by Cora Kenborn
I hated Emilio Reyes.
But even I knew that wasn’t a nick.
The buzzing became clearer as the room came into focus. Blinking repeatedly, I swallowed, my mouth feeling like I’d stuffed a bag of cotton balls down my throat. I attempted to find my voice as the buzzing morphed into voices.
“How the hell did they find us?”
“Don’t know. Only the top level knew the safe house location. At this point, the only logical explanation is to start looking for a mole.”
The sound of sloshing liquid filled the room as the voice switched back. “Fucking hell. I want everyone’s house searched. No one is excluded, is that understood?”
“Si, boss.”
With a fully functional brain, I shifted a gaze around the unfamiliar room. The guy who’d brought me food at the other house, Mateo, nodded as he exited the doorway, his eyes sagging from fatigue. A concentrated stare fell to my left, and with one glance, I quickly averted my eyes to the floor.
Val.
He sat in a chair four feet away from me, his hair disheveled, and a heavy five o’clock shadow covering his face. His hands cradled a half-emptied bottle of tequila between his legs. My lips twitched as multiple conversations ran through my mind regarding his disdain for assholes who drank tequila out of the bottle.
I guess desperate times call for desperate assholes.
Remembering the frantic exit from the safe house, I stretched, attempting to sit up and get a handle on my new surroundings. A sharp burn in my right arm caused me to cry out as I realized I was, once again, cuffed to the bedframe.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Val steadied his eyes on the closed door in front of him and turned the bottle up, taking a generous drink. “Nope.”
Drawing in a deep breath, I released it before speaking, reining in deep rooted anger. “Val, in the last forty-eight hours, I’ve been kidnapped, drugged, restrained, held prisoner, and shot at. Where the hell would I go?”
He shrugged, twisting the bottle in his hands. “Don’t feel like getting stabbed with any more forks, thanks.”
I darted my eyes to his bandaged arm and offered a fake smile. “You deserved it.” Glaring at me, he took another gulp from the bottle and resumed his stare at the wall. Realizing the defensive approach was getting me nowhere, I tried another tactic and softened my tone. “After what happened in that room, I didn’t think we needed restraints anymore.”
His eyes darkened as the muscles in his jaw tightened. “That was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
While I’d already made the same promise to myself, somewhere inside it still cut deep to hear the words come from his mouth. What we’d done had been born out of wrongness and hate, yet I’d never felt so alive. The guilt I’d felt afterward had been too overwhelming at the time to consider exploring what that meant.
Sex had always been on my terms since Davis left. For some reason, Val dismissing what we’d done pissed me off and immediately set me on the defensive.
I jerked on the cuff again, to express my irritation. “Then why bring me here at all? Why keep me alive? Obviously, I’m trouble for you and your little operation. You could have let them kill me back there and be done with me.”
Val cocked his head to the side, assessing me. “I don’t know. It’d make sense for a man in my position to have been done with you. It’s not like I haven’t killed before.” He sat back in his chair, seeming to mull over his answer. “But you’re different. There’s always been something about you. Maybe I see myself in you.” In a sudden shift of questioning, he pointed the mouth of the bottle in my direction. “What happened to you, Cereza, to make you so hollow?
Taken aback by his personal question, I pressed my medallion between my finger and thumb, rubbing it while I stalled for time.
“Eden?”
“I’m nothing like you.”
He chuckled and drank from the bottle again. “We’re still alive, aren’t we?
Alive and alone.
Sighing, I turned my back to him. His penetrating stare heated my skin just a little too much and confused the hell out of me. My whole world had tilted on its axis and spun in the opposite direction. Somehow, I’d landed myself front and center in the middle of the entire Carrera operation—the same men I’d believed were responsible for murdering my brother. For hours, I’d wanted nothing more than to escape their hold on me. As I sat with the pathetic excuse for a weapon, waiting for the kingpin to get close enough to cause damage, a plan had started to formulate.
But maybe escape wasn’t the answer. I’d sworn to Nash and my father I’d find the men responsible and see them dead. What better way to do that than in the lair of the snake himself?
Val Carrera swore a rival cartel held the smoking gun. Did I believe him, or had a moment of sexual weakness blinded my judgment of the truth? I had no idea. But one thing was for sure, I’d never find out standing outside the lines of their inner circle.
Knocked out of my internal tug-of-war, the mattress dipped with weight as Val’s hand dusted over my cheek, gently turning it to face him. “I promise not to let anything happen to you, Eden.” His slightly slurred voice washed over me with a deep cadence. Immediately, images of being together in the basement of the safe house raced my pulse as my body flooded with warmth.
His lingering touch quickened my breath, and I centered all thought on that one point of contact. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
The words seemed to resonate something deep within him. Furrowing his brow, he dropped his hand back to his lap and nodded softly. “You’re right. I’ll never make that mistake again.”
“There’s always been something about you. Maybe I see myself in you.”
I wanted to ask him what he meant, but a wall blanketed his face, ending any further communication. Somehow, I’d touched a nerve without knowing it.
Sighing, I reached over as far as the restraint would allow and grabbed the bottle from him. Silently, I drank long and steady. The warm liquid burned a trail of fire down my throat, and I welcomed every drop. Wordlessly, we passed the bottle back and forth until only a sip remained between us.
Enough time and alcohol had passed that liquid courage built inside of me. Draining the last of it, I tossed the bottle across the room and turned to face him, my head wobbling heavily on my neck. “Is Emilio dead?”
Running his hand through his hair, Val raised an eyebrow, smirking with delivered intent. “Do you care?”
“What kind of ridiculous question is that?” I moved to punch his chest, forgetting my arm was cuffed and performed a slingshot back against the bedframe. “Ow.”
“Watch out for that.”
“Wow, thanks for pointing out the obvious.”
“It’s a valid question.”
I scrunched up my nose. “Huh?”
“Your question.”
“What question?”
Groaning, he scraped his hand down his face. “The one you asked, Cereza.”
“You asked me a question.” I had no idea what we were arguing about, but my stubborn streak kept giving me the thumbs-up and a high five.
“I didn’t ask you any fucking question. This is why I should’ve left you there.”
“A-ha!” I screamed, pointing my free finger in his chest. “I knew it! See? I told you that you were trying to kill me.”
Val wrapped his fingers around my wrist and held it in a strong grip between us. “I never said that. Stop putting words between my mouth.”
A loud snort rolled off my tongue as I fell backward against the bedframe again. “Ow!” I rubbed the back of my head and bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Oh, my God, you’re drunk. I think you meant ‘stop putting words in my mouth.’ If I put words between your mouth, I’d be connected to it.”
His fingers tightened against my wrist, and he pulled me flush against him. Danger glinted across his darkened eyes. “That could be arranged.”
Overwhelmed at the
intensity in his stare, I focused on the hold he had on my arm. Licking dry lips, I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Is Emilio dead?”
“No,” he smiled knowingly. Releasing his hold, he sat back like I’d just jumped from his fuck list to his shit list in two-point-oh-seconds.
Story of my life.
Since the first flame had been doused, I might as well dance in the ashes.
“But I saw him get shot. You can try to tell me otherwise, but I saw it. I know what I saw.”
“I’m sure you saw what you saw.”
“So?” I waited for confirmation.
“So? We all get shot from time to time. He’ll be fine. It was a flesh wound.”
My mouth dropped open. “Do you realize how asinine you sound right now? People just don’t get shot from time to time, Danger. Not normal people, at least.”
He wiped a hand across his mouth as if to hide an emerging smirk. “Danger?”
Shaking my cuffed wrist, I narrowed my eyes to hostile slits. “Don’t get cocky. It’s not a term of endearment. I can’t stand you.”
“You’re not exactly my favorite person either, you know,” he offered quickly.
The alcohol bottomed out in my system, and my mouth claimed the throne, taking ownership of my better judgment. “Then why don’t you get out of here and go fuck yourself? At least you’d satisfy one of us.”
The smug look drained from his face, only to be replaced by darkened fury. Before I could blink, his palm engulfed my cheek, bending me backward until our mouths and lips bruised in a punishing kiss. His free hand buried in my hair, twisting with a need barreling from somewhere deep within.
Once my alcohol-infused brain caught up with what was happening, my libido went into overdrive, kicking what reservation wasn’t slovenly drunk behind locked doors. Wrapping my unrestrained arm around his neck, I pulled him closer, lost in the feel of his hardness pressing heavy against my curves.
Rage and passion ran parallel with Val and me, and as we frantically groped each other, I wondered where the line lay between manslaughter and sex. As his hands ran down the length of my body and his lips whispered dirty Spanish in my ear, I questioned both our sanity.
Trailing his mouth down the hollow of my neck, he dove his fingers under the waistband of my shorts. “Esta panocha es mía.” This pussy is mine.
“Who’s El Muerte?” The words came out of nowhere. From behind the locked door where I shoved her, my subconscious stood on the headboard, hands on her hips, eyebrow cocked, and armed with three words I had no clue I’d even verbalized until Val froze.
Swallowing harshly, he dragged his hand from my shorts and sat up, his face twisted with a mix of shock and loss. Pressing the heel of his palm in between his eyes, he inhaled slowly, counting to ten before answering.
“Why do you ask?”
“When we were running…I heard the men who shot at us scream for you to face them. They called me a puta and you El Muerte. I don’t know much Spanish, but I know what a puta is.” Something in his eyes drew me away from him and into the corner of the bed. “What I don’t know is what El Muerte means. Val, I heard the men say it when they killed Nash too.”
Grabbing the empty bottle, Val moved off the bed and stood in the middle of the room, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. A confusing rush of guilt swept through me at the emotion wrestling inside of him. Finally, he dropped his hand and tilted his chin over his shoulder, his face a mask of blank resolve.
“El Muerte means The Reaper. The Reaper is me, Cereza. It’s the name the Muñoz Cartel gave me. Unspeakable crimes have been committed in the name of El Muerte. Some I have been a part of; some I haven’t. Men, who were determined to see me ruined, murdered the wife and child of Manuel Muñoz and carved the name in their foreheads.”
The room felt half its size and lacked air. “Jesus.”
Val’s smile pulled downward. “No, Cereza…Jesus was nowhere near Guadalajara when Manuel Muñoz’s family died. Just as I suspect that he turned a blind eye when your brother took a bullet to the head and had the same words carved in his skin.”
Tears rolled before I knew they’d formed and a wounded cry tore from my throat. My hand clutched the St. Michael medallion hanging around my neck. “No…”
A hint of sadness hung heavy in Val’s eyes as he nodded toward my hand. “I’d hold tighter if I were you, Eden. It’s not over.” Shuffling to the door, he flung it open and paused in the entryway. “It’s only just begun.”
Chapter Seventeen
Valentin
Sometimes a man just needs to handle business.
At least that’s what I kept telling myself as I left Eden sleeping in the safe house the next morning and drove to RVC Enterprises. Keeping up appearances seemed a necessary evil and getting out of a house where she proved to be a constant temptation was essential to my sanity.
She knew about El Muerte.
That meant all bets were off.
Indulging in Eden Lachey had been the biggest lapse in judgment I’d ever willingly been a part of. Giving in to her weakened my authority within the entire cartel. Not only had I allowed her to see me lose control, my men could tuck away the dangerous knowledge that I’d protected her with my own life in the safe house.
She had no idea in that unguarded moment in the basement, she’d stolen everything from me. My sanity. My rationality. My indifference. I’d held her in my arms, knowing my world had just ended. I was completely fucked.
Sitting at my desk, I raked both palms down my face. God, I needed sleep. The last time I’d closed my eyes for a substantial amount of time…shit, I couldn’t remember when I’d closed my eyes. Every time I tried, images of her head thrown back as she violently came around me found me in a cold shower at three a.m.
I’d fucked hundreds of women. Not one of them mattered enough to think about after the door hit them in the ass on the way out of my bedroom.
Heartless?
Maybe.
But something in Eden Lachey’s pale blue eyes haunted me. There was a hidden vulnerability that desperately wanted to be needed and needed to be wanted. She floated without belonging—one impulsive act away from self-destruction—and not giving a damn one way or another. She silently screamed for salvation and craved isolation.
She frustrated the shit out of me. Because she was me.
I had to live this way. My life had no choices, but I’d fuck some sense into Eden if it was the last thing I did. Either that, or I’d be the cleanest motherfucker in Houston from living in my goddamn shower.
Scrubbing my face again, I let out a frustrated growl, shaking my head to focus on the problem currently screwing up the pipeline of my organization. Checking my phone, I verified no missed calls from Mateo. It was only a matter of time before the Colombians sent a collector for the eleven million I owed them. With the lost shipment, I had no product to move to compensate for the trade.
Fucked didn’t begin to describe my situation.
The whole operation reeked of Muñoz involvement, but I couldn’t figure out how they’d pulled it off with so many government officials on my payroll. They had a presence in Houston, but nowhere near the reach and infiltration the Carreras had for years. Something else had to factor in. I just needed to find it.
And where the fuck did Nash and Eden Lachey fit into all of this? They should’ve been insignificant to someone like Manuel Muñoz.
Unless Mateo’s theory proved to be right, and a mole had infiltrated my cartel.
The thought sent a sharp haze of red across my vision. I picked up the nearest object on my desk, which just happened to be a coffee mug, and hurled it against the closed office door.
“Fuck!” I’d just reached for my laptop when my phone vibrated. Anxious for an update from Mateo, I accepted the call without hesitation. “You’d better have good news.”
“It depends, son. Is the puta still in your possession?”
I grew up hearing the
man’s rapid-fire Spanish barked in harsh commands to everyone from my mother to high ranking soldiers. However, the moment his broken English slithered through the phone, attempting to sound worldly and refined, I found the revolt in my throat almost palpable.
“I know you didn’t cut your happy ending short to ask me that, did you, Alejandro?”
His low chuckle unsettled me. “You get one, Valentin. Another disrespectful comment will cost you a lieutenant. You’re fond of this Mateo Cortes, yes?”
I remained silent. Responding would only jeopardize my crew and my friend. One-upping my father wasn’t worth the risk. Mateo was the closest thing I had to a friend, and in this business, loyalty wasn’t to be taken lightly.
Alejandro took my silence as compliance. “This woman, Valentin…she weakens you.”
“I’m handling her.”
“How? By shielding a cunt while Muñoz bullets hit your men?”
“Don’t call her that.” I gripped the phone, slamming my fist onto the desk with the other as I cursed myself for letting him provoke me into reacting.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, Valentin. You fucked this woman, didn’t you?”
I had to think fast. The moment Alejandro Carrera knew Eden mattered to me, she’d be a marked target. The words boiled like acid on my tongue as I choked them out. “I wanted it, so I took it.”
His laugh of approval chipped away at my soul. “Bien! This woman…she fought you, yes?”
I pulled at my collar, jerking three buttons loose to breathe as I lied. “Yes, Father.”
“My boy.” The sense of pride in his voice swirled the coffee in my stomach and threatened to bring it back up. “Now, kill her.”
I didn’t cry out or protest. I wouldn’t give my father the satisfaction of my begging. On some level, my subconscious expected the words to come as almost a natural progression of his pride in Eden’s fictional rape. I was literally the son of a sick bastard.
Instead, I placated him as my mind raced a hundred miles an hour crafting different plausible plans to keep her safe. “Fine, Father. But I need you to find out why the Muñoz intel seems to be always ten steps ahead of me, and why they’re so interested in her. Before I take care of her, I need to know how she fits into their plan. Somehow, she’s the key to their sabotage.”