by Cora Kenborn
She slowly faced me, and for the first time, the ice queen’s face looked ashen. Usually, when someone assumed the offense like that, I made a point of turning the tables. But not now. Not about this.
“After Cristiano showed up here and informed me of everything, I made a few phone calls,” I told her. “I have eyes and ears everywhere, including Tenancingo. She’s on her way back to Miami along with twelve other girls.”
And that was why I couldn’t have my way.
Why bullets and fire weren’t raining down on Tenancingo right now.
Ava’s chest visibly deflated. “Thank God.” However, the relief quickly dissipated, and the ashen pallor of her face stained with the color of rising hell. As if manipulated by a string, her head slowly twisted around, her eyes black as coal. “Zhopu porvu, glaza vikolyu!”
My Russian was weak, but I was fairly sure she just informed Ronan she was going to rip out his ass and poke out his eyes.
So, I poured another drink and waited for the show. After all, I wrote the script and handpicked the cast.
“Ava—”
It was the last word Ronan Kelly ever spoke. Like the ice queen she was, Ava pulled a knife from under her dress, popped the blade, and with a precise flick of her wrist, sank it deep into his carotid artery. I wasn’t sure the fat fuck even knew what hit him before he dropped to the floor in a puddle of his own blood.
I cocked an eyebrow. “Impressive.”
Any other woman would have collapsed as soon as whatever adrenaline spike prompted her to commit spontaneous homicide drained out of her, but not Ava. The Miami pakhan calmly took her seat and folded her hands in front of her as her husband kept a watchful eye. “I’ll want my knife back,” she said in an even tone.
“I’ll see to it.” I smirked as Mateo rose to his feet to escort a shocked Cristiano out of the room. “And send in a cleaner,” I called after him. “I want this bloated piece of shit out of here before he starts to smell.”
A perfect ending to Act One.
As low chatter grew into incessant arguing, I stood, reclaiming command of the room. “Since the first problem has been taken care of,” I announced, “everyone shut the fuck up so we can discuss the other.” When the room settled to a whisper, I added, “As you all have been informed, Dante Santiago and I agreed to a temporary truce. We have two mutual interests at stake, and while they are being eradicated and serviced, there will be no attacks on the Colombians or interference with any of their shipments. Do I make myself clear?”
I shot a hard glance around the table until each person nodded their agreement, the dead body at the end of the table already a forgotten inconvenience.
“Muy bien. In two days, we make our move on New York, but we’ll be working our water and ground forces in conjunction with Santiago’s men.”
A throat cleared on my left. “I don’t see why you don’t just go in and take what you want,” Adriana said, bunching her veil in her hands. “We have the positioning. We have the intel. Screw two days. We should strike tomorrow.”
My eye twitched at my sister’s insolence, but it was her wedding day, so I forced myself to tolerate her outburst. “Because deals aren’t brokered that way. We have the intel because of Ava and her contacts. Besides, double-crossing didn’t end that well for our friend Ronan, did it?”
Ava smirked.
“Not only that, Santiago has a dirty New York senator with slick palms and an irritating accent on his payroll. Sanders ruled that area before he turned it over to them. Do you really think Santiago’s ally-turned-political-shit-stirrer doesn’t still have his dick in his old backyard? Sometimes fifty-percent of a lucrative operation is more profitable than a hundred percent of a bullet-ridden drained piece of shit.”
She sat back, blowing a soft breath between rounded lips. “You should never underestimate a man like Dante Santiago, Val. He’d burn down a forest before he’d let anyone steal his shade. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
I held up my drink. “I always do. Besides,” I added, glancing at Ava. “Santiago isn’t the only one with allies jerking their dicks all over the Constitution.”
A rare pause of silence permeated the room until Niko’s eyes narrowed and he rose out of his chair like an automated machine. Without a word, he moved toward the window and stared up at the sky.
I cocked my chin. “Do you have a problem, Gaheris?”
“No,” he answered in a monotone voice. “But three of yours just arrived.”
Chapter Nine
Valentin
The room tumbled into shadows as if the sun itself was hiding from the impending storm.
Frowning, I glanced toward the window where Niko stood. An entourage of black helicopters had begun their descent onto my estate, but all I could see was that fucking color again—only this time there was an ocean of it flowing all the way back to me.
“Santiago,” Mateo muttered.
“Danger,” I countered. Eden should give up her exclusive rights to my nickname because a whole load of it would be landing on my front lawn in the next sixty seconds.
I pushed away from the table and rose to my feet. It caused a ricochet of movement around the room. Mateo, Brody, and Ava joined me and Niko by the window, and we watched in silence as the Santiago elite spilled from the Bell Ranger 407 helicopters—smearing their brand of darkness all over my front lawn.
“Ava, tell Santiago to keep his gun in his pants around my family.” I issued the threat through gritted teeth, my gaze never straying from a tall, dark-haired man in black pants and shirt. He couldn’t even be bothered to wear a suit to my sister’s wedding. I felt my palm curl into a fist as Santiago turned to help a petite brunette in a white dress down from the Ranger. “If he starts flashing it around like a cocky motherfucker, he’ll be a dead one instead.”
“Santiago wouldn't be so restrained,” Mateo said mildly. “The man doesn’t flash. He fires first and doesn’t give a shit about the consequences later.”
A policy he could check at the front door, or he’d find out how quickly I could make him “give a shit.”
I reached for the loaded Glock on the table. All eyes were on me as I slid the cold steel into the back waistband of my pants. “We let him in, we get this done, and then I want this pinche cabrón off my property.”
There was a collective nod in agreement.
My hospitality was forced. My anger, barely restrained.
This meeting was already a hairline fracture waiting to splinter.
Fifteen minutes later, we all felt Santiago’s unwelcome presence outside the room. A coldness had steeled under the door, turning the stale Mexican air to ashes and dust. No one said a word as they waited on my command.
The seconds ticked.
Let the fucker wait.
Eventually, a slight nod to Brody was all it took. He opened the door to reveal my head of security’s tall, scowling frame.
“Jefe,” Rafael said, his gaze seeking mine. “I have Señor Santiago here to see you.”
“Gracias,” I murmured, as I took another leisurely swig of my drink. “See him in.”
Let’s keep this shit cordial before the bullets start signing contracts.
Rafael dutifully stepped aside, revealing a huge man who was every bit a devil in name as in nature—a man who’d disguised his insatiable thirst for blood behind a feared name and twisted legend.
His cold expression never shifted as he removed his sunglasses, sending an icy chill throughout the room. It stopped with me, and I felt nothing. Because the minute he stepped inside my Senado, I saw him for what he really was.
Santiago was more than a name cultivated by this underworld swamp in which we all dwelled—a name he backed up with his trigger finger and whispers of his immorality.
Instead, I saw a man and his inner inferno.
I saw the war that he waged with himself every day.
It only took a glance to understand him because I lived it all myself.
“
Santiago,” I snapped.
“Carrera.” Our gazes locked and loaded. After a beat, he glanced around the room with an irritating disdain. “So,” he drawled. “Which one is the bridezilla?”
The sound of a palm cracking against wood echoed throughout the tension. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of red as Adriana started to rise from her seat. Without breaking eye contact with Santiago, I held up my hand to halt her movement. “Check your tone, señor… That’s my sister you’re talking about.”
Dante’s lips twisted. “Ah. How touching. I never held such regard for my blood family. I took great pleasure in dispensing with most of them… unpleasantly.” His dark eyes flashed in my direction again. That’s when I knew that this greeting was to goad and test, not to placate and ally.
Well, game on, motherfucker.
At the same time, I sensed the rage swarming like a cloud of angry hornets to my left. I kept my hand lifted, and Adriana slowly sank back into her chair. Once I had her diffused, I matched his smirk with a thinly-stretched bullet of my own. “Rest assured, Santiago, I speak for everyone when I say my sister’s feelings about your presence here is mutual. I suggest you and your entourage take a fucking seat before this merger is over before it’s begun.”
I always wondered what meeting Dante Santiago would be like. So far, I wanted to grind his dead face into the floor next to Ronan’s corpse.
“Rest assured, Carrera,” he responded coldly, his disrespect slashing razor-sharp talons at my anger as he stepped into the room and motioned behind him. “I’m not thrilled to be here, either. As such, I brought a few associates along to help sweeten the atmosphere. I’m sure you understand.”
Sweeten, my ass. I saw the threat, but I grudgingly respected it too. There was no fucking way I’d walk into enemy territory without backup, but I sure as hell didn’t appreciate him whipping his dick out and pissing everywhere like a dog marking his territory.
Three men and a slight woman with a curtain of glossy, raven-black hair filled the space behind him. Two, I recognized right away, but the woman and the third man gave me pause.
It pissed me off.
This man was quickly earning a fucking diploma in pissing me off.
Santiago didn’t acknowledge the dead man lying on the floor. He merely stepped over him to avoid soiling his pants with his blood. As he did, a huge stone-faced man circled in front of him and claimed the seat next to Mateo. It wasn’t a power move. It was a protective one. He was putting a gun in between Mateo and his boss.
Smart man.
Slithering into his chair, Dante gestured to the man beside him. Is this a concession at last? “Joseph Grayson. My second-in-command. And I’m sure this man needs no introduction...” A dark-haired man had taken up the empty place beside him, wearing his smugness like a blood-red corsage.
“Senator Sanders,” I murmured. “To what do we owe the honor?”
“A slice of wedding cake and a bottle of your finest Gran Patrón Burdeos Añejo,” he drawled back, without missing a beat. Interesting. He’d done his homework. “In the past I would’ve fucked a bridesmaid or five as well, but I’m afraid my wife has gone and made a dishonest man out of me.”
I didn’t dignify that with an answer. A man didn’t maintain his empire without knowing the key players inside everyone else’s. I already knew his wife’s name and occupation, his past, and his connections. Most of all, I had the inside track on his inappropriate wisecracks. The edgier he was, the more salacious they became, which meant that Santiago’s crew weren’t as cool and “fuck you” as they made themselves out to be.
The man now sitting on the other side of Sanders was one of the unknowns—an all-American asshole in a cheap blue suit and neat silver tie pin. He was attracting the mother of all glares from Ava.
I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed her reaction.
“Enjoying yourself, Ms. Chernova?” Amused, Santiago raised a dark eyebrow at her.
Without breaking contact with the man across the table, Ava swiped at the glass in front of her and brought it to her mouth. “Not particularly... Saves me from looking at you, though.”
“Who the hell is he?” I demanded.
With a rough bark of laughter, Dante leaned forward and flashed me a sinister smile. “This is my associate, and Ms. Chernova’s close personal FBI special agent friend, Roman Peters.”
“And who the fuck is she?” Adriana exploded, aiming her words at the young woman reclining in the chair beside Roman, looking like a front row spectator at the showdown of the century. Her keen dark eyes missed nothing, and as soon as I caught a glimpse of the tattoo on her left shoulder, I knew she wasn’t to be underestimated.
“She has a name,” the woman said witheringly. “It’s Viviana, and I’m Santiago’s niece, so play nice and I might let you live a life beyond your wedding day.”
Adriana was already halfway out of her chair, her eyes blazing. “Or I could end yours right now.”
Brody clamped a hand firmly on her shoulder. “Sit down.”
She blinked down at him. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“I said, sit down, Adriana. You may be a queen, but this is not your court.”
I didn’t say anything because I wanted to see how the hell this was going to play out. Adriana and Brody bickered like children, but I’d never seen him pull rank on her like that.
Adriana’s face twisted with fury, and we all waited for the storm, but instead of leveling the room, she clenched her teeth and lowered back down in her chair. “Fine.”
I’ll be damned. He’d tamed my sister. Which, as far as I was concerned, was the first sign of the Apocalypse.
“Let’s get started.” I’d grown bored of all the shit slinging.
Santiago tossed his sunglasses onto the table. “First, I want to know who the body is.”
It was the first indication he’d even noticed Ronan’s corpse.
“A human trafficking piece of shit who didn’t deserve a seat at this table,” I responded coolly.
“Was this your idea of a welcome present?” For the first time since he’d entered Senado, I saw his lips twitch.
“He was the first of the Mexican links.”
“And the others?”
Dios mío. This man didn’t miss a beat. His version of hardball was a concrete fist.
“Why don’t you let Brody go get you a bourbon.”
It was another “fuck you” wrapped up in my reluctant hospitality, but I wanted him to know I had detailed intel on him too.
“So, I drink bourbon and I enjoy fucking my wife,” he sing-songed as if he were being drawn into some childish game of mine. “I know for a fact you enjoy fucking yours too, and that you named your son after me. I hope the two aren’t related. Does Señora Carrera have a crush?”
“Santiago is my mother’s maiden name, pendejo,” I replied through gritted teeth.
He’d fired back by bringing my family into this, and the bullet had strayed too close to the mark.
“Is he a danger to society like me, or just another Carrera disappointment?”
“Would you like a twist of acid in your bourbon?”
Someone cleared their throat to my left, and Santiago laughed. I didn’t give a shit if he feared me, but respect was another matter. He’d give it or get the fuck out.
“The body was a show of faith, cabrón. A simple ‘thank you’ would suffice.”
“It’s a pretty blade sticking out of his face.” The room fell silent as he rose to his feet and made his way over to Ronan’s corpse. He bent down and removed Ava’s knife without flinching, and then ripping open the front of the dead man’s shirt, he calmly carved a couple of bone-deep initials into his chest.
S
C
“Consider this a show of faith returned,” he declared, rising to his feet again, skidding the knife across the table toward me and leaving a crimson trail in its wake. “This truce is now borne in the blood of our joint enemy.”
<
br /> I stopped the blade with a single finger and held his gaze. “Then consider these negotiations open.”
A second throat cleared to my left, and I smirked as with a flick of my wrist, the knife made a second trajectory down the table straight into Ava’s waiting hand. Shifting my gaze beside her, I arched an eyebrow at her husband. “I’d sleep with one eye open if I were you, Gaheris.” Raising my glass, I added, “And a hand over my dick.”
Chapter Ten
Adriana
“Go away,” I yelled, hurling the sharpest point of my stiletto against the door. I didn’t care if it chipped holes in the expensive wood. After choking on a thick cloud of testosterone and bitch-fumes for the last hour, I deserved an outlet.
A brief pause preceded the sound of shuffling feet from the other side. “What the hell was that?”
“A five-thousand-dollar Jimmy Choo I’m imagining driving into your skull!” Drawing my arm back, I sank the shoe deep into the wood again for emphasis.
Brody and I had gone back and forth like this for a solid ten minutes with him demanding entrance into Val and Eden’s bedroom, and me screaming obscenities through the door in Spanish before assaulting it with designer footwear. I assumed by now he would have given up, but I should’ve known better.
The man was a skilled prosecutor. He didn’t hold the highest conviction record in Houston for nothing.
Damn him.
“Adriana, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?”
My pulse skyrocketed, and I wasn’t positive, but I might have blacked out for a second. “Oh, mi amado, overreacting would have been blowing your kneecaps off when you followed me into the house.”
Followed... Right. More like chased. If I hadn’t been so fucking pissed, I might have laughed. We looked more like a victim and her attacker than a bride and groom. While climbing the stairs, we traded insults back and forth, and just as I sprinted toward the bedroom, he lunged. Seconds away from grabbing me, I slammed the door in his face.