But before I lost sight of Catalina, I noticed something.
She wasn’t fighting.
Her eyes were big, tears were streaming down her face, but she didn’t try to get away.
That should have been her moment. His arm around her neck loosened as the gun came away from her head. And she just stood there.
“Cora,” Penn growled. “Get the fuck out of here. Now.”
My life had never been great. Not until recently, anyway, and even then, it had decidedly not been easy.
But with Penn back, talking about Seattle, babies, and wedding rings, it was getting there.
However, right then, as Drew came walking around the corner, his hands in the air, Thomas’s gun at his back, I started thinking that Manuel was right.
Maybe I was a curse.
Penn
“No. No. Please stay, Cora,” Thomas crooned, strolling into the living room with a gun at Drew’s back.
Molten lava replaced the blood in my veins.
What the fucking fuck was going on?
No goddamn way Drew told Manuel where we were. Yes, they’d been buddies in prison, but none of that had been real. He was my brother despite our birth certificates listing different parents. From day one, he and I had been in this together. Every step. Every breath. Every minute of every day, we’d shared the same ravenous thirst for revenge.
The Earth being flat was more believable than him flipping on me.
But what the fuck was he playing at, and why had he kept me in the dark?
Catalina struggled in her father’s arms when she saw her ex-husband.
“Honey, I’m home,” he singsonged with a wide smile.
Backing up, I forced Cora closer behind me and attempted to catch my brother’s gaze.
His eyes were locked on Catalina’s though.
“Now, would you look at this,” Thomas said cheerfully. “It’s a family reunion. Well, minus our dear friend Lisa.” He tipped his head my way. “My sincerest condolences. She was a lovely woman. But, as she learned, I am not a man to be challenged. I gave her every opportunity to get out of my city, Shane. I swear I did. Personally, I admired her tenacity, right up until the moment I ordered them to slit her throat.” He grinned.
My vision flashed red, and I ground my teeth. It would have been all too easy to allow that pent-up rage bubbling to the surface to overtake me. But it would have left Cora exposed, and that was not a risk I could afford to take with her, not even if it finally gave me the satisfaction of ripping Thomas Lyons’s head from his shoulders.
It was a true testament to my self-control when I didn’t move a muscle.
He leaned to the side, attempting to catch a glance at Cora, but I shifted so he couldn’t see her.
I didn’t even want his gaze to touch her.
He arrogantly cocked his head. “Did your wife know you have a taste for whores, or is this a new predilection of yours?”
My entire body strained, swelling until I feared that it would rip free of my skin. My hands ached, and the same burning Cora had tamed within me was back and thrumming with need to—
“Enough,” Drew growled, joining the conversation.
My gaze jumped to him, searching for a clue—any fucking clue—to what was truly going on, but his face was an empty and emotionless pit.
He shoved at Thomas’s arm. “Get that fucking gun out of my face. I did it, okay? You want Catalina? There she is. But this is done—do you understand me? You forget about me. Both of you. I want no fucking part of this anymore.” He planted his hands on his hips and stared at the floor. “I’m sorry, Shane. But I can’t live like this. It’s not worth this shit. I gotta get out of this life. The running, the hiding. The constant looking over my shoulder. I might as well go back to prison if that’s how I’ve gotta live my life. I just want it over. I need it over.”
And then he finally looked up at me, his dark gaze hitting mine with all the gentleness of a sledgehammer.
Oh, yes. I knew Drew Walker.
We’d met in college at MIT. He was two years younger than I was, studying mechanical engineering. The kid was so fucking smart that, in the five years it took me to graduate, he’d caught up and we’d walked across that stage together. He was livid when he’d found me in bed with his sister and refused to speak to me for a whopping six days. But when we graduated and I moved her back to Florida, he bought a house two blocks away. And on the day I slid a ring on her finger, vowing until death do us part, he’d been not only my best man but also her man of honor.
Drew Walker was sewn into the fabric of my life.
I would never for the rest of my life forget the look on his face the night we shook on our commitment to find and kill the man responsible for Lisa’s death.
As I held his gaze from across the room now, it was that same ruthless determination staring back at me—and this time, he really was done.
The hairs on my arms stood on end and my chest caved in on me, but before I could utter a single syllable, Drew spun, pulled a knife from the back of his pants, and, in one fluid movement, carved a horseshoe across Thomas’s neck.
Blood exploded from his skin. Shock registered on his face, and his hands went up to his throat as though he could stop it.
I wanted to gawk as he fell to his knees, relishing in his pain.
I wanted to watch the crimson blood seep from his throat as he coughed and gurgled, unsure if he would drown or bleed to death first.
I wanted to squat in front of him and stare into his eyes as the life slipped from his eyes.
I wanted twenty-nine minutes to make him suffer.
But I was willing to settle for twenty-nine seconds of watching him die.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t have either.
Cora was there, her sweet, soft body trembling at my back. And I was more concerned with Manuel’s reaction and the bullets that were about to soar through the air than I was basking in revenge.
I swung my gaze to Manuel. Waiting and ready for my window to take him down.
Manuel was smiling wide though. “Jesus Christ, Walker, could that have possibly taken you any longer?”
Drew replied, “Do not fucking start with me, old man. I have no patience with your bullshit. You showed up fifteen fucking minutes early. I barely got back from dropping the kids off at the movies in time. I told your ass last night to be here at eight.” Cool, casual Drew turned his eyes my way. “Oh, hey, Shane. FYI, I took the kids to the movies. I know you said you didn’t want them out of sight, but I didn’t want them here for this.”
I blinked and then rumbled, “And what the fuck is this, exactly?”
Catalina caught my attention as she stepped away from her father. “Cora, you okay?”
“Um…no. No, like no…nothing. I have no idea,” she rambled, remaining tight at my back.
Wiping the handle of the knife on his shirt, Drew walked over to Manuel and then traded him weapons.
“Perhaps, next time, you can get me a fucking gun that actually has bullets,” Manuel grumbled.
“Never trust a felon, Manny. I believe you were the one who taught me that.” Drew winked, curling Catalina into his front.
I just stood there blinking, my head pounding as I tried to figure out what the hell was happening.
“What is going on?” Cora whispered.
I had no fucking idea.
Blood was everywhere.
Thomas was keeled over to the side, facedown in a puddle.
Manuel groaned with pain as he walked to the couch and sat down, breathing like he’d run a marathon, not walked six steps.
And Drew—well, he was peppering kisses on the top of Catalina’s head like they were long-lost loves and not standing next to the body of her husband.
“Catalina, honey,” Manuel called. “I don’t want to see that shit. I spent the last twenty-four hours with that prick. I’m tired. Get on the phone and call the police and let them know that your father just killed your husband.”
Drew
I should probably start at the beginning.
So there we were, two of my fingers buried in her tight pussy. Her round tits and dark nipples were swaying as she arched her back off the black leather seat of my rental.
Okay, wait, that’s not really the beginning. But those were the parts that made my cock twitch the minute she opened the door that day Cora, River, and I had arrived at her house.
The beginning would really be that same night, four years earlier, when she walked into the bar. I tagged her immediately. Honestly, I think every person in the bar did. And not because she was gorgeous—which she fucking was. But rather because the bar was a filthy little hole in the wall and she strutted in looking like a senator’s wife.
She was wearing a black knee-length skirt that clung to her ass in all the right ways and a cream silk top that bordered on the line between sexy librarian and eighty-year-old grandmother. But, with a chest like hers, it was leaning heavily toward librarian. Her long, toned legs were capped by black pumps, and her fingers were perfectly manicured with white tips. But, even without all of that, her plump lips had been enough to command my attention.
I watched her for the first hour as she toyed with the ends of her long, brown hair. She downed three martinis while alternating between nervously checking her phone and staring at the door.
The second hour, I decided to make an approach while silently declaring that whichever douchebag was stupid enough to invite a woman like that to a place like that and then stand her up was my new favorite dumbass in the world.
I’d been going stir-crazy while sitting in the hotel, but I had a few more hours to kill before Lisa was supposed to meet me there. And what better way to kill time than with a beautiful woman.
I hadn’t said hello before she scooted down two stools.
I’d given her space, but only physically.
I started conversations, and just as quickly, she shut them down.
But then it only became a challenge to me, and considering that talking was my forte, it wasn’t but about thirty minutes before I cracked her.
Well, almost cracked her. “Leave me the fuck alone” was still talking.
She’d told me that she was waiting for a friend. And every time the door to that bar opened, I prayed like hell that friend did not come through it.
It took me a little while, but eventually, I got her talking—two more martinis aided me in that task.
And then I was fucking done for.
She was so damn funny—a real ball-buster. I loved every minute of her snarky retorts and teasing side-eyes. I swear to God I laughed more with that woman over the span of the next three hours than I had in my entire life.
And when she started looking through her phone for the number of a cab company, the thought of her leaving hit me far deeper than it should have.
I asked her to stay.
She told me no.
I asked her to let me drive her home.
She told me no.
I asked her to come back to my hotel room.
She told me no.
I asked her for her number.
She told me…no.
But, as we waited together outside in the dark parking lot, I didn’t ask before I dipped my head and took her mouth in a kiss that changed my entire life.
Because it happened at the exact moment I failed the only woman in my life who mattered.
We watched her cab come and leave, laughing and making out like high schoolers in the front seat before moving to the back.
Penn was blowing up my phone the entire time I was inside her.
And when I finally picked up, I kicked her out of my car so fast that I didn’t even remember if she was dressed.
Her name was Cat and she was the biggest regret of my life.
I’d never been brave enough to admit that I was a thirty-one-year-old man fucking a random woman in the back of my car the night my sister was murdered half a mile away from me—not even to Penn.
Somewhere in my self-loathing and desperate need to place blame for what had happened, it’d all become her fault.
She was gorgeous, funny, and smart—the perfect storm of a woman the devil himself must have planted in that bar to distract me.
I didn’t know what hotel Lisa was staying at, but in the What-if game, rationale didn’t matter.
If Cat hadn’t been there, maybe I would have left earlier.
Maybe I would have driven past the hotel and seen a commotion.
Maybe in those twenty-nine fucking minutes, I could have found her and saved her.
But no, I’d been fucking a woman named Cat while my sister was being beaten, tortured, and stabbed.
Fucking Cat.
So imagine my surprise when, some months later, I started digging into the Guerrero family and her face popped up in the private investigator’s findings.
She was married. Had been for way longer than four years. And she and her daughter had gone missing. Presumably dead. But it seemed all too convenient to me that she was there with me that night. It solidified my suspicions that the Guerreros were involved. That was the moment I volunteered to go to prison. My life was over, and I lost my job after I’d become so wrapped up in my own pain that I stopped showing up. I’d eventually run out of money. The only thing I’d be losing was Shane. And he was a fucking mess. Every time he looked at me, I thought he could see what I’d done until I started avoiding him altogether.
But then I’d miss Lisa, and he was all that was left of her.
Two years in a cell with Manuel Guerrero and the only info I’d truly gotten was that the same woman who I irrationally hated more than anyone else in the world was the woman I had to find in order to finally escape the pain altogether.
I’d hoped she wouldn’t recognize me when Cora had given me directions to her house that day. It had been four years, so maybe I’d ghosted from her memories the way I’d never been able to get rid of her.
One glance and I was back in that bar. Catalina was still beautiful.
But her eyes weren’t the same.
Or maybe it was my eyes.
I knew more about her now. Like why she was on the run. How she had gotten her daughter. And who her husband was. And then other things, like how she was the only person who had ever been good to Cora. And God knew I’d fallen head over heels in love with that woman. Not in the sense that Shane loved her of course, but there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her or those kids.
So when Catalina cornered me in her house that first night, demanding to know who the hell I was and what the hell I was up to, my misplaced hate for her melted away.
I kissed her.
She slapped me.
And then, hours later when she heard Thomas’s gunshot from the bedroom I’d put them in before opening the front door, she screamed my name in such a terrified tone that I’d never be able to erase the imprint it made on my soul.
When Shane had told me that he’d found her in the hall, being choked by a man I didn’t even know was in the house at the time, the weight of failure took out my knees.
Cat and I did not see eye to eye on damn near anything, but there was something about that smart-ass woman. And when she snuck into my bedroom early that morning in Shane’s apartment in Chicago, while he was sleeping on the couch and Cora was in with River and Savannah, we finally got the chance to talk.
And I told her the truth. All of it.
But I didn’t want her truths, because while I thought she was beautiful and incredible, her truths bound us together in ways that made me wish for lies.
She’d been at the bar that night to meet Lisa at seven.
I was supposed to meet her at nine.
My fucking Sherlock Holmes of a sister had been following Catalina and begging her to help take Thomas down. Seriously, my sister was crazytown.
But, apparently, it’d worked, because in Catalina’s purse
that night had been all the necessary documentation she was planning to turn over.
And I’d fucked her.
While Lisa was dying and Catalina’s life at home was terrifying, I’d fucked her in the back seat of a car like a whore.
She told me that, at that time when she was taking the first steps to reclaim her life and figuring out who she was as a woman, the fact that someone genuinely wanted her and was kind and gentle about it had been the biggest turn-on of her life.
She’d also told me that, when I’d kicked her out of the car half-naked and alone in an empty parking lot for reasons that I had not explained, I’d changed her life too.
And not for the better.
She’d gone home dejected and feeling more used than ever, and she’d caved to Thomas’s demands to testify against her father. And then spent four years living in solitude with Isabel, for fear of ever taking another chance on a man.
Much to my surprise, she let me hold her that night in Shane’s bed. And when we woke to him and Cora arguing in the kitchen, she slipped back out of my life for what I feared was the very last time.
That is until Manuel called my phone later that morning while we were cooking eggs and bacon for the girls, before the news of his escape had even hit the local news.
Despite the fact that he had agreed to help Thomas track down Catalina in exchange for his freedom, the only thing Manuel truly wanted was Thomas dead. And he wanted me to do it.
That I could do.
That I could so fucking do.
Manuel had no delusions about the fact that he was going back to jail. He was dying, and he said that he could go peacefully as long as Thomas Lyons made it to hell before he did.
And then he shocked the shit out of me by telling me exactly where Catalina had been in hiding and asked me to go get her so he could see her one last time before he died. It seemed losing three of your four children and preparing to meet our maker softened the man.
And considering she was standing right next to me, tears rolling down her face at the knowledge that he’d known where she had been all along and never turned her over to Thomas or Marcos or Dante, she picked up the phone. They talked for over an hour. And while I’d say that chat was therapeutic for Catalina, nothing was forgotten during that conversation. She hated him. But she finally got some closure.
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