by Bethany-Kris
“It better be,” Jorge muttered, “I paid enough for the import.”
“Forgive me for being forward,” Gian said, bringing Jorge’s attention away from Chris for the moment, “but I can’t help noticing this is your father’s home, and yet, we haven’t seen him. They told me, although I don’t trust everything said in passing, that your father stepped back from the cartel a while ago, yes?”
Jorge raised a brow and brought the lit cigar between his fingers to his lips for a heady drag. Grey smoke lifted toward the darkening sky, telling them night would fall soon.
“He has stepped back,” Jorge said, passing the house behind them a look, “but he still puts his opinion and influence in whenever he wants.”
A bite colored his tone.
Gian didn’t miss it.
“And what, he doesn’t agree with us being here?”
Jorge tipped his cigar in Gian’s direction. “Almost correct—not quite, though. He’s of the opinion the business will be good, but he’s currently attempting a merger between our cartel, and the only rival we have. Something I think is a mistake, and with you Canadians on my books, we won’t need to merge at all.”
“Is he aware?”
“He stepped back.”
“But did he?”
“It doesn’t matter once it’s all said and done, does it?”
They didn’t get the chance to reply to the man because a door closing had Jorge’s attention turning away. His brow lifted in contemplation before he smiled. Not a fond smile.
“Ah, there they are. Which means the rest have already arrived, and we can begin a proper dinner.” Jorge lifted a hand to wave, and called out, “Hermosa, bring the princesa over for a proper hello to our new friends.”
Chris turned to see who had come out on the back steps of the mansion, not familiar with Spanish but having heard just enough in his lifetime to understand those affectionate terms that left Jorge’s mouth. In a white dress, holding the hand of a small girl at her side, Chris found the answer to one of their unknowns standing on marble steps.
Yes, Valeria was very much alive.
Yes, the cartel had her.
And yes, she was beautiful as that picture of her at the Marcello wedding had shown. Shockingly so. The image on the screen he had seen before now had not done the woman justice.
Tanned, golden skin. Pin-straight, black hair that fell to her mid-back. Tall, and womanly. Her soft features, accentuated with a touch of makeup, seemed more natural than dolled up. The dress she chose draped over her curves loosely, yet still allowed him an appreciation for her body.
None of which he had any right to notice. Nor should he.
“My wife, and daughter,” Jorge said to them, although Valeria had not yet left the stairs with little Maria at her side. “Val is shy, so don’t mind if she doesn’t talk a lot. It’s her nature.”
Or, Chris wondered, could she not talk? That’s what he was here to find out.
5.
“Hermosa, bring the princesa over for a proper hello to our new friends.”
Valeria heard Jorge’s call to her, but her attention was on someone far more important. Surely, he could wait two minutes. Maria attempted to pull the bow from her dark ponytail, and as much and Valeria sympathized with her daughter’s annoyance, she was still quick to kneel and fix the ribbon. She gave her girl a smile and winked.
“Remember what I said?” she asked.
Maria sighed, her dark gaze darting to the side as two kids came out of the back of the mansion, their squeals chasing them down the steps. Valeria thought they were the children of Jorge’s men—the ones privileged enough to dine with them during business, or otherwise. She couldn’t talk to people on the payroll, unless it was Maria’s nanny, and so she couldn’t say for sure.
“Maria,” Valeria murmured, letting her fingers twist into the ends of her daughter’s soft curls. “What did I say this morning, huh?”
“To be good today. We must look pretty. Be quiet.”
God.
She hated this.
Those weren’t things a child Maria’s age should have to worry about at all. Valeria knew, however, if her child misbehaved that she wouldn’t hear the end from Jorge. He’d given her more than enough warnings leading up to this dinner for the last week about what he expected from her, and Maria.
Sure, she could handle his moods, even if it was the last thing she wanted to do, but it wasn’t fair for her daughter, either. Even if Jorge didn’t shout and smack Maria around, she would still have to watch the asshole do it to her mother.
Valeria tried to avoid that.
“Mamá, can I go play with them?” Maria pointed at the kids running down the grassy pathway leading away from the pool. “Please?”
Frankly, Valeria couldn’t find a reason to tell her daughter no. At least, playing with the kids would keep her out from beneath her father’s feet for a while, or until dinner. It wasn’t like the girl could find trouble when there happened to be a small army of guards all around the damn mansion to look after them.
Jorge had asked for her to bring Maria over, but what did it matter?
“Sure,” Valeria told Maria. “Be kind and don’t get your dress too dirty.”
Maria grinned and swished the skirt of yellow dress like she had when her mother put it on her earlier. “I’ll try.”
“That’s my girl.”
“Val!”
She tensed at Jorge’s shout for her, gave Maria a quick kiss, and stood up when her daughter raced down the steps to chase after the other children. Air filled her lungs in a heavy inhale, the one extra second she needed to be ready to face her husband, and put on that fake smile he seemed to like so much for his guests.
Everything was fake here.
Nothing was true.
Settled enough in her heart that Valeria thought she might pretend to give a fuck about what Jorge wanted, she turned to see her husband still staring expectantly at her—although, with annoyance tugging his lips down at the edges. Great.
It wasn’t Jorge that her attention turned to though. He was a background thought, never leaving and always a reminder for her to behave. Rather, it was the two men standing near Jorge, one ahead of him, and another behind him at the wet bar beside the pool.
A father and a son, maybe?
Valeria thought the older gentleman, and younger—but he had to be close to her age, at least—shared a lot of similar features. Their strong, square-cut jaws, brown, short-cropped hair, dark eyes, and high, defined cheekbones. The slight differences in the shapes of their faces didn’t detract from the fact it was obvious they were family.
What had Jorge told her today?
Business meeting—new partners.
Right.
Valeria was hyperaware of the men’s gazes locked on her as she came down the stairs and walked along the edge of the pool to approach them. She was careful in her heels not to step on any wet spot, lest she slip, and fall into the water. Wouldn’t that be just perfect?
It was the man ahead of Jorge by a step—the younger of the two—that didn’t drop Valeria’s stare as she came closer. He was handsome, strikingly so with his piercing gaze, and rugged features that seemed carved from stone. He didn’t smile, but he also didn’t have to considering his lips naturally curved in such a way they pulled into the hint of a smirk, anyway. His form, fit under a tailored suit, rested confidently in his stance.
Valeria shook her head, turning her gaze away from the man that was still watching her with every step she took closer to him, her husband, and the other unknown gentleman. God knew she didn’t need Jorge thinking she was staring a beat too long at another man even if said man was decent to stare at.
That was her first thought about him, too, which was strange. Looks were the last thing Valeria noticed about a man. His appearance only hid what was beneath the handsome package. A lesson she had, unfortunately, learned firsthand, and not one she cared to learn again.
“I wanted
you to bring Maria over to say hello,” Jorge said, nothing hiding his displeasure in the slightest once Valeria was close enough for him to speak. He reached for her, and while it killed her to put on this act for the newcomers, she allowed his arm to snake around her waist, and pull her into his side. Cigar smoke clung to the air, and it became worse when Jorge lifted the lit cigar in his other hand for a heady drag. “And now look at her.”
Valeria’s gaze searched for her girl, and she found her. “She’s having fun with the other children, let her play. She’s a child.”
“It’s good for children to play,” the older gentleman said, “because it lets them burn out all that energy they can’t seem to get rid of otherwise.”
Jorge tipped his cigar in the man’s direction and nodded. “You make a good point, Gian.”
Gian.
Was that Italian?
She thought so, but the man had a strange accent. It had a hint of Italian, but also something else, too. Something as equally smooth, maybe. French?
Valeria couldn’t be sure.
Gian chuckled. “Been a while since any of my boys were that young, however. Isn’t that right, Chris?”
“It is, Papa.”
So, she had been right.
Father and son.
Jorge’s hand tightened on Valeria’s waist, bringing her attention back to him. Heaven forbid her eyes weren’t always on him, waiting for the next moment when he would snap his fingers, and demand something new.
“Valeria,” he said, “meet my new business partners. Gian and Christopher—although, he likes Chris, they told me—Guzzi. From Canada.”
Business partners.
Right.
The cartel had one business.
Jorge tipped his head toward her, saying to Gian, “And this is the wife I may have mentioned once or twice.”
“Yes, Valeria, correct?”
She nodded. “That’s me.”
Gian smiled, but said nothing.
Jorge didn’t notice, continuing with, “We had a rough patch for a while, but somehow, Valeria found her way home, didn’t you, hermosa?”
Her heart thundered in her throat. Yeah, she found her way home. As though it had been her choice to come back to Mexico, and not like Jorge hunted her down as though she were an animal that deserved what it got. She wondered if her choosing to come home also meant watching Jorge’s man point a rifle at her daughter’s head, and calmly explaining that if she didn’t go with them, they would kill Maria?
She swallowed those words, knowing damn well nothing good would come from her letting it slip out of her mouth. Instead, she took the safe route, even if every single part of her screamed to do the opposite.
So was her life, now.
“Yes, right where I belong,” Valeria agreed.
All lies.
The younger man—Chris—had said nothing at all, and he didn’t then, either. Gian chuckled as though he understood Jorge fine.
“You should go watch Maria while I discuss details here,” Jorge told her.
Fine with me.
“Sure,” Valeria replied.
He didn’t let her go, so she didn’t move. She understood what Jorge expected; she gave him a quick kiss on the corner of his mouth, swallowing back the bile that flooded her tongue, before giving the other two men a smile. One she had practiced time and time again in the mirror. That way, no one had a clue it was a fake.
“Very nice to meet both of you,” Valeria said.
The men greeted her in kind, not that she cared for small talk, or whatever business they had come here to do. She still counted down the seconds when she could get away from her husband for the evening though. Jorge had that effect on people.
• • •
Tiptoeing out of the room Maria would use to sleep in for the night at her grandfather’s mansion, Valeria carefully closed the door without making more noise that might wake her daughter up. She could stay upstairs for a bit—a few minutes more, safely—and Jorge would know nothing different, but she wasn’t stupid.
He expected her to put their child to sleep after dinner and come right back down. He would send someone up after her, if he figured she was taking too long, and no one needed that problem.
Mostly, dinner had gone well. The Canadians kept conversation on everything but business, although Jorge hadn’t seemed to mind indulging their chattiness, for once. She figured because he banked on being able to supply their territory in order to get out of the arrangement his father had made with the García cartel. If they wanted to talk about the sky, he would probably do it as long as it got him what he wanted, no doubt.
Valeria didn’t care either way. She liked it when Maria didn’t have to hear about all of that nonsense, anyway. Wasn’t it bad enough that the girl had a front-row seat to her father being horrible against her mother, did she also need the cartel spelled out for her, too?
Maria wouldn’t be young forever.
Eventually, she would understand.
Not now, though.
Valeria navigated the halls of the upstairs, walking down the grand spiral stairs where at the bottom, she listened to the echoing voices of the men inside the large sitting room. She edged closer to the doorway, but stayed hidden beyond view to peek inside.
With dinner over, business took its place.
“You expect to need that many kilos a month?” Jorge asked.
Gian stared at Chris. “Oui?”
“We can supply Canada-wide through our connections with the gangs, and other organizations. We’ve had the stronghold over most organized crime in Canada for ... longer than I have been alive,” Chris added.
“He isn’t wrong,” Gian added. “So yes, monthly.”
“The smuggle runs will have to go in through several ports of entry,” Jorge muttered, his gaze narrowing on the glass of liquor in his hand, “to avoid detection. We’ll have that covered, but once it gets over the border, it’s your problem.”
“We can handle that.”
“Now, on the money side of things.”
Valeria tuned their conversation out. What did it matter? She concluded that anyone working with Jorge, or the cartel, was likely no fucking better than him at the end of the day.
Did they understand how the family built the cartel?
How they became so strong?
On the backs of the weak and the ignorant, breaking down a country’s justice, legal, and political systems piece by piece until nothing was left but corruption. With the blood of innocents, spilled across crate after crate of every shipment of cocaine that crossed the borders.
There was nothing good here.
Even thinking these Canadians couldn’t be any better or worse than her husband and his family, her gaze still drifted to the younger of the two.
Chris.
She didn’t understand why, but she enjoyed looking at him, even if she had no business doing it, and that would be a dangerous game for her to play. He was just another good-looking man, nothing special, right? He’d barely spoken two words to her, so she didn’t need to be staring at him, not like she might want to know more about him. She didn’t get curious about men, not when she had neither the time, the give a damn, nor the ability to do something with it.
Valeria was going crazy.
Yet, as she stared across the room from her hidden position in the shadows of the doorway, it seemed Chris recognized someone was looking at him. His attention left the conversation, and his gaze drifted upward, finding the spot where Valeria hid, watching him and the others. She stiffened, her heart picking up pace with its beats, as his stare lingered her way. A heat danced over her skin when those thin lips of his twitched before curving into a sensual smile.
Did he see her?
“Careful,” a soft voice said behind her.
Valeria jerked in her heels. “Jesus, Abril. Make a noise.”
Her sister-in-law laughed under her breath, a single dark eyebrow lifting in what seemed like a challenge. “L
ike you’re doing?”
“Well ...”
She had a point.
Abril stepped in beside Valeria in the shadows but didn’t glance her way. Instead, she stared across the room, looking at the men, and specifically, the one man who still had his attention focused in their direction.
“Don’t let Jorge see you staring at one of his new friends,” Abril said under her breath, “lest he get in his feelings about it, and wonder if something is going on, sí?”
“What might go on?”
“Nothing. He only needs to think there is. We both know what happens then, Val.”
Right.
Valeria stepped back from the entryway, needing five minutes to breathe alone, and far away from her confusion. “Tell Jorge I wanted to take a walk outside—it’s hot in here, and I’m not feeling well.”
She might as well take the chance to get away even if her husband would come looking for her soon enough. He always did; it was one thing she counted on with Jorge although she wished he would find someone else to focus his attention on.
Well, he did that, too.
Any woman pretty enough he wanted to stick his dick in, he did exactly that. Not that Valeria complained. If he fucked someone else, then he wasn’t raping her night after night.
Win some, lose some.
“Tell him for me, if he asks,” she said again.
Abril nodded. “Sure.”
• • •
Valeria sensed the presence join her on the back stairs of the mansion before he even said a word. She hadn’t heard him open the door, or his steps as he came to stand next to her while she stared up at the stars dotting the inky sky, but she felt him.
Somehow.
“Christopher,” she said, not unkindly.
“I prefer Chris,” he returned.
Valeria did her best to keep her gaze on the sky overhead, and not the handsome man next to her. She wasn’t sure why he had come out here. Had he seen her in the shadows and followed her?
If so, what did that mean?
Nothing decent, she imagined. Her heart stuttered at the idea, and she liked it too much. Not good.
“Care to take a walk?” he asked.
Valeria looked at him then, surprised at his offer. Earlier, when they met, and even at dinner, she hadn’t spoken more than a few careful sentences to him. It wouldn’t be enough for him to assume they were friendly, or otherwise. And yet, he smiled at her as though he already had her answer.