by Bethany-Kris
And God, yeah, beautiful didn’t do the woman justice. Her joyful smile brightened her delicate features, and her black hair had a glossy sheen under the sunlight. Tall, and curvy, the lavender dress she had picked for the day hugged her body and showed off all kinds of leg.
With only a picture, Chris thought whoever had taken it had captured the woman’s beauty, her confidence, and her womanly appeal all at the same time.
Quite a feat.
“Valeria Lòpez,” Cree said when Dare stayed quiet. “Formerly Gomez, but she changed it after a forced marriage to Jorge Lòpez at fifteen when the cartel killed her mother down in Mexico, it became a means to blackmail her father. Or, those are the details we have.”
“That’s all we had,” Andino muttered.
“Right,” Dare said, nodding at Andino, “and so this is what we’re working on. Somehow, around sixteen from what we understand, Valeria was pregnant, and ran away from her husband, and the cartel. She found her way to the States, and we don’t know how. What we do know is her daughter was born in the States, and at some point, she met Haven Murphy.”
“Marcello, now,” Andino added under his breath.
That name rang a bell.
Chris looked to Andino. “Your new wife?”
Andino nodded. “The two happened to be roommates for quite a while before I came along, Valeria worked for Haven, and one night she came home ... seemed like Val up and left and so did—”
Dare pressed a button, and the screen changed to a single picture of the little girl Valeria had been holding in the wedding picture. “Her daughter, Maria. Who is six. We cannot find anything for this little girl anywhere at the moment. No school records in Mexico, nothing for a doctor, and ... yeah.”
Chris let out a heavy breath as he took in the black-haired, brown-eyed child. She looked all of maybe five on the screen if that. Cute, with a wide, toothy smile, and her arms high in the air as her yellow summer dress spun around her legs.
“Jorge Lòpez is her father,” Dare said, “but what’s important is ... Valeria ran from the cartel, we’re aware she was forced into marriage, and at some point, they took her again. We have every reason to believe she is back with the cartel.”
“Might she want to be there?” Chris asked.
“Possibly,” the man returned, “but you must figure that out when you get inside, won’t you?”
Gian hummed under his breath beside his son. “And that’s why you want me here, isn’t it? Being the boss of the Guzzis, I’m not affiliated to the Marcellos on paper as a business partner, they wouldn’t expect me to go there for her, and I could use my status and territory as a transaction for them, correct?”
“They wouldn’t suspect something’s up, no.”
Chris looked to the two Marcello men as this was their job. They had come here with it, and they wanted to retrieve the woman. “Why is she important? A cartel wife ... that’s playing with fire. I’m familiar with details about the Lòpez cartel. Jorge, he’s the oldest son, and has taken over more now that his father took a step back years ago. And you want to ... what, take his wife and child from him?”
Andino arched a brow, replying, “I respect the hesitance, but the woman never asked for the life they gave her. From what my wife explained, and I understood, Val stayed on the run and had been for years, which meant she had to be running from something.”
“Or someone,” Chris finished.
“Jorge, likely,” Andino agreed. “Val and Haven ... she needs to know if Val is where she wants to be, is safe, and happy. And if she is, fine, we leave it alone. But if she isn’t, and if she needs help, that’s what you’re here to do.”
Chris cleared his throat and nodded once. “All right.”
Dare passed him a glance. “The job’s a go?”
“The job is a go.”
3.
“Mamá, watch me!”
Valeria already had one eye on her daughter, but she tipped the rim of her large, pink summer hat higher so that Maria could see her. She smiled, refusing to allow her six-year-old to see her discomfort about where they were staying. Maria liked the pool at her grandfather, Martín’s, mansion in Mexico City, but Valeria hated it.
Or better yet, she hated the people here.
Most of them.
“When did she learn to swim?”
The soft voice at Valeria’s left didn’t take her attention away from her daughter in the pool—safety first, and all—but she still answered Abril on the lounger. “Last summer. A friend and I took her twice a week to an indoor pool for lessons.”
“A friend?”
Valeria did her best not to roll her eyes at her sister-in-law. Six years on the run, and Jorge had caught up to her. It wasn’t Abril’s fault, and no one had ever found out the truth about how she helped Valeria all those years ago. She had been back in Mexico, under Jorge’s thumb, for a year now ... and life was worse.
“Haven Murphy,” Valeria said, her gaze darting to the marble steps leading to the back of the mansion’s patio doors. It was a habit for her now—she looked for Jorge if she dared mention anything about her time when she ran away because if he was within hearing distance, or if someone else was that would tell on her, she would suffer for it later. “She thought it was a good idea.”
In her stark white, one-piece bathing suit that contrasted against her deeply tanned skin, Abril shifted to face Valeria more on her lounger. Valeria still kept one eye on her little girl in the water, just in case Maria became tired, and needed her ma to jump in after her.
“I would think you might be ... furioso—angry—with her, after everything.”
Val blinked. “Why?”
“It was because of her that he found you, no?”
“I don’t blame her. It wasn’t her fault that someone leaked a picture from the private wedding to the public, and it was the one that Maria and I were also in, Abril. It was the circumstance, and nothing more.”
Valeria never understood how she befriended Haven when she found herself in New York a good year after taking off from Mexico, but she had never been more grateful for the friendship. For years, Haven was the only person Valeria had to rely on—they lived together, for Christ’s sake. And then when Haven met someone who was maybe as dangerous as Jorge had been for Valeria, she knew it was a risk to continue her friendship.
Except, she was scared to walk away.
She loved her friend.
Haven married that man.
Turned out, he wasn’t awful like Jorge.
The rest, from the wedding to the leaked picture, all brought Valeria right back to this hellscape Jorge liked to call home for her. And oh, he had been so fucking pleased to watch his men drag her through the gates of the compound, messy and fighting, while another man carried his drugged, sleeping daughter to him.
“We shouldn’t talk about that,” Valeria said.
“Hmm.”
Mostly, because it pissed Jorge off, and Valeria didn’t feel like dealing with her husband later in the evening. But also, because it hurt Valeria in her heart to think about the people she had left behind.
Haven.
Her best friend.
Chances were, she would never see Haven again. That would be to Haven’s best benefit, all things considered. Anything Valeria cared about, Jorge took note, and used it to keep her controlled, and to make her behave.
Even her daughter wasn’t out of bounds for him, the bastard. Valeria had learned over the last year since her forceful return that it was better to do what the asshole wanted from her than to fight him every step of the way.
One hurt less.
“Well, at least he allowed you out of the compound for this weekend,” Abril muttered, rolling to her back on the lounger, and tipping her matching white sunhat down enough to hide the sun’s rays from her face. “That’s a start.”
Yes, but for what?
Jorge did nothing without reason.
Valeria assumed this was the same.
“Okay, Mamá,” her girl replied.
She watched as Maria swam closer to the edge of the pool on the shallow side, her tanned legs kicking up a storm and splattering the tiled edge with droplets of water. It was only then that Valeria noticed the man approaching, and because Maria happened to splash him with water from the pool.
Not that he seemed to care.
Dressed in beige slacks, his leather shoes hit the tiles soundlessly as he rolled up the sleeves of his silk dress shirt around his elbows, showing off skin darkened by the sun. He’d left the top two buttons of his shirt undone at his throat and seemed comfortable approaching them.
Roberto García.
Son of a rival cartel leader.
Enemy of theirs.
In peace talks.
And also—
“Ah, dove, you’re getting too much sun,” Roberto murmured as he came to a stop beside Abril’s lounger.
Abril took a deep breath, but didn’t move her sunhat to peer up at the man who should be her intended husband sometime over the next few months. Or, that’s what Valeria had understood. According to Jorge, it was one of the many attempts at making peace between the rival cartels. Although, she wasn’t sure they should trust anything that came out of his rotten mouth.
“I am fine, but gracias,” Abril replied, not unkindly.
Still, a bite lingered in her tone.
Roberto didn’t miss it if the slight narrowing of his eyes was any sign to his lessening patience. His gaze darted to Valeria, and he offered her a tight smile. “You two look like twins today—almost.”
Yes, her in a pale pink one-piece.
Abril in her white one.
Valeria shrugged. “Only from behind, though.”
That made Abril laugh.
Roberto didn’t understand.
Valeria grinned.
Her amusement didn’t last long when a familiar figure came to stand on the marble steps. She swore she distinguished his gaze nailing into her from thirty feet away. She couldn’t see his eyes from behind the dark aviator sunglasses he wore, their weight was still palpable.
“Valeria, clean Maria up and come inside,” Jorge called out to her, “we’re about ready to sit down for dinner.”
She didn’t reply, simply moved to do as she was told, slipping off the lounger to approach the side of the pool. As she pulled Maria from the water, a towel already waiting for her to dry her daughter off, and get her dressed, Roberto murmured something to Abril behind her before he headed for the mansion.
Valeria turned around with a towel-wrapped Maria in just enough time to watch Abril glower at the man’s back as he walked away. “Be careful,” she told her sister-in-law, “because they won’t like seeing your face looking like that about him.”
Abril’s jaw tightened before her hateful expression morphed into a blank slate. “I refuse to marry that man.”
“He isn’t a bad man.”
“He isn’t the man I want, Val.”
Yes, well ... she knew how that worked.
How this life of theirs worked.
Look at her.
Valeria said nothing.
Abril didn’t seem to mind.
• • •
Spanish flowed around the table between the men, but the women at their sides kept quiet, and focused on the meal. It was what the Lòpez men expected from their wives, or sister, in Abril’s case. They weren’t interested in hearing a woman’s perspective on their business, and they didn’t want opinions.
Valeria didn’t care.
She used that time to make sure Maria ate enough of her food that she wouldn’t be asking for a snack every five minutes after dinner ended. And when her attention was on her daughter, which she didn’t get often because Jorge was an asshole, no one seemed to pay any mind to Valeria.
She considered that a win.
Right?
Maria sat between her mother, and Jorge. She called him Papá because Jorge refused to answer to anything else, but God knew Maria didn’t like the man who had helped to give her life. It didn’t help that the child had a front-row seat to the horrible treatment her mother received from her father daily.
Not to mention, until this last year, Maria hadn’t known her father at all. So, they forced the girl out of America, put her in front of some man who behaved like a monster, and expected the six-year-old to love him.
Okay.
Valeria did her best to make sure Maria behaved and gave her father the attention he wanted. It was easier on all of them that way, but in private, she let her daughter hug her tight, cry, and beg to go back to America, and Haven. Away from these people who she said were mean and hurt her mom.
What else could she do?
“Is it good?” Valeria asked.
Maria nodded. “I like it.”
“Good.”
“This will be a good deal,” Martín, her father-in-law, said with a pointed finger moving between Abril and Roberto sitting side by side across from Valeria and Jorge. “It is a good match, and it will bring our organizations closer ... more money, more power, sí?”
Jorge smiled tersely. “Absolutely, Papá.”
Across the table, Roberto chuckled. “The Garcías never thought we would see the day when we made peace with the Lòpez family, but as they say, all wars must come to an eventual end, right?”
“That’s what they say,” the man next to Roberto muttered.
Samuel.
The other Lòpez son.
No one paid him any mind.
Valeria was a little distracted by trying to ignore the hand that came to rest behind her chair. Jorge’s fingers curved around her shoulder, his fingers digging in painfully. Still, she managed a smile across their daughter between them, just enough to make him assume she was fine with his touch.
She wanted to puke.
Still, Jorge’s hand flexed against her shoulder again when his father smiled at the man who was now arranged to be his future son-in-law because of the upcoming marriage to Abril. Even if she didn’t sense that tension in her husband’s hand, she would know the truth. In private, Jorge didn’t shut up.
His father had taken a step down from running the cartel a while back. Jorge was the one who had the major control of the operation, but that didn’t stop his father from stepping in occasionally, to remind everyone that the king wasn’t truly dead.
Like this deal with their enemy.
This marriage.
Jorge despised it all.
“Good things are happening to us all,” Jorge murmured to the table, lifting a glass of red wine for the others to follow his lead. He tipped his glass toward his father, “To power, Papá, by whatever means we can get it, no?”
Martín smiled and raised his own glass. “To power.”
Jorge tipped his drink back and swallowed it in one gulp. Valeria knew if he kept that up, by the time they got up to their room later, he would be drunk and unpleasant. To say the least ... more like violent and wanting her.
Something else to make her sick.
“And we have more things to look forward to,” Jorge added, setting his glass down to the table hard. “More business—starting next week. Everyone will benefit if it goes right.”
Across the table, Roberto asked, “Everyone?”
He meant their side of things, too. Because now, if the two cartels merged, even if Jorge didn’t like it, what benefitted them should also benefit Roberto’s father’s organization. That was how it should work, but Valeria didn’t believe for a second Jorge would agree.
Jorge didn’t reply.
Valeria doubted the other man missed it.
• • •
Valeria tightened the silk robe around her body, using the ties to cinch the fabric at the
trim curve of her waist. She sensed his presence the moment he opened the bedroom door.
Jorge had that effect.
“Why would you dress in that?” he asked.
It was by his tone she knew he had polished off the bottle of red wine from the table after dinner finished. Great. He was always worse when he was a little too drunk, and his lips were loose.
Not only did she have to deal with his pawing in bed but also his fucking mouth which never shut the hell up. It was a losing battle.
“Val,” he mumbled.
She turned around to face him, only to find him circling the foot of the bed to come closer to her. Maybe her attention should have been on the door because she always found it easier to handle him when she could see him coming.
Valeria hated being surprised.
Like now.
As she assumed, he was drunk. Thoroughly. Bloodshot eyes, a slack mouth, and a sheen of perspiration dotting the lines in his forehead as his gaze narrowed in on her. Not that she had much time to react because she didn’t.
He reached for her before she might refuse him—lie and say she was on her cycle, which turned him off like nothing else. Pulling the robe she had just tightened away from her body with his rough hand, it allowed him access to the silk short and camisole set she wore underneath.
He picked her clothes, too.
“Jorge,” she started to say.
His hand found her breast, sliding under the silk before clamping down tight enough to take her breath and words away as he muttered, “Next week, when the Canadians come down to make that deal, we won’t need the fucking Garcías for anything. And then my father will understand that I can do this without merging. Smart, aren’t I?”
Valeria swallowed hard, ignoring the bile rising in her throat as his hand slid from one of her breasts to the other, and then climbed higher on her neck to rest against her throat. If she flinched, he would become rough. She didn’t need more bruises to hide with makeup.
It never worked, anyway.
“Of course, you are,” she lied. “But might he be mad?”