“What are you saying?” I ask, forcing myself to look Vega in the eye, swallowing back my instinct to keep fighting him.
“Café Palacios,” Vega says, and my heart sinks a little more. “You make me the new CEO, and I swear to you, your family’s legacy won’t serve as a drug front for a second longer than necessary.”
Sure, it’s not like I’d had an active role in the family business at any point in my life, but that doesn’t mean I’m eager to hand the reins over to the criminal I’m now legally bound to for life. But, as far as I can tell, there’s no one else crazy enough to go against El Sombrerón. Not even me, if I’m being perfectly honest. Not without help from Vega, anyway.
“You’re a criminal,” I remind him. “How is making a known felon the public head of my company any better?”
“Not so known anymore,” he says, with a tiny self-satisfied smirk. “You’re the last person who will ever see those police files. My rap sheet, criminal record, it’s all gone now.”
“What else?” I ask after a moment, giving him no reaction to his first request—a request we both know will become a command if I don’t acquiesce the first time around. I don’t ask him how his criminal record might have gone missing overnight. I’m guessing it’s the same way he got a judge to marry us in less than 24 hours.
“The wedding,” he goes on, and my palms begin to sweat. “We do it big, just like I told you. And you play along every step of the way.”
“What do I get out of that one?” I ask, jutting my chin out in a show of bravado I don’t truly feel.
Something hot flashes in his eyes and for a moment, I’m afraid he’ll say something sexual, remind me of the one night we spent together, that one dirty, depraved, bloody night in my bathroom. My skin is already blushing pink, but he doesn’t bring it up.
“Protection,” he says, taking a sip of his own coffee. “You’re on a lot of radars now, Selina, dangerous, deadly radars, and you clearly don’t have the security you’ll need to protect yourself from these threats on your own.”
What he’s not saying is that I’m only on those radars because of him, and that we only know how weak my security is because of how easily he took me. Well, how weak my security was. My security is all dead now, and that one’s because of me.
“You need me alive more than I need myself alive,” I point out, and it sounds darker coming out of my mouth than I meant it to. Neither of us acknowledges it, though.
“It’s up to you, Selina,” Vega says, ignoring what doesn’t serve him, as usual. “We can go back to the way things were, where you’re in the dark, following orders, living from threat to threat. Or we try something new, where you can be a part of things, working with us because you want to, because you know it’s what’s best for you. This marriage is a sham, we both know that, but this partnership can be something real. Consider it your first wedding gift.”
I roll my eyes at him, and busy myself with another long pull of coffee while I roll his offer around in my head. This partnership, while perhaps an abnormally kind gesture, will be about as real as this marriage and we both know it. Sure, he might bring me in on his plans a bit more, let me chime in here or there, but there’s no world in which I ever get to be his equal. But maybe a partnership in name only would still be better than the life I’ve been caught in the past few months, blind to the circumstances that brought my captors to me. My whole life I’ve been blind to the way my family fortune came to be. Even if it’s just pretend, I want to be an active participant in my life for fucking once. And maybe, just maybe, I can get a little something out of it, too.
“Okay,” I say, and I watch Vega’s shoulders loosen just a touch. “But there’s one more thing I want.”
I was never supposed to end up here. The odds were stacked against me every step of the way. I came from the wrong country, wrong neighborhood, wrong family. I have the wrong skin color, no formal education, and too many tattoos. I should have ended up back in prison a long time ago, or left on the side of the road with a bullet in my head. Neither nurture nor nature could ever have brought me here, and fate would never allow this. No, this I did for myself. I fought and clawed my way here, taking what was never supposed to be mine. That’s the only way to get what you want: to steal it, to force it. And once you have it, well, you better be willing to die for it.
“Sir, can I get you some coffee?”
I turn away from the giant windows overlooking the heart of Atlanta, trying not to look too annoyed with the assistant standing in the doorway of the office. My assistant, my office, my company. Soon, my Atlanta.
“Sure. Black, no sugar. Thanks, Annie.”
The curvy woman nods and scurries away. She’s afraid of me. That’s fine. If her speedy hire was any indication, her replacement will be just as easy to find. The previous assistant left us in a bit of a bind when she up and moved to Seattle overnight, but who could blame her? Her former boss had just been shot in the head, murdered a few feet down the hall from her desk. That, and some generous stranger offered her more money than she could refuse to leave the city and never return. Or maybe she’s dead now, too. I don’t know. With my hands full of Selina and Café Palacios, I handed the task of taking care of witnesses over to Miel, and I trust her judgment too much to bother following up. All I know is that Annie is my assistant now, and I’m getting the feeling I might have to learn a new assistant’s name sooner rather than later.
I sit down at the desk and pick a business card off the stack that came in this morning. Javier Vega, CEO. It still reads like a joke, even to me. This was always part of the long-term plan, but it wasn’t supposed to happen so damn soon. But an opportunity presented itself, a silver lining to the havoc brought on by Selina’s ill-fated escape attempt. I’d spent years perfecting my plan, every detail and every deadline, but that night I improvised. So far, it’s paid off. Now I’m Selina’s husband and the usurper to her family’s throne. Soon enough, we’ll be striking my enemy in the way that will hurt him the most. It’ll be the ultimate power play, one that will force him to recognize me as a very real threat, not just some underling gone rogue, annoying but easy to exterminate. And if it benefits Selina too, gives her a reason to see me as an ally rather than an enemy, well, so be it.
I flick the crisp business card into the air, watching it spin across the room. In due time, that could be a bullet, spiraling directly into my enemy’s heart. Right now, though, my greatest weapon is this leather throne I’m sitting on, and the power it gives me.
It will only take a quick phone call to cut off El Sombrerón’s supply. The real trouble comes after. Despite the former CEO’s death, shipments have continued as normal, and as such our enemy has taken no notice of the change in command here at Café Palacios. But once we pull the plug, it will be a matter of days until he finds out, maybe less. My stomach twists in a way I haven’t felt in a very long time. Fear? Terror. If he wanted me dead before, well, now I won’t be so lucky. He’ll flay me alive, and god knows what he’ll do to Miel. She’ll kill me herself once she finds out what I’m planning to do. But it’ll be too late then. We do our best work under pressure, anyway. Especially when the pressure is life or death.
And what of Selina? Whether he thinks she’s the one behind the cut-off, or realizes she’s associating with me, her fate will be sealed. Bile rises in my throat at the thought of what he might do to her, and I force the images out of my head. There was a time when all he wanted was a bullet to her heart. That will no longer suffice. I protected her from him once, and I’ll do it again, and again, and again. I can’t risk coming into that situation unprepared, though. Not when her life is on the line. When we deal the first blow, cut off the kingpin’s greatest supply once and for all, I have to be one thousand percent ready to deal with the consequences. If I lose Selina in my attempt to keep her, this will all have been for naught. He’ll find out about Selina sooner rather than later, as soon as our marriage becomes public knowledge. I’ll just have to make the mos
t out of the time I’ve got left. Besides, there’s plenty else to keep me busy.
Annie brings me my coffee and I thank her with a smile. I take a sip. Damn it, that bitch put sugar in. I set the mug aside with a grimace and focus back on my laptop. Café Palacios’s profits are going to tank once we lose the cut from the cocaine trafficking, that much is certain. Thankfully, our intel from Isla del Rey has been paying off in a big way. Having the mayor in our pocket has already proven to be infinitely useful, and we still have a dozen other names on her list. The income from our other business, what Miel calls extortion and I call rich assholes’ comeuppance, will make up for our losses, and then some. Not to mention the political capital of it all. When we bring the war to my former employer, we’ll need as much power as we can get.
While I’m thinking about it, I text Miel asking for an update on our latest target. She’s still in the shithouse in my book, but I can’t afford to bench her right now, not when everything is coming to a head. Besides, all she really did was give Selina information she would have learned eventually. Miel didn’t know our captive princess was about to uncover our own past with El Sombrerón. My stomach twists again, newly unsettled. The police have nothing connecting me to the murder of Max Palacios. There’s no way Selina will be able to piece the truth together. Even so, the fact that she has even a single puzzle piece makes me newly anxious. What I did was unforgivable, no matter my intentions. She’ll never understand.
My eyes flick to a framed photo on the wall, one of Selina a few years ago, shortly after I laid eyes on her for the first time. I can’t escape those haunted eyes. She stains my whole life, just as she has my mind since that day. I live in her home, work at her company, keep her under my thumb. She’s bound to me, as legally mine now as she was illegally for months. I’ve never been able to escape her, and now, she’ll never escape me again. The memory of her betrayal is still a fresh wound. I would never hurt my pretty captive, but my fists still curl at the thought of her running from me. Forcing her to marry me will have to be punishment enough, as much as I hated playing that card in such a way.
I’m not a child. I don’t believe in the romance of marriage, never have. The memories of my father beating my mother bloody, breaking her bones over trivial bullshit, made that impossible from a very young age. Still, some small part of me wishes I’d been able to take Selina to the altar of her own volition, not at near literal gunpoint. That’s why I had given us so much time to build up to the marriage, time for her to come to me willingly, time for her to realize that the darkness in her matches the darkness in me. A fantasy, I realize now. It doesn’t matter anymore. Not when there’s a war to prepare for, a war that threatens us both. I will protect Selina Palacios, even as she fights me every step of the way. I will give to her, too. I meant what I promised her, a new partnership. As long as she holds up her end of the bargain, and as long as she understands that she will never again know a life without me. It’s for her own good, though she may never admit it. In time, I will bring Café Palacios into the light for her, and I’ll bring Selina Palacios into the darkness for myself. It’s where she’s always belonged, anyway.
My phone buzzes, a text from H.
We have her.
One more gift for my new wife. Not that she’ll ever thank me. I smile anyway. It doesn’t matter. I’ve always liked my women with a little bite.
On my way, I text back.
“Kate!” I run down the hallway and throw my arms around the woman I’ve known my whole life, now smaller and frailer than ever. I want to ask how she is, how they’ve been treating her, but with Brock and Hernando looming over us, I swallow back the questions and focus on this moment instead. “Kate, I missed you so much.”
She returns my hug easily, and up against me, her arms don’t feel weak, and her body doesn’t seem emaciated. Wherever they were keeping her, she must have at least been well fed.
“Selina, I was so worried about you,” Kate says, pulling away and looking me up and down. She must be thinking the same thing, must not have known that while she was chained up in some dank hole, I was still living my same privileged life, albeit with a few more chores. “I knew they must be using me to ask a ransom of you, or something worse. Thank god your new men found me when they did, or who knows what would have happened to me. Eddie and Alan, oh…”
She comes in for another hug, eyes misting at the thought of my old bodyguards, dead at my hand, though she must not know that if she’s so thrilled to see me. Wait. Did she just say, thank god Brock and Hernando found her?
“She never saw her captors’ faces, can you believe that?” Vega says, apparating behind me and slinging an arm around my shoulder. It still makes my heart jump, the casual way he touches me. Like I’m just another stolen object that now belongs to him. “The ordeal Kate’s been through is unbelievable. We’re lucky she’s here with us today.”
“Who’s this?” Kate asks, shrinking away slightly. Vega has on a pleasant face and a shirt that covers most of his tattoos, but there’s still something dark and violent that emanates from him, something no amount of smiles and money can hide. Kate can sense that just as much as I could when I first met him.
“Selina’s new husband,” Vega says, and Kate’s gaze darts to my left hand. I instinctively curl it, trying to hide the shameful eight-carat truth it bears. What game is Vega playing now? When I asked for Kate back, I didn’t ask for details on how he might pull off such a feat. Is it really going to be this easy for him? Will Kate enter the ranks of all those who don’t know the reality of what my new husband has put me through? Is she now one more person I’ll have to lie to? It will be harder with her, the woman who basically raised me. Even through my worst times, at least I could always be honest with her. “Selina came to me with your plight, and of course I set my men to work on your rescue straight away. Are you alright? Should we get you a doctor, a therapist?”
“No, thank you. Thank you,” Kate says, still looking back and forth between me and our captor, the man she now regards as her savior. There’s a small furrow on her forehead. She senses something is off, doesn’t quite know how to react to this moment. Besides, she’s probably traumatized from the experience, as well fed as she might have been. It will take her time to adjust to being safe and back home. Well, relatively safe.
“You must be exhausted, you should get some rest,” I begin, but I’m interrupted by Vega.
“Were you mistreated?” He asks, staring the older woman down. “Hurt in any way?”
“No, not really,” Kate says, pulling her faded cardigan tighter around her body. “Eddie and Alan took the brunt of it, god rest their souls. But other than that first horrible night, I was treated quite well. They kept me fed, well rested, even gave me books to read to entertain myself. Isn’t that odd? If it weren’t for the guns and masks, it could have been a vacation. Oh, is that horrible to say?”
“Not at all,” Vega says, squeezing my shoulders tighter. His touch says, See? I’m not the villain you think I am. “We’re all so lucky you’re unharmed. I can only hope they catch the guys that did this to you soon. For now, Selina is right, you need your rest. Brock, take her to her old room. Everything should be ready for you, Kate.”
“Thank you,” Kate says, giving me one more quick hug before she goes. As soon as she’s out of earshot, I spin on my heels to face Vega.
“What the fuck?” I spit out, keeping my voice at a low hiss. “How can you lie to her like that? It’s evil, pretending to be the hero in her story after everything you did to her.”
“I meant everything I said,” he says, raising a patient brow at me. “Well, except for the part about wanting us to get caught. But you should be pleased, princesa. You have your housekeeper back, and this little omission of facts will spare her further trauma. Just let it be.”
Oh, so I’m the only one who gets the pleasure of having to live with this knowledge? I bite back every horrible thing I want to say to him, because on some level, he’s right
. It probably is better for Kate this way. The way I have to live, knowing that my housemates, my husband, are the cause of my new circumstances, is a nightmare I wouldn’t wish on anyone else. I know he expects me to be grateful, to say thank you, but I will at least refuse him that. I march out of the room, not realizing until I’m halfway down the hall that my fists are balled so tight, my nails are cutting crescent-shaped marks into my palms.
The “rescue” of Selina’s old nanny went off without a hitch. Brock and H aren’t winning any awards for their acting, but luckily, Kate Pai is as naive as they come. And if she ever starts causing trouble, well, heart attacks aren’t uncommon in people her age, and they’re also not difficult to fake. I can be generous, but I’m no saint. There are no lines I won’t cross to protect me and what’s mine. Still, I hope it won’t come to that. My princesa has been through enough.
I’m reminded of that every night, once the screaming begins.
Ever since the night of Selina’s escape attempt—and of my proposal—she’s been having these nightmares. I can’t blame her, not after she saw a man’s brains paint the walls of what is now my office. She needed to witness that, though. She had to understand the realities of her new life once and for all. And now, her haunting cries serve as a nightly reminder that no matter how expensive my suits are, or what my business cards say, I will never be anything but a monster. It’s what I was born and bred to be. Perhaps it’s a side of myself I should be ashamed of, but I’m not. It’s how I got this throne, how I got Selina, and how I will get my freedom once and for all.
So why do her pathetic whimperings in the night keep me up long after she’s finally fallen silent again?
I’ve had enough. A bizarre sense of self-righteous fury carries me to her bedroom door. It makes no sense to be upset with her for being unable to control her mind’s response to trauma, but there is no world in which I accept the fact that this anger I feel might be directed at myself, at my own blame in this situation.
Caged: The Complete Trilogy Page 18
