her assault his “best friend.”

  “Juan Carlos called me this evening, frantic, with a wild story.” Her mother ran a trembling hand down her ponytail and Sofia distantly recognized it as a move she’d once used to comfort herself. “He said that the man we’d been working with was Aish’s dead bandmate, that the man had lost his mind, that he was going to make it so Aish would never be seen again. Juan Carlos said we had to get our story straight so we couldn’t be held responsible.”

  Sofia suddenly had trouble catching her breath. Something was filling her chest, pressing against her lungs, clogging her throat. She put her hand against her heart. She looked up, confused, at Carmen Louisa, at her brother and Henry. She opened her mouth, but could get no air in or out.

  Oh God. Aish was lost in her kingdom with a psychopath.

  Henry’s blue eyes went wide before he was charging toward her and shoving her forward, forcing her head between her knees. “Breathe, girl,” he barked. “You’re having a panic attack.”

  She felt other hands on her back, rubbing up and down. “Respira, mi hija. Cálmate, mi amor.”

  Instant tears popped into her eyes. She let her head hang and let her mother rub her back and tried not to think about never seeing or touching or kissing Aish again.

  On her first full inhale she said, “We’ve got to...we’ve got to go save him,” she finally gasped out, head still between her knees.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Roman said. “I’ll find him.”

  She had no breath, or time, or need to argue with him.

  “If you knew...the Monte like I do...you would have caught him already.” Because who else could the vandal and the person who’d assaulted her worker be but John?

  It was a low blow but never was wah-wahing in Sofia’s ear. Never seeing or touching or kissing Aish ever again. She’d said never over and over again during the last decade, stroked her hip again and again as she repeated it like an incantation, an incantation that had apparently worked because it had kept her shielded from Aish’s world-dominating fame. “I will never fall in love with you again. I will never, ever, ever forgive you.” But, for all of her denial of his existence, her never still involved Aish existing, out in the world somewhere, playing his music, living his life, filling someone else’s days with his love and spirit and warmth.

  Only now, she discovered, that within her never, she’d always hidden the possibility of maybe.

  This never was Aish gone. His fire extinguished. The space his big spirit took up in the world icy cold.

  He’d broken her a decade ago. Then he spent the next ten years writing her songs and learning her language and inking odes into his body. Was that simply the response of a guilty conscious? Or something more? What would he have said if she’d allowed him to complete the apologies he’d attempted so many times? Could she forgive him?

  He’d planned on sacrificing his career for her this afternoon. “You’re my first love. You’re my last love. You’re the only woman I’ll ever love.”

  They’d dived effortlessly into loving each other as children. Maybe they needed a chance to see if they
could do the hard, mountain-climbing work of loving each other as adults.

  Her breath was coming easier now. She straightened and closed her eyes, gripped her hip, fortified herself with big inhales of air, taking in the leather-and-gun-oil smell of Roman’s home, the aroma of her wine, the soft scent of her mother because for once she wasn’t drenched in—

  Sofia’s eyes snapped open. Cologne. That rank whiff of it when she’d been in the cellar with Aish. She’d smelled it earlier, too. When? In the basement of the bar when they almost kissed. When someone took the photo.

  She asked Carmen Louisa to find the picture from the news story. Then she pointed at Roman. “Dime otra vez, what businesses had the vandalism?”

  They both looked at her like she was losing her mind. “Rapidamente,” she urged.

  As Roman rattled off the businesses, Sofia tracked their location in her mind. Joder. Of course. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t put it together before.

  When Carmen Louisa handed her the phone, it was the verification Sofia needed.

  “I know where he has Aish,” she said, flipping the screen around. She pointed at the photo. “We thought one of the interns took this picture. But the angle is wrong; this was taken from the back of the room. Where there is a gate that leads into the tunnel. The tunnels connect all of the vandalized businesses and the winery; that’s how John has been getting around and how he snuck into Bodega Sofia. That’s where they’ve gone now.”

  Carmen Louisa nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes, Manon was asking about the tunnels.”

  A cold certainty dropped into Sofia’s stomach. “And if John wanted to get rid of Aish so we could never find him, I know exactly where he’d take him.” Those careless stories she’d shared about the tunnels so long ago. She swallowed her fear as she looked at her brother. “We need to go right now.”

  With one nod, Roman pulled his phone out and began contacting his team.

  She bit back a laugh of hysteria. After all her bemoaning and complaining, her self-pity and sadness, Aish certainly needed her now. She was the only one who could save him. But she wouldn’t have known he needed rescuing if not for the woman kneeling in front of her.