by Pam Godwin
He was a self-made felon, feared and abhorred by all walks of life. “I could’ve killed her. Maybe I should have. Had she fallen into the hands of another drug lord, that’s exactly what they would’ve done. Let’s not forget, she was found in a truck full of slaves, destined for a life much worse than the one I gave her.”
“She was taken from her home by those slave traders. How did you keep her from running back to her family?” She absently rubbed the red marks on her wrists. “Did you tie her up for eleven years?”
“I poisoned her.”
He unraveled the details of his deception—how he’d secretly tainted Lucia’s food and made her chronically ill, how he counteracted it with daily injections of the antidote, and how it led her to believe she had a disease that only he could cure.
“My medical team monitored the poison, ensuring the doses weren’t fatal,” he said.
“That’s sick.” Kate shook her head, her face scrunched in revulsion. “And unacceptable.”
“It was more humane than keeping her in shackles.”
“You could’ve let her go.”
He didn’t expect this naive girl to understand. Her ordeal with Van Quiso was nothing compared to what existed in the bowels of the criminal underworld.
“I assume she figured out you were poisoning her,” she said. “Is that why she attacked you?”
“No. Matias Restrepo was the catalyst for the recent chain of events.”
“Matias? How?”
“A week before I took you, Tate initiated contact with Lucia. He approached her in a sex club and fucked her. Or maybe it was the other way around.” He smirked. “I knew about their hookup but didn’t consider him a threat until her routine changed. She started acting cagey. That’s when I dug deeper and discovered his connection with the Restrepo cartel.”
“You didn’t know Matias was Lucia’s brother-in-law?”
“No, and neither did she. It changed the stakes. I was no longer dealing with some clueless American sneaking around my turf. Tate’s presence was attached to a cartel, a notoriously ambitious one. I didn’t know if they meant to wage war against me, try to seize control of my smuggling routes, or something else. So I took you.”
“As payment.”
“And to send them a warning.”
Kidnapping and murder, business as usual.
“Matias isn’t interested in taking your business.” Her breathing accelerated. “Lucia is his family. He just wanted her back.”
“To that end, he would’ve gone to war.” He cocked his head. “He sent men to the states to gather everyone close to Tate and bring them to Colombia. But when they arrived at your diner to collect you, they were an hour too late. You were already in my possession.”
A whimper left her before she cut it off.
“The night you disappeared,” he said, “was the same night I captured Tate and Van.”
While she was being transported from Texas to Venezuela, he was putting Tate through eight brutal hours of trials and torture.
He gave her a graphic account of the evening—the icepick through Tate’s arm, the carving on his back, and the forced sodomy between him and his former captor.
“What?” She gasped, her cheeks damp and bloodless. “You made Tate fuck Van? Why?”
“Justice is rarely pleasant, and Van had it coming.”
“How is that justice? Tate wouldn’t have wanted that. He’d already forgiven Van.”
“Are you sure? Have you made peace with Van?”
She glanced away. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t like him.”
Van was a reflection of himself. Scarred. Splintered. Heartless. There was a reason he never looked in a mirror.
“Is Van still alive?” she asked quietly.
“Yes.”
He detailed the events of Lucia’s incursion with the dumbbell, her escape with Tate and Van, the gunfight, and car chase. “After they fled, Arturo found me on the floor in my room. By the time I woke, your friends were already recaptured.”
“How could you orchestrate that with your head smashed in?”
“Boones arranged things on my behalf, leveraging the police on my payroll. Lucia and Van went to prison, and Tate was taken to the shack as part of the original plan.”
“You didn’t let her go.” She ground her teeth.
“She’s free, right now, because I allowed it. While she sat in prison for a week, I could’ve had her executed or returned to me at any time.” He tapped a finger on his thigh, questioning this compulsion to explain himself. “She escaped prison, and I allowed that to happen. I let her go. Her and Van both.”
“Why? I mean, I’m happy they’re safe, but I don’t understand the change of heart.”
“I want her to find Tate.”
“Then release him! It makes no sense.” She tucked her limbs close to her torso, keeping her legs covered by the thin dress. “You poisoned her, tortured him, and separated them when all they want is to be together. Do you hurt people just for the hell of it?” A swallow bobbed her throat. “Because you get off on their pain?”
“You want to know if I’m a sadist.” It was a query he didn’t mind examining. “I suppose the label fits. Delivering pain is an expression of art. It’s inspiring, inherently satisfying, but only when the hurt has meaning, when it serves a purpose beyond cruelty.”
She slowly drew her head back, shrinking away from him. It was a sane reaction. Sitting within arm’s reach of the man who would end her life, she was probably crawling out of her skin to run far, far away.
He’d told her she had no opinions here, but that was bullshit. He couldn’t control the thoughts in her head, and after talking with her, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. She was a good listener and spoke her mind, even if he didn’t like what she had to say.
It was refreshing.
Her stare lasered onto his, narrowing, analyzing, before traveling down his arm to linger on his scars. “Your cuts are self-inflicted.”
“Hm.” He didn’t move his eyes from her face.
“The lines on your left arm are straighter, cleaner. Because you’re right-handed.”
Impressive.
She glanced at his head wounds and returned to his arms. “When you asked how bad your injury looked, I thought you were concerned about infection or something. But that’s not it at all. You regard scars the way a painter beholds a painting.”
He leaned forward, hanging on her words.
“Delivering pain is an expression of art. That’s what you said.” Her nose twitched. “I assume that means you prefer to be the giver of scars, not the receiver. But you gave and received those.” She nodded at his arms. “I don’t know what to make of that. Do you?”
He could explain it, but he chose not to.
At his silence, she drifted closer, inspecting his welted skin with those huge blue eyes. “The designs are incredibly detailed. I can make out a few of the abstract shapes, like the sunset and mountain range. Some of the symbols are animals, but the other marks… They’re esoteric.” She looked up and met his gaze. “Every cut means something to you.”
“Yes.” He felt himself warming to her, wanting to give her more than a night to live.
“The image you put on Tate’s back…” Her neck stiffened. “I couldn’t see it clearly. What is it?”
He described the illustration of the double gate hanging between pillars and the woman floating through the opening. “Lucia was there when I carved it into his back. When she realizes it’s a picture of the location where he’s being held, she’ll find him.”
Kate’s jaw fell open, her glare livid. “Why won’t you just let him go? That’s a whole lot easier than cutting a map into his body.” She speared a hand through her hair and pulled at the strands. “What you’re doing to them… It’s insanity.”
“Love is insanity.”
She blinked. Blinked again. “Okay?”
“Tate and Lucia were an experiment. I wanted to le
arn the limits of how far they would go for each other. As it turns out, the thing between them is unstoppable. He’s alone in a shack under the assumption she’s dead, and his only request is a tattoo of her on his arm. She hasn’t seen her sister in eleven years, but instead of going home, she’s scouring the country day and night. I’m certain she won’t give up until she finds him. It’s fascinating to watch.”
“You’re playing God.”
“I’m helping them.”
“Helping? Jesus Christ,” she muttered under her breath. “You’re interfering in destiny. Manipulating it.”
“Destiny is a power far bigger than my mortal reach. I’m simply providing obstacles for them to overcome, to make them stronger.”
“Sounds like a veiled excuse to deliver pain.” Emotion leaked into her voice, raising it a few octaves. “Does their agony inspire you? Do you get hard thinking about it?”
“Stop being so goddamn narrow-minded.” His pulse quickened, firing through his veins. “Adversity builds character.”
“And feeds the sadist.”
“Careful, Kate.” He hardened his eyes, gripped by an irrational need to make her understand. “If you love someone and they don’t reciprocate, what happens? You love them harder, deeper, more obsessively. Roadblocks don’t diminish desire. They intensify it. Obstacles heighten the obsession.”
“Fine.” She blew out a breath, sagging in defeat. “I get what you’re saying. Love is insanity. No one can control it.”
“Not even me.” He felt the glimmer in her eyes, the lingering heat and thrill from arguing.
“Just because I gave the devil his due on one point doesn’t mean I agree with your demented methods.”
“I don’t give a fuck whether you agree or not.”
With a harrumph, she tipped her pretty head, studying him. “You’re not…quite what you seem.”
“Explain.”
“Well, you seem to be a romantic, for one. I didn’t see that coming. Wait.” She straightened, staring at him with a startled expression. “Is that what happened to you? You had your own love story and—?”
“Do you actually believe a woman could love a man like me?”
Her lips parted as she exhaled a slow puff of air. “Am I supposed to answer that?”
He grabbed the tequila and empty mugs and rose from the bed. “We’re finished here.”
She touched a nerve, and he didn’t bother hiding it. He wanted her out of his room.
Heading to the bathroom, he set the bottle on the counter and rinsed out the cups.
The sound of her footsteps approached from behind, pausing outside the door. “Why are there no mirrors in the bathrooms?”
They were removed for reasons that were none of her business.
She sighed into the silence. “Can we talk about the elephant in the room?”
The ever-growing burden of what to do with her unsettled his stomach. With his back to her, he mindlessly dried the cups while making a decision.
If he sent her back to her room and waited until tomorrow, she would spend the evening agonizing over her fate. Unnecessary cruelty wasn’t his thing.
He needed to kill her now. No more delaying.
Some murderers claimed that killing was the same as having sex. Others argued it wasn’t about lust. It was about feeling that last breath of life leave a woman, looking into her eyes, and being God.
Tiago didn’t have a god complex. Nor did he derive sexual pleasure from killing. He especially hated taking a woman’s life, but occasionally things happened.
If he had any human qualities left, he would get to know the stunning woman glaring at his back. He would date her, seduce her, and fuck her until neither of them could walk.
Instead, he was contemplating where to dump her body and how badly it would rot before her friends found it.
“You have four options.” Kate’s voice strummed with nervous agitation.
That raised his brow. He turned and rested his backside against the counter.
“One. You can let me go.” She wilted beneath his glare and hugged her waist. “But that would make you appear merciful and weak. Can’t have that.”
He let his silence affirm her words.
Drawing a breath, she released it slowly. “Two. You can keep me locked up. But my friends won’t stop looking for me as long as I’m alive.”
He slid a hand in his pants pocket and fingered the casing of his blade, the only solution.
Her eyes followed the movement, and a tremor rippled through her. “Three. You can kill me, and maybe my friends won’t put a lifetime of effort into hunting you down. Like you said, there are other priorities, stronger passions than avenging my death. But killing me will make them your enemies. It’s a small world, and when you cross paths with the Restrepo cartel, they’ll remember.”
It was a weak argument. His treatment of Lucia ensured that Matias Restrepo would forever be an enemy. “You said there were four options.”
“I can make a phone call.”
“No.”
She cleared her throat and closed her eyes. When she looked at him again, a strange transformation rolled over her, loosening her posture. Her shoulders eased, and she stood taller, lengthening her height with grace and confidence.
“Liv Reed is my closest friend.” She smiled, and it glowed so beautifully across her face it was disarming. “I can convince her I’m safe, that I haven’t been hurt or touched against my will. Since I’ve been here for a month, that’s plenty of time to get to know you.” Her eyes beamed, lashes fluttering flirtatiously. “I enjoy your company. You’re ridiculously handsome and protective, and you make me feel things I’ve never felt. I know it’s crazy, but I want to stay. I need this. It’s a chance to get away for a while and figure out my life. So there’s no need for anyone to look for me. I don’t want to be found.” She released a shaky breath. “How was that?”
Fucking hell, she was good. Not a hitch or tremble in her voice. She sounded and looked so goddamn sincere he almost believed the lies.
“Did Van teach you how to do that?” He prowled toward her, captivated.
As a trained slave, she would’ve received lessons in obedience and decorum so that she wouldn’t embarrass her Master in public.
“Did Van whip you until you learned how to maintain that pleasing disposition?” he asked. “To hold that smile through the godawful pain?”
“Yes,” she spat, all traces of sweetness gone. “I bet that puts joy in your hateful heart.”
“Not at all.” He circled her, stepping so close he felt a shudder vibrate her tiny frame.
“Shall I grab your phone?” she asked warily.
He kept untraceable burners in the safe. If he went with the phone a friend option, what was the risk?
She couldn’t tip them off on anything useful. She didn’t even know her location. If she meant to deceive him and started begging for help while on the phone, he would just end the call and kill her.
Liv Reed would be skeptical no matter what Kate said to her. But a believable performance would leave her friends wondering, hoping. Just hearing her happy, healthy voice would take some of the urgency out of their need to find her.
“Do it again.” He moved in closer, crowding her back and breathing in the gentle scent of her hair. “Talk through the conversation you would have with her.”
With a deep breath, she re-acted the call. Every word and inflection in her voice was just as convincing as the first time. She made references to him throughout, praising his good looks and weaving a tantalizing tale of budding romance and exciting adventure.
Her enthusiasm was so persuasive it drew his body tight, heating his skin and tempting him to touch. The strapless dress exposed her shoulder blades, the top half of her back, and all her delicate arches of feminine bone and muscle. He couldn’t resist.
Sweeping her hair to the side, he rested his fingertips on the soft, warm curve of her nape.
Goosebumps rose beneath
his hand, but she didn’t flinch or stutter. It was a testament to how badly she wanted this phone call. She was determined to prove she could do it, with or without distractions.
As he feathered his touch down the sinuous line of her spine, he interjected questions that Liv would ask. Kate answered with quick-witted untruths and seamlessly redirected the conversation.
She could absolutely pull this off.
He drew his hand away and stepped back. Anticipation hummed through his body as he stalked to the safe and removed one of the phones.
Keeping her alive introduced new problems and temptations, but the challenge excited him. She excited him.
He locked the safe and returned to her. “If you’re playing me, there will be repercussions.”
“I’m not.” She picked at her fingernail, avoiding his eyes. “Before I make this call, I need you to promise me two things.”
He could guess her demands. “Choose one.”
“But—”
“Only one, Kate.”
Pressing her lips together, she stared at her bare feet. Crossed her arms. Lowered them. Then she lifted her gaze, decision made. “I need your word that Tate will go free.”
“When Lucia finds him—”
“I want a deadline.” She raised her chin. “Promise me you’ll release him if she hasn’t found him in one week.”
“One year.”
“What?” She gasped. “He’s chained in a shack, sleeping on a dirt floor, without a bucket to shit in.”
“There is a bucket.”
“Please, don’t say—”
“To shit in.”
Her neck went taut, and she gritted her teeth. “One month, tops.”
“Six months.”
“Three months.”
“Six months. I’ll keep him fed and cared for. No harm will come to him.”
Her mouth quivered. “Six months is too long.”
“That, or we forget about the phone call and go with option three. What will it be?”
“Damn you.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, inhaled deeply, and dropped her hand. “If Lucia doesn’t locate him in six months, you’ll release him, alive, and never hurt him or touch him again. That includes you or anyone under your command. Promise me.”
