A sudden thought occurs to me and I stand up again, working out the kinetic energy that it brings about in me.
“What is it?” Leira asks.
“The list, the one with the names and amounts of the people Richard works with. It must have been sent to me by your father.”
Her eyes go wide and she looks away in thought. “That does make sense. Maybe it’s the same information he’s hiding at this location he gave me.”
“In which case, why give it to me in the first place? The whole point of blackmail is that no one else knows about it.”
She just gives a half-hearted shrug.
“We have to find out what’s in that building.”
“We could call my father again?” she suggests.
“No,” I say quickly. “Not until we figure out who this person is that wants to meet with me next Friday and how they found out about me.”
She exhales with relief. “He probably wouldn’t tell us anyway.”
My head is still spinning with everything I’ve learned tonight, but the weariness is setting in.
“Let’s get something to eat, and we can figure all of this out. You must be as hungry as I am.”
“Right. I’m actually starving.”
“I know a place that will give us some privacy so we can talk. Let’s go.”
Leira nods and rises from the bed.
As I follow her to the door, I can’t help but look at her in a new light. All of this is far too coincidental. The one question that is front and center in my mind is, is she the daughter of a man who is my ally or my enemy?
Chapter Thirty-Six
Leira
The place Enrique takes me to is another tapas bar, which I have absolutely no problem with. I’d live on this stuff if I could.
We are tucked away in a corner of the dimly lit restaurant, which is surprisingly full for how late at night it is. Still, he was right, we do have privacy.
Our glasses are filled from the bottle of red wine—yet another thing I’m getting used to—and we have our first servings of thinly sliced ham on pieces of bread and more of those potatoes I love.
“Okay, so let’s start from square one,” I say after swallowing a sip of wine.
As much of a mind fuck as all of this is, I’m actually enjoying the conspiratorial feel of it all. I’ve always been good at solving puzzles. The past forty-eight hours have been the most excitement I’ve had in a long time.
But I still want to figure all of this out.
Most importantly, which side of it my father falls on.
“You were five when you saw your father kill a man?”
Enrique nods, and sips his wine. “The man worked at one of the Luxembourg banks that my father was helping people launder money through.”
“And he discovered what your father was doing, right?”
Enrique gives me a bland smile and lifts his glass up in confirmation.
“So you told your mother, and she thought she could blackmail your father with it?”
“I suppose,” he says, his expression going dark. “I wasn’t there for that part. But when she turned up dead, what else could I assume?”
I nod as though that all fits into place. “So then you were adopted out and…fast forward how many years? When did you first get the list of names?”
“The summer after I graduated university. It was an attachment in an email message.”
“What did the message say?”
A sardonic smirk touches his lips and I straighten up in anticipation.
“That he—or she, I suppose; I don’t really know—knew that I didn’t really want to work for my parents now that I had graduated. It suggested an alternative.”
“Why would they think that you had the ability to do anything with it? Why didn’t he just suggest you take it to the police?”
A smile curls his lips. “What I do these days is a result of years of practice.”
“So, you’ve always been a thief?”
“Not necessarily. My parents were well off enough that I never needed the money. But I was always good at…exploring, let’s say. Mostly via computer.”
“A hacker,” I confirm, sitting back in my seat with my glass in my hands.
He shrugs. “The result of a mostly hands-off upbringing. My parents were socially and professionally active people. I practically raised myself. Which left so much mischief to get into.”
I laugh and sip my wine. “So, he apparently knew a lot about you.”
“In all fairness, it wasn’t much of a secret. Everyone I went to school with knew I could be counted on to help change grades or find exam answers.”
“And you call me Diabla,” I scold.
Enrique smirks. “Here we are, two troublemakers.”
I laugh and pop some more potatoes into my mouth. Enrique grabs the menu, and after scanning it, calls the attention of the server to order a few more dishes.
“So, the message said something about working for your parents. Did you want to go to work for them?”
“No,” he says curtly before grabbing one of the pieces before us to pop into his mouth.
I stab the last of the potatoes and chew, waiting for him to expound. When he hasn’t by the time I’ve swallowed and taken a sip of wine, I set my glass down and give him a level gaze.
“We promised everything, Enrique. Don’t hold back now.”
He considers me for a long moment, sipping his wine. Finally, he seems to come to some conclusion and sets his glass down, leaning on the table. I instinctively do the same.
“There’s a point in time when all children are disillusioned by their parents, realizing that they are all too human. But sometimes they find out that perhaps their parents are the worst kind of human. I saw that in my biological father.”
I just nod, encouraging him on.
“I suppose all along, I knew that my adoptive parents weren’t perfect. But they did their best to make a show of it. Perfect house. Perfect lifestyle. Perfect family. Perfectly wealthy. Until the bottom fell out on real estate. That was their main source of income, and they were leveraged to the hilt when it happened.”
I sense something coming and take a sip of wine to prepare myself.
“I never would have known, though in retrospect, there were signs. The arguments between them were more frequent. They were gone more often than usual. More indulgent with me, which is to say, indifferent.”
The server comes back with our new round of tapas, and I almost flinch in surprise, being as caught up in this build-up as I am.
We both pull back so he can place the new dishes down and take away the old ones. When he’s gone, we pull back in closer to each other.
“Go on,” I urge.
“A woman came by the house. It was one of those times when they were gone. She was yelling and screaming about my parents having murdered her husband.”
“What?” I exclaim before I can stop myself.
Enrique gives me a dry smile. “Not in the way you’re thinking. It was one of the apartment buildings their company had been involved with constructing during that period. It collapsed. Officially, on the record, which I know they paid a hefty sum to make happen, it was the result of seismic forces, misleading geographical records, anyone and everything to point the finger at besides themselves.”
He stops to grab an encrusted mini log from a dish. I grab one as well. It’s some kind of dough with bits of ham inside. Delicious.
“That’s when I decided to use my skills to find out more about it. I’d never dug into my parents’ business, mostly due to a lack of interest. I was one of the people who had been fooled by all outward appearances. I discovered that for several years, they had cut multiple corners. Lowest bidding contracts, subpar materials, shoddy construction. Most often in the lower end buildings. And one of the pieces in this house of cards had finally fallen.
“I was a teenager at the time, so I had no idea what to do with the information. So I just confro
nted them. After the usual denials and defenses, they caved, admitting everything. They reassured me that in the years since, money has been paid out, upgrades have been made on all of those buildings, so they are sound. I saw the evidence myself when I went snooping.
“But…five people died in that building collapse. How can money replace that?”
He seems so broken over this, I have this instinctive urge to reach out and stroke his cheek.
“I think back to that period. No one ever knew. They still threw lavish parties, traveled the world…. Our lifestyle didn’t change one bit. All while they were building death traps.”
His eyes, which have glazed over as he reminisced, now sharpen as he gazes at me. “So no, I didn’t want to go to work for my parents.”
I nod with understanding. “And you think it was my father who sent you that list?”
“Who else? Who would want me to target these people? Who would know about what my father is up to?”
“Just because he gave me a name, doesn’t mean—”
“Leira.”
I go quiet, mostly under that penetrating gaze of his. Then I speak up again. “At the very least, it means he’s the good guy. That I was right when I told you he wasn’t involved in drugs, or anything criminal.”
“Possibly.”
“Definitely.”
“You seem so certain.”
“I know my father. Like I said, if he tells me something, it’s true.”
Enrique pulls back, grabbing the last of those rolls to bite into, without saying another word about it.
I sit back and eye the plate of bread with sliced sausage on it before taking one.
“So you graduate college, and it’s summer. All of a sudden, you get this message about the people your father is working with. And you set up this team of fellow pirates?” I ask before taking a bite.
“Pretty much,” he says with a shrug. “It took about a year to pull them all together and coordinate a system. The rest is history.”
“Until now,” I say before taking another bite.
“Until now,” he repeats, taking his sip of wine.
“So, let’s dissect this. Off the top of your head, who do you think it could be that wants to meet with you?”
“Maybe your father?”
A reluctant smile touches my lips. “After everything that’s happened, that wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
Enrique laughs and takes a long sip of wine. “Mira, we have over a week before I have to meet with him. That’s a long grace period. I’d rather not waste it going round in circles trying to figure out who it is. Life is too short. In my case, potentially very short.”
“Don’t say that,” I say quietly.
Something in Enrique’s eyes shifts as he considers me for an almost uncomfortably long moment. “All the same, I’d rather enjoy these days with you, Leira.”
I feel a smile spread my lips, already absorbing the warm energy surrounding us in this moment. “Me too.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Leira
“…so that was the one, and only, time I’ve ever been to Disneyland. I’m pretty sure the park instituted new guidelines based on what I did.”
Enrique is still laughing as I tell him about the time I got a little too curious and wandered “backstage” at Disneyland, exploring the off-limits part of the park for almost two hours before I was finally returned to the nanny, who promptly quit the next day.
It’s late, so the only other patrons are part of a large group, obviously drunk and thoroughly enjoying themselves based on the noise.
I laugh with him and take a long swallow of the wine in my glass from the second bottle he’s ordered. Just like the sangria, I can feel it hitting me hard, but I’m enjoying myself too much to quit. “So I’ve been talking all night. You know all about me. What about you? What was it like growing up here?”
“Marbella is not here,” he corrects.
I wave my glass in the air. “I meant Spain. It must have been some transition at first.”
Relocating to the convent for the summer was definitely a culture shock for me, but at least I had the benefit of knowing I’d return to normalcy once it was over. But really, will anything be normal after all of this?
More importantly, do I even want to return to it?
“I was five at the time,” Enrique says. “Everything that happened before that feels almost like snippets out of a dream. Even my mother’s face, her voice, it’s all faded. My adoptive parents actually made a point of encouraging me to try and forget about it all. I guess they thought it would only be traumatic for me to dwell on it. Or maybe they just wanted me to fit in better to my new life here. I don’t know.”
“That’s terrible,” I blurt out. “Having never even known my mother and oldest sister, it seems cruel. Hearing stories about them via my father and older sisters at least made me feel like I knew them somehow. Then losing Layla, who was the sister I was actually closest to, and Lucinda, who was probably more of an influence than she should have been. The memories I have with them…I can’t imagine ever letting go of those.”
“More than anything, I think I miss what could have been. With my mother at any rate. My father—” Enrique stops, his jaw hardening. “I sometimes think maybe my life would be better if I had forgotten what he did, moved on from it all.”
I feel some draw pulling me toward him, not liking that train of thought he’s on. I scoot out of my side of the small booth we’re in and round the table to be next to him.
“You have a right to be upset, Enrique—to grieve. I don’t know what I’d do if I had the chance to confront the men that took my sisters. So I get it, what you’re doing.”
“Even killing?”
It’s wrong. Despite the Bible’s rather bipolar exploration into taking lives—even if the Ten Commandments are quite clear—I know it’s wrong. But I also empathize with it. And that same deviant rush that seized me when he first talked about killing his father now consumes me once again.
An eye for an eye.
Thou shalt not kill.
“I…can’t speak to that,” I say. Something in his eyes dulls, and I instinctively reach out a hand to cup his face, bringing them blazing back to life. “But I would never judge you.”
I can’t tell if the heat of his cheek against my palm is a warm glow of comfort or symbolic of the fires of hell. Maybe it’s just the wine warming the blood in both our bodies.
Enrique’s burn is obviously not a slow as mine is. He sets his glass of wine down on the table and pulls me in closer.
There’s nothing warm and comforting about the way his lips feel against mine. No, his mouth is like pure brimstone, punishing and dangerous. It sets the alcohol in my blood on fire, making it far more potent an enabler.
His tongue slips through, speaking a language with mine that could only translate into trouble. And hell if I’m going to tell it to shut up now, not when I’m caught under whatever spell it’s chanting.
The sound of someone clearing their throat interrupts us.
Enrique and I pull apart like two magnets suddenly on the same poles, repulsing away from each other.
“Desculpe,” the server apologizes before explaining that the restaurant is about to close.
Enrique pulls out his wallet and hands over a credit card before the bill can even be set on the table.
I pour the last of the wine into my glass and drink, even though I know it’s the last thing I should be doing. Something inside of me is on the cusp of an edge that delineates whether I fall into an abyss I shouldn’t, or rise above it.
And I want to fall.
“Are you sure about that?” Enrique says, eyeing me as I finish off the glass. “Remember what happened with the sangria?”
Oh, yes I do.
I set the glass down and give him a level gaze, or as level as the wine in my system will allow.
“I’m sure.”
The amusement in his gaze evaporates
and is replaced by something dark and smoldering.
The server comes back with the bill and douses the moment with reality. Enrique signs the check and takes his credit card.
I quickly slide out of the booth, wanting whatever is left of the momentum to carry me all the way back to our hotel. My legs are less sure than my head is and get entangled in one another.
“Cuidado,” the server says, reflexively catching me as I nearly tumble to the floor.
Enrique is just as quick out of the booth, snatching me out of the arms of the man in a way that is so aggressively possessive that center part of me, low in my stomach, seems to spontaneously combust.
“Ella es mía,” he growls.
Even a person who didn’t know Spanish could interpret the dangerous intent in his voice. I bite my lip to hold back the moan as his strong arms match that voice, holding onto me like a prized treasure he has no intention of sharing with the world.
The server backs away, grabbing the check as though he’s ready for this night to be done already.
Even though I’d happily die right now in Enrique’s arms, I steady myself enough so we can at least return to the hotel.
Outside, the night is still warm and glorious. The city isn’t even remotely dead, despite the late hour. I hear young people laughing and talking loudly in the distance. Somewhere a guitar plays. A man on the street even offers to sell us a can of beer for one euro as we pass by.
“Where is the beer?” I stupidly ask him with a tipsy laugh.
“You don’t want to know,” Enrique says, dragging me past him. When we’re far enough away, he leans down to whisper in my ear. “They keep them cool in the sewers. It’s not even legal to drink in public here.”
I wrinkle my nose with distaste, then laugh at the thought that the man probably does brisk business despite that. This city is so wild and wonderful, I want to drink it up.
We pass through narrow alleyways that make me think I’m in a different time period. An era in which young, virginal women just like me could be carried away by handsome men through these very streets where anything could happen. Maybe they had their innocence taken right here against these walls…maybe not so much against their will, despite the prevailing religious ethos of the day.
Spanish Pirate: A BWWM International Legacies Romance Page 16