He slid open a panel in the bottom of the device, large enough to allow the exotic beauty to do her job but small enough to keep her from escaping. He certainly didn’t want his pretty, new nurse friend dying before he had the opportunity to get to know her better.
Luis gasped in pain as his eyes opened wide in shock. Confused, he blinked hard and shook his head. He looked up to see a brown-haired stranger by his bed, looking down at him impassively as he slid a small, square box into his jeans pocket. Luis stared up at him in shock before exhaling harshly and clutching his chest. Luis’ gaping mouth drooled streams of saliva and his eyes glazed over as he slipped into the coma that would send him off into the afterlife to meet his own personal hell.
King pulled on a disposable glove, moving quickly as he thrust the heel of his palm upward against Luis’ bandaged nose. With no x-rays taken the night before, there was every reason to hope the doctors would initially believe the broken nose had caused more complications than first anticipated.
Complications were King’s specialty. Now all he had to do was see to it that the beauty at the nurse’s station didn’t suddenly get a conscience and run her mouth. Something told him that she wouldn’t. But that was all the reason he needed to keep a very close eye on her.
Chapter Thirty Eight
Two hours later, Harley finished making the bed with fresh linens, then closed the room off and went back to her desk to finish the necessary paperwork. Sitting at her desk, she thought about the handsome stranger who had given her his business card. She looked it over after she finished compiling the file on Luis Jimenez.
King
Exotic Animals
The card listed a cellphone number but no last name. A mystery man... Well, she loved a good mystery. She’d always been an animal lover and there was something mysterious about this guy that she found really appealing.
The smile on his face did nothing to cover up the bad boy in his eyes. The thought made her grin. And he was confident. She liked that. Somehow, she knew he wasn’t an incurable flirt, and that he’d felt the same pull she did.
It had been a long time since anything but her career had held her interest for very long. It took a certain kind of guy to get her attention. The man had secrets, she could practically smell them; probably because she had a few of her own. Deep calls to deep, dark calls to dark, and secrets call to secrets.
She knew all too well how one person’s darkness could call to another. She also knew that, no matter how long she walked the straight and narrow, it would never change her past and who she had become because of it. A nurse’s uniform would never undo what years of the biker life had done to her.
If she could go back and change her past, she wouldn’t. She was a better person because of it and certainly more intuitive. No amount of college education could ever teach her what the streets had.
Her cell phone rang so she slipped the card into her pocket and accepted the call. It was Stacy, one of her coworkers. Harley had to laugh because when she looked up, Stacy was walking toward her, grinning as she talked into her phone even though Harley could hear her just fine in person.
“Let’s get coffee, girl. I’m fucking beat.”
Harley ended the call and playfully rolled her eyes as Stacy slid her phone into her pocket. Harley just shook her head, looking at her friend who never failed to make her laugh with her off the wall antics. “Why would you bother calling when you’re ten feet away from me?”
“Come on, I’ve got some serious tea to spill.”
“Well, let me get my popcorn because we both know how entertaining you can be. I’m just about finished here anyway, so just give me a minute to pack up.”
“Well, if you consider a patient mysteriously dying entertainment, then you should be giddy with joy right about now.”
“No…I don’t consider a dead body to be entertaining, Stacy.”
“You’ve always got your nose buried in a murder mystery,” Stacy complained as they rode down in the elevator together. “I mean, this whole obsession you have with criminals and death and gore is beyond me. You’ve really got to get out more. Anyway, let’s get through the cafeteria line before we start talking. You know how nosey these hospital bitches are.”
Once inside the cafeteria, they each selected a light breakfast and coffee, then pushed their trays through the line and found a secluded spot where they could talk. The morning light streamed through the vertical blinds at the floor-to-ceiling windows, reminding Harley of what a long, strange night it had been.
“Okay, you’ve got me curious,” Harley quipped, grimacing as she took a long draw from her coffee cup. “What’s up?”
Stacy sipped the weak hospital brew in a blatant effort to prolong her pleasure at having a captive audience. “Well, it’s just that the guy with the broken nose…died.” She didn’t give Harley a chance to say anything before she continued. “Who dies of a broken nose, Harley? I mean, seriously. The doctors think the bone in his nose somehow moved up and punctured his brain. What’s that old saying, the truth is stranger than fiction? I mean, that right there is some unbelievable shit. Poor guy comes in with a broken nose and leaves in a body bag. Go figure.”
“That’s probably what happened then. It’s possible for the bone to make its way up into the brain.”
“Well, I don’t know but it seems to me like there would need to be some force applied for it to puncture the brain.”
“The force happened when he was hit. If it was done with an uppercut, it’s plausible. Just take it for what it is, it was his time to go. Thank God, he didn’t die on the operating table or it would be a hospital scandal and we don’t need that. Trust me, you don’t want to be the doc whose patient clocks out during a nose job.”
Stacy didn’t notice her friend slipping her hand into her scrub pocket. Harley ran her finger over the embossed letters that spelled the name of the man who had made her night a hell of a lot more interesting. Yes King, you’ve got secrets and I have every intention of discovering what they are.
Her gut was telling her there was more to this story than a broken nose and she always listened to her gut. It never steered her wrong.
Chapter Thirty Nine
“What. The. Fuck. Is. This?!” The words rumbled from deep in Victor’s throat as he stared down at the 8x10 photos on his father’s desk. Where were her fucking clothes, why the fuck was she in bed with that asshole Briggs, and who the absolute fuck else had seen these photos?!
The top of Tony’s head tingled and he felt like he was about to come out of his skin. He bared his teeth, his chest heaving as his father’s stern voice drifted over to him from what seemed like a great distance, telling him to calm the fuck down.
It had only been a week since Valentina had made her declaration about proving herself to the cartel, only a week since she’d been attacked. Victor thought she had wanted some space, so he’d tried not to hover – even though it damn near killed him to do it -- and relaxed his grip on her enough to let her have some time to recover from the traumatic experience. Looked like he’d been a fucking fool. What the hell had she been up to?
“Again, I will ask. What. The. Fuck. Is. This?!” he thundered, not bothering to lower his voice now.
“Loyalty. That’s what this is,” Ricardo answered serenely. “Valentina became aware of our difficulties with William Briggs and how his stubbornness was delaying our media expansion. She offered to help. It was a smart move that will serve everyone’s purposes.”
“Yeah, a regular win-win.” Victor grabbed the stack of photos off the desk with shaking hands and went through them, one by one. Valentina, damn near naked, on a bed, straddling some paunchy, middle-aged fucker. Valentina, her back arched with those perfect tits pointing to the sky as she reached back to unfasten her damned bra. In one particularly damning photo, Valentina leaned forward with her tits practically pouring out of the bra cups, her softness only inches from the asshole’s open mouth.
He dropped the pho
tos on the floor, his face contorting with rage as he clenched handfuls of his hair and just tried to fucking breathe. He paced the floor, then braced his hands on the edge of the desk. His vision went blurry and red around the edges as he imagined that fucker close enough to touch his woman. “What the fuck kind of help are you talking about? You already had the pictures of Briggs’ family. Wouldn’t that be enough to intimidate him and bring him around to our way of thinking? What else could you possibly need?”
“We need something more. And Valentina has given us…more.” Ricardo’s voice was steady and even, but his eyes narrowed speculatively as he watched his son come to grips with Valentina’s extraordinary gesture of loyalty. Of course, Ricardo already knew the details: the man had been drugged and, therefore, incapable of participating in any illicit activity. The incriminating nature of the photos was the result of a series of methodical, carefully choreographed poses that Valentina and Roxanne had come up with. Those two were proving to be diabolical when they put their heads together.
Roxanne never refused an opportunity to indulge her love of photography. She had photographed the proceedings from across the street using a powerful zoom lens. What Victor didn’t know was that the ruse had actually been Valentina’s idea. Ricardo did not look forward to divulging that particular bit of information, but he wasn’t a man to hide behind a lie.
Victor’s neck was flushed and his jaw was clenched as he cast a baleful look his father’s way. “How could you possibly ask that of my woman?” he asked disbelievingly.
“I didn’t have to ask. It was her idea.” At his son’s ragged intake of air, he added, “She has proven herself to the cartel. And she remained faithful to you the whole time. Briggs was drugged anyway, she made sure of that; he couldn’t open his eyes, much less get a hard-on. At no time was she out of sight or in danger.
“Now, son, a little advice,” Ricardo said briskly as he gestured for Victor to pick the photos up off the floor. He was quickly growing impatient with his son’s histrionics. “You have found a rare woman, Victor. A woman of great tenacity. A woman of worth. She has all the makings of a strong cartel wife. I suspected as much years ago, which is why I picked her for you in the first place. If this goes well, I will declare her as yours and under the protection of the cartel.” A rare, indulgent smile tilted Ricardo’s lips. “And then your mother and your aunt can ‘wedding plan’ to their hearts’ content. Now, go. Oh, and Victor…”
Victor paused on his way out the door with the photos clenched in his hand, tucking his chin and turning his head to the side slightly as he listened.
“She loves you, son. The life you’ve always wanted is within your grasp. Don’t fuck it up.”
“Did you fuck him?” Victor bellowed as he advanced on Valentina, backing her into a corner as he jabbed an accusing finger in her face.
“No, I did not fuck him.”
“You sure about that? Because those pictures sure as hell look like it.” He pointed to the 8x10 glossies he had strewn across the bed as proof of her betrayal.
“They’re pictures of me in lingerie--” she said tentatively, stumbling over her words when his nostrils flared and his neck reddened. “Um, lingerie, yeah…I was just straddling him, Victor.” Victor’s eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline as he cocked his head to the side, clearly exasperated at the image that was quickly becoming burned onto his brain. “And he was drugged,” she continued desperately, “so he probably didn’t even know I was there. Trust me, he wasn’t going to get hard after all the drugs I fed him.” At the word ‘hard’, Victor’s eyes shut and he bared his teeth.
She straightened her back and forced her voice to remain steady as she met his stormy gaze unflinchingly. “I did this for the cartel, Victor. Cartel comes first, always. I did this so your father could buy that television station. This is my job too and there was no way I was going to let the likes of William Briggs ruin my career. I don’t know what this connection is between you and me but we’ve got to face facts here…You. Are. Not. My. Man. You don’t own me. This obsession you have with me has to end.”
“It will never fucking end. Never. One way or another, I’ll have you. You seem to think you have a fucking choice, but you don’t.”
She was right; Victor was hopelessly enthralled with the woman. From the moment he’d seen her, he’d known he had to have her. His family still maintained business ties within the country, so it wasn’t a complete surprise when his father had declared that Valentina would be the right woman for him. Ricardo’s approach to matchmaking was more than a little old-fashioned, some might even consider it brutal, but Victor didn’t care. He had made it his mission to make good on his father’s promise. And he had been making progress, but she was still resisting his efforts. Come hell or high water, he was going to get her down the aisle and his father would be the one to give her away. He was his father’s son—brutal, methodical, and an over-the-top Alpha male. He saw his union with Valentina as inevitable. Her resistance was simply a waste of time.
“You. Belong. To. Me.” He wrapped a hand around her neck, forcing her head back. “The quicker you understand that, the better off you’ll be. You wanted to be a star in America? Well, I’m part of the package. You’ve known that from the start. You are going to be my wife and the mother of my children. If I have to drag your ass down the aisle, I will.”
“I don’t doubt it, you fucking Neanderthal!”
He slid his hand around to grip her hair at the nape of her neck. He grazed his teeth up and down the length of her neck, biting down when he landed on the sweet spot where her neck met her shoulder. She shuddered and leaned into him, and hated herself for it.
“Fight the attraction all you want, but by the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging me to give you this cock,” he purred as he pressed his erection against her. “I don’t care what your head is telling you, your body is what I hear talking to me. It always betrays you at my touch. It must be maddening to be the slave of a man you hate. But there’s nothing like a good, angry hate fuck to take the edge off, you’ll see. Oh, and one more thing,” he said with a smug smile. “You little thief. We caught you on camera stealing Brigg’s money from his wallet before you left the hotel room.”
“Victor, don’t be so sanctimonious, we both know you’ve done far worse than that. And I had to let that asshole think he actually had a shot at fucking me. I had to get something out of it for myself. It’s not like he’s going to miss that money anyway.”
“You won’t do a job like that on your own again. I will know about it and I will be there.”
“Victor, please,” she said. “Like I’ve been telling you, this is my career. I wasn’t going to let that bastard take it from me. I mean, moral, my ass -- that guy followed me up to that room like a horny puppy.”
“Shut up, Valentina, you devil-woman!” he fumed as he seized her arm and half-dragged her across the room to the bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and put her over his knee so hard that it stole the breath from her lungs.
She was so stunned that she didn’t catch on to what he was going to do until the first stinging smack landed on her ass. Kicking and screaming did no good with his powerful leg over her thighs, holding her firmly in place. Five rapid strikes later and she was sobbing in pain.
Victor rubbed his hand over her heated skin and slipped his fingers along the crack of her ass until he slid two of them into her soaked pussy. “Such a lady, but so filthy dirty when it comes to your man.” Her hips lifted, meeting his fingers and confirming what he already knew: no matter how much she hated him, her body craved him.
“That’s it, baby, fuck my fingers. You belong to me. That tight pussy of yours is mine to use however I want. Don’t you ever go anywhere alone with any man but me again! I ought to kill that son of a bitch.” He pinched at her clit, squeezing enough to give her painful pleasure.
Her hips began bucking wildly as his fingers worked their magic, triggering an orgasm that started in her lower b
elly and electrified her all the way down to her toes.
Despite her protests, he knew perfectly well that she had deliberately gone to meet Briggs. Even if it wasn’t something she had wanted to do, she had pursued the idea and, at the very least, she had most certainly enjoyed rebelling against the man who ruled her life.
He yanked her head up by a handful of hair and hissed, “You ever do something like that again, I’ll use a horsewhip on your ass while you’re swinging from the chain in my dungeon.” He tossed her over onto the side of the bed and stood up to leave.
He needed to find Tony. It would probably be impossible to pry his brother off the new woman in his life. That situation had come as a complete shock at first, until he remembered that the Ramirez men never pursued love in a conventional way.
Typically, when a Ramirez man set his sights on The One, he didn’t bother with the whole ‘dinner and movie’ thing. He knew that shit belonged to him and he claimed it using whatever means necessary. But Tony was his own man and he had started out slow with Caden until circumstances called for him to be more direct. It certainly explained why Tony had been spending so much time at The Club after he got home from the military, and all that fucking texting he had been doing. Always on his fucking phone. It had all been about a girl, of course. Caden was a good girl, though, and she and Tony seemed solid. Victor was happy for him.
But he didn’t care if his brother was dick-deep in his new woman. He needed Tony’s help, now. They had cartel business to attend to with one William Briggs. His father wanted that TV station, and Victor wanted revenge. With Tony’s help, he’d secure both. And he’d make Valentina watch. She needed to understand the power she wielded as a cartel woman, and the impact her impetuous decisions had on others.
“I hate you. You bastard!” Valentina screamed at his departing back.
Old Hollywood (Colombian Cartel Book 4) Page 19
