And he’d claimed to be jealous. So he wasn’t completely indifferent to me. Was he? Earlier, he’d claimed he’d wanted me by his side. Now, he didn’t even seem to care if I descended into the party with him.
I hadn’t realized the warmth of his attention until he took it away—especially in a room full of strangers.
Perhaps now that I was caught, I was little more to him than a product of the merger. And that was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? To be nothing to him? To be left alone?
The security guards were suddenly at my back, and my only paths were back through them or down the stairs. They looked even unfriendlier than him.
I followed Cristiano.
As I hit the basement level, a young boy ran up to Cristiano without any hesitation. I braced myself, though for what, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps anger from Cristiano at being approached that way.
“Mira,” he said, opening his mouth and pointing at his missing front teeth.
Cristiano stopped. “What am I looking at, Felix?”
The boy grinned wider. “I lost the second one.”
“That’s too bad,” Cristiano answered. “You won’t be able to eat any cake.”
“Yes, I will,” he declared. “I already had a piece.”
A woman—Felix’s mother, I assumed—took his hand to pull her son away. “Perdón, señor,” she said to Cristiano as she eyed me. “He’s just excited for the el Ratoncito Pérez to leave a gift under his pillow.”
“Who wouldn’t be? There will be one there tonight, Teresa,” Cristiano said and looked to a member of his security team.
The guard nodded in acknowledgement, then limped away to speak into his two-way radio.
“Gracias, señor,” Teresa said and thanked him again before turning her eyes on me. “She’s beautiful.”
“Eduardo told you what I need?” Cristiano asked.
“Sí.” Teresa nodded. “But it helps to see her for myself.” In any other situation, I would’ve demanded they not speak about me as if I weren’t standing there. But I couldn’t be sure who was friend or foe—or who worked for Cristiano and who was in my position.
Teresa guided her son away, and I found a sea of unreadable faces looking back at me.
“Eat, drink,” Cristiano bellowed to them, gesturing at their tables. “Don’t let us interrupt the fun.”
The music resumed, and people turned back to their food, beverages, and conversation. It felt wrong to drink and sing. People almost seemed . . . comfortable. I could see that they were well-fed, and they acted as if they were safe. In some way or another, the people here must’ve been employees of the cartel and their families. Which made this the office Easter party.
Cristiano nodded at the buffet. “You should be able to find something to your liking.”
“I’m not hungry.” I crossed my arms over my stomach and hoped it wouldn’t growl. To me, it just wasn’t the time for tamales and cake. “What was that with the boy’s mom? Some kind of code?”
“Code for what?” he asked.
“You expect me to believe that exchange was really about what the Tooth Rat would put under a kid’s pillow? Did you just order someone decapitated or something?”
The corner of his mouth twitched as he led me to the spread of food. “No, mi amor. Just handled. I’ll do the same to you if you don’t eat something.”
My stomach was in knots. “Food is the last thing on my mind.”
“What is on your mind?” he asked.
“I’m tired,” I lied. “I don’t see the purpose of being paraded around for people who don’t seem to want me here. Is there somewhere I could lie down?”
“Sí,” he answered. “My bed.” Amusement flashed across his features. He was testing my limits. Trying to scare me.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll eat.”
“Good to know that threatening my bed works on you.” He handed me a paper plate printed with party balloons. “While Felix and his mother are here, Eduardo will put a hundred pesos under the boy’s pillow. I’ve also hired her for something personal, but it’s nothing deceitful. Not as exciting as a beheading, just a small favor.”
I eyed Cristiano for signs of sarcasm but was only met with a casual shrug.
A young man walked over, his arm extended in greeting. “Felicitaciones,” he congratulated Cristiano, shaking his hand before turning to me. “Y usted también, señora. You make a lovely bride.”
I couldn’t tell if the man was mocking me by extending his congratulations to me as well—Cristiano had made it clear to all that this was nothing more than an arranged marriage.
“Doesn’t she?” Cristiano remarked as if I were a prized pig, and barely glanced at me as he said, “Go make yourself a plate.”
I understood his order for what it was—they needed privacy. Diego and my father had dismissed me the same way many times. In a way, Cristiano’s true colors were a relief. This was the ice I’d expected to find in my new husband. It was a wonder he didn’t melt in hell.
As I turned, Cristiano touched my arm, leaning in so only I could hear. “But stay close. I should be able to reach out and touch you whenever I please.”
He returned forward, leaving me with his clean scent, promised heat, and a chill that raced down my spine.
Dusk encroached, and true darkness would fall soon. And when it did, Cristiano would touch me whenever he pleased.
4
Natalia
Standing over a hand-painted sink, with cobalt blue and white shiny tiles at my back, I stared at myself in a bathroom mirror, my wide, nervous eyes and pale face bathed with warm, honeyed light. Over an hour into the Easter party, and it was the first moment I’d had alone. Cristiano carried on conversations and shook hands as if I didn’t exist, yet if I ever left his side, he’d reprimand me with a look or a clipped command under his breath to return.
I touched the dark circles under my eyes, and my new wedding ring caught the light. I inspected the small, meaningless diamond Cristiano had probably found in a pawn shop. Or, more likely, one of his men had been ordered to pick it up.
“In order to make the deal, I’ve taken a wife.”
Literally.
How far back had Cristiano planned this? For Diego and me, the union had been sudden, but had Cristiano known my fate since the night of the costume party? If so, then he’d played with us—and I feared the game wasn’t over.
Cristiano had admitted as much at his nightclub. This was all a game, and I had to play, or I’d lose.
But how did someone like me, with nothing except the clothes on my back, beat a man who had every resource available to him?
I had only one thing to offer—one bargaining chip.
I hadn’t forgotten Cristiano’s threat to Diego earlier.
“Envision me taking her with the same fervor on this, our wedding night.”
I pressed my hand to my stomach as my insides wrenched. How long until Cristiano ended the party and took what he felt he was owed? I needed to prepare for tonight, mentally and physically. For me, sex was no longer about love. It was an exchange, and perhaps a tool I could use to make my time here bearable.
With a knock on the bathroom door, I opened it and met Alejandro, the guard who’d shown me to the bathroom and who’d also stood for Cristiano at our wedding. “Don Cristiano is asking for you,” he said.
“Can’t I use the restroom in peace?”
“It’s been twenty minutes.”
“Don’t have the shrimp,” I snapped at him.
I thought I detected a smile in his eyes, but he remained passive. “Noted.”
He led me back through the house. In the kitchen, people continued to buzz, coming in and out with trays, though it seemed to me everyone had eaten plenty. Jaz stood at the sink washing dishes with her head down. Her bun sagged, and pieces of her red hair had come loose around her face. I’d thought she was young and pretty before, but as I studied her profile, I realized she was beautiful.
I stoppe
d where I was, and without consulting Alejandro, I seized an opportunity to gather more information while Cristiano wasn’t around.
I walked over to her. “Do you need any help?”
She looked at me with brown, startled eyes. “No. This is my job.”
I rolled my lips together, glancing at Alejandro. “How long have you worked here?” I asked.
“Years.”
My mouth fell open. She looked my age. “Is it . . . did you live here before? Are you being paid?”
“¿Qué?” Her gaze shifted over my shoulder to Alejandro. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Where are you from?” I asked, touching her forearm.
She flinched back. “I’m from here. This is my home.”
“Is there a problem, Natalia?” Alejandro asked behind me.
Everyone in the kitchen went quiet. The chef leaned against a counter and slurped stew from a bowl like a server on his dinner break. The scarred, elderly woman glanced at Jaz and me, and then quickly away.
I faced Alejandro. “I was asking for . . . aspirin.”
Jaz turned off the faucet, yanked off her rubber gloves, and slapped them against the counter with a thwack. “I’ll bring you some, doña Natalia,” she said with obvious sarcasm and a glare before walking away.
“Come on,” Alejandro said. “Jaz will find us.”
I’d clearly upset her, and I hoped I hadn’t gotten her into trouble. “How old is she?” I asked.
“Not sure. Early twenties?”
“But she’s worked here years?” I asked. “Doing what?”
He frowned at me. “What do you mean? She’s part of the household staff. Cooks, cleans—that kind of thing.”
“But is there more that’s . . . required of her?”
“Well, it’s a big house,” he said, his eyebrows drawn. “She helps keep the rooms in order, manages the landscapers—”
“Never mind,” I said with a sigh. I just didn’t understand how such a young girl had come to work here, and whether she was in any kind of trouble. She didn’t seem to be. So what was the truth about the Badlands?
Alejandro veered us away from the party and toward the living space we’d walked through earlier.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He gestured in front of us. Some of the main room’s French doors had been opened, and the scent of rain and wet soil drifted in from the patio I’d seen earlier, the pool just beyond. Cristiano sat at a round table with a group of men, his back to Alejandro and me, an ankle over one knee and a cigar in his hand. Alejandro continued outside and went to take the last open patio chair, leaving me in the doorway.
Cristiano drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair looking anything but bored. He almost seemed relaxed as he acknowledged Alejandro but didn’t notice me behind him.
“It’s all right,” he said after a few moments of silence. “Continue.”
“As I was saying, Cortez is demanding more from us than the buyer paid,” the glass-eyed man said after a sip of his drink. Max. He’d brought me from the church garden to the wedding earlier that day.
“The shipment is invaluable, but he doesn’t need to know that,” Cristiano said. “Pay him a fair sum, nothing more.”
Max nodded through a cloud of white smoke. “If he doesn’t like it, he’ll like the alternative even less.”
I stepped lightly onto the patio so as not to draw attention. Though both Alejandro and Max knew I was there, it still felt like I was doing something wrong. But picking up even a few words of Cristiano’s conversation could help me puzzle together what exactly was happening inside the Badlands’ walls.
Cristiano placed both feet on the ground, leaned his elbows on his knees, and pointed his cigar at Max. “But make sure he understands that our payment is a courtesy I won’t extend twice.”
I held my breath, certain Cristiano would turn around and tell me to leave any moment.
“Next time we catch him transporting for BR,” Cristiano said, “I’ll take the shipment. Nobody gets paid shit. And I can’t guarantee he’ll walk out alive.”
“Agreed,” Max said.
Cristiano sat back in his seat. “Gentlemen, there’s one thing you should know about my new wife: you should be even more alert than usual. She has been taught since childhood that eavesdropping is the only way to get information.”
A few of the men chuckled as my cheeks warmed. He hadn’t even looked in my direction—how had he known I was standing there?
“So you’ll handle that then, Max?” Cristiano asked.
“Sí, jefe.”
Waiting to be dismissed, I folded my hands, and my knuckle caught on the diamond on my finger. It would take getting used to. It seemed blasphemous to wear it, a mockery of the marriage I could’ve had.
“What else?” Cristiano asked. “As much as I like you all, there’s only one person I want to spend my wedding night with.”
“There’s the matter with Sandra,” Alejandro said.
“Right. You think she’s ready?” Cristiano puffed his cigar, but he still didn’t send me away. He knew better than to assume I’d leave my own, which meant he was allowing me to listen in.
Sweet, woodsy cigar smoke wafted toward me. Only Alejandro refrained from partaking. “She won’t look this young forever,” he said. “She can easily pass for fourteen.”
“How long has she been going to Solomon?” Cristiano asked.
Alejandro exchanged a look with another man. “About six months.”
“Then she’s ready. Put her on the corner.”
I gasped, only mildly more shocked by Cristiano’s suggestion than I was that they were talking business in front of me.
“If Sandra says she’s too scared, send her to me,” Cristiano added.
“You can’t put a fourteen-year-old on the streets,” I blurted.
Everyone except Cristiano turned to me. “She’s not fourteen. She’s eighteen.”
“But you’re trying to pass her off as underage?” I asked. “It’s sick.”
Cristiano finally looked at me. “Perhaps it was a mistake to let you stay. You’re asking the wrong questions, and you don’t have the stomach for this yet.”
I pressed my lips together. He was giving me a choice, which was more than anyone in a position of authority had ever done before. I could stay and continue to gather information that might help me understand what was happening under this roof, or I could run and hide in my room.
As if responding to some silent signal, the men ashed their cigars, stood from their chairs, and nodded at Cristiano on their way inside. The one with the face tattoo and limp—Eduardo, I thought Cristiano had called him—was last to get up, hesitating before he shut the door behind himself.
Once we were alone, Cristiano turned to me. “Sit.”
I obeyed, hoping it would earn me some leeway. Because despite being in a similar situation, or maybe because of it, I couldn’t stay quiet when a young girl was being taken advantage of.
“I do have the stomach for this,” I said as calmly as I could so he wouldn’t get defensive. “But that could’ve been me on the corner. You protected me as a young girl once. Do you still have it in you?”
Cristiano eyed me passively. “What do you mean it could’ve been you?”
“If your father had struck against mine as he’d planned, he’d have left me an orphan. What do you think he would’ve done with me? Despite their pact with the other cartels in the area, including Papá’s, your parents were secretly trafficking humans.”
“I’m aware.” A vein in Cristiano’s temple pulsed as he glanced over his shoulder and into the house. “My father wouldn’t have been as kind to you as I have been today. As I have been your whole life.”
I swallowed. I couldn’t deny that was true, but it wasn’t a strong enough argument to justify what he was doing. “You’re no different from him now, but you can still change.”
He smashed his cigar into an ashtray. “Y
ou don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m nothing like him. I wouldn’t exploit a woman, no matter her age.”
“If that was true, I wouldn’t be here.”
He shot up from his chair, nearly knocking it over. “I didn’t buy, sell, or trade you,” he said, going rigid. “You’re here willingly.”
Willingly. Diego had used the same word. Was it a clue as to what justifications brewed in Cristiano’s mind? He seemed set on believing I’d come here by choice. That he hadn’t forced me into anything. Diego had told me all about how Cristiano had been so opposed to his parents’ budding business in human trafficking that he’d gone as far as to enlist Papá’s help to put a stop to it—even knowing there was only way to stop it.
My father had killed Cristiano and Diego’s parents for sins similar to Cristiano’s. Trafficking people. Exploiting young girls. Plotting against our family.
So what had changed for Cristiano? Why had he stood up to it back then, only to turn around and build an even greater empire on the backs of others? He’d obviously seen and done enough to turn him into a different man. One worse than his father if the rumors were true, and if he justified his actions by convincing himself that anyone came to him willingly.
The door opened behind us. “Señor?” came a small female voice.
We both glanced over at Jazmín as she stepped out with a decanter of amber liquid.
Cristiano smoothed out his dress shirt, rolled his neck, and sat back down, once again cool and unruffled. “Come,” he said to Jazmín.
She brought him the bottle, and he refilled his drink, nodding at her other hand. “What’s that?”
She passed him a pill bottle and set an Evian on the table. “For Miss Natalia,” she said.
He furrowed his brows as he studied the painkillers. “What’s wrong?” he asked me. “Headache?”
“Yes,” I said, which wasn’t a complete lie. By the end of the night, I wasn’t sure what kind of pain I’d be in. The thought made me queasy and opened a door in my mind I’d been trying to hold shut. How was I going to make it through this? I’d only had sex once, and it had been the complete opposite of what I was about to endure.
Violent Ends (White Monarch Book 2) Page 4
