by Tillie Cole
“Since you.” My eyes snapped to Diego. He was watching me with a smug smirk. And I was sure he caught the blood draining from my face. My mouth opened, ready to speak, but no words came . . . me? What the hell was he talking about? Diego saw my confusion. “You were the first, Adelita.” Diego looked to my father, who had turned just as white. “That’s right, isn’t it, Alfonso? She was the first?”
“What?” I whispered, my heart kicking into a sprint. My father moved quickly and lifted a gun from under his desk. I instinctively stepped back, thinking he was raising it at me, but instead, he aimed it at Diego. Before my father could fire, Diego pulled a gun from his jacket and shot my father through the head. I screamed as blood spattered the wall behind my father and his body slumped in the chair. His forehead hit the desk with a thud. Blood started to flood from his wound.
Heartbeat thudding in my ears, I barely registered Diego calling someone on his cell, until I heard the sound of gunshots thundering in and around the house. Panicked, I turned in the direction of the door. All I could hear were screams and shouts, and bullet after bullet leaving the barrel of guns.
“The house is mine,” Diego stated, making me turn his way. My knees were weak. Fear was all I could feel. Diego straightened his suit jacket, like he hadn’t just killed my father and all his men in the hacienda.
“Carmen . . .” I whispered.
“No one loyal to your father can be kept alive.” Instant sorrow burrowed in my chest. Diego’s arrogance shone through in his tall stance. “It has taken me years to sway enough men to my side, Adelita. Years. Your father was a weak leader. Too concerned with women and acting the perfect cartel boss.” He shrugged. “I have plans for this cartel. Plans that exclude your father and the dead weight he calls his best men.”
“No!” I shook my head and tried to comprehend what was happening. “You,” I said and focused my anger on Diego. “You are involved in the trafficking, aren’t you? You are as much a part of that shitshow as my father! Is that your big plan? Slaves?”
Diego kept his cool. “They couldn’t have children.” I froze, confused by his stark change in topic. “Your mother and father.” He paused, allowing me catch up. “At least those you believed were your parents.” My eyes widened, and I tried to keep my cool. But I didn’t know how. What was he saying? Diego sat down on the seat opposite my father—my dead father. I couldn’t look at the body. Neither could I move. I was rooted to the spot. “He killed her, Adelita. Your father. He killed your mother when she found out what he’d done.”
“The trafficking?” I whispered. “She found out about his business?”
He slowly shook his head. His eyes were cruel and cold. “When she found out you’d been stolen from your birth mother—a woman who had never wanted to let you go.” The pain in my chest was so great I couldn’t breathe. The air seemed too thick to inhale, and my lungs were fighting against it. My hand came to my chest. “You were the resolution to a deal gone wrong.” He shrugged as if my life was nothing. “I don’t know the full story. But I know your biological father owed Quintana a lot of money. Your father—Quintana—was about to ruin him and his organization.” He met my eyes. “You were the solution. You for the organization to survive.”
“I don’t believe you,” I replied, but my gut told me he was telling the truth.
“Your mother—Quintana’s wife—discovered where you came from. And she couldn’t live with it. She wanted to return you to the woman you were ripped from. Stolen from. But, by then, Quintana had become too attached. So he killed her.”
“No . . .” I said, but everything started to make sense. The lack of pictures. The fact he wouldn’t talk of my mother. “But Carmen,” I said. “Carmen told me I looked like her.”
Diego laughed and shook his head. “You’re so naïve, Adelita.” My stomach fell. “Everyone who worked for your father was paid to say whatever he wanted them to say. To ignore whatever he wanted them to ignore.” Diego got to his feet and came toward me. He picked up a piece of my dark hair and ran it through his fingers. “You were the first child he trafficked.” He dropped my hair. “Adelita, you inspired the business that followed.” He flicked his wrist in dismissal. “It’s simply import and export. Of what was never an issue. You proved selling humans would be lucrative. Women and children, at least.” Diego’s hand lay on my cheek, softly, as gentle as a lover’s touch. “This empire . . . all the money . . . it would not have happened if not for you.”
My head was spinning, too full with information. I was stolen from my real mother. Who she was, I had no idea. And my father . . . was not my father.
I was payment to him for a debt? I was nothing more than a pet? A thing he bought and raised, crafted to be his perfect cartel daughter?
I could see the happiness on Diego’s face. The satisfaction that he had been the one to tell me this secret. And he had shot my father . . . removing the only person who could have given me answers. The only person able to tell me the person I really was, who my parents were.
“I hate you,” I spat out, and pushed him from me with my hands on his chest. Diego fell back a few steps, and his smug smile melted away. He struck out and sliced his hand across my face. My head snapped back with the force of the blow. Before I even had a chance to recover, he slammed me back against the wall, knocking the air from my lungs. “You think I don’t know you’ve spread your legs for the Nazi?” His words quickly cleared my head. I met his eyes. They were furious. “You think I don’t know the great White Prince of the Ku Klux Klan killed Vincente?” My pulse and heart raced in one fast beat.
But this time it was my turn to smile. Diego would kill me. I knew that. I had nothing left to lose. “I love him,” I said boldly, and felt myself calm as those words came from my mouth. I leaned in close. “He is everything to me, and no one, not a single person, could ever compare.”
“He’s dead,” Diego threatened. I rejoiced that my words had hit their intended target. The triumph was short lived. “The Klan are here in Mexico. We are readying to destroy the Hangmen. And I’ll be the one to take that cunt out.”
Instant fear for Tanner suffocated my heart. “You are no match for him.” I looked him up and down, seeing him for the wicked man he was. “In any way.”
Diego’s fist flew out, and he punched me. He hit me over and over until my ears rang and the world tilted. I could taste nothing but blood in my mouth. Diego gripped my hair and dragged me through the hacienda. I tried to take in what was happening. Bodies littered the floor. I saw Carmen’s lifeless body on the mezzanine outside my rooms. Diego opened the door and threw me inside. I hit the floor with a thud. “I’ll be back for you,” Diego promised. “And I’ll enjoy every minute of killing you, princesa. Every last fucking minute.” His threat washed over me as he headed to the door.
“Where is Charley?” I demanded to know. “Where is her father? He won’t tolerate this! He will come for you, Diego!”
Diego turned around. “Bennett is dead by my own hand. The kill ordered by your father weeks ago. He was no longer effective as a distributor. We gave another Californian outlet the contract.” I stopped breathing. “And as for your best friend . . . she is long gone.”
“Dead?” I asked, breathlessly.
“No. But she’ll wish she was.” The door slammed and the lock turned. I was left alone. I let the tears flow. I let the choking grief and pain tear me apart, until I shook with hurt and my chest was raw from too many hitched breaths. My face throbbed from Diego’s fists, but I crawled to the tapestry that hid the underground tunnel. When I pulled back the tapestry, nothing but brick wall greeted me.
A dark kind of acceptance settled over me as the last hope of freedom was ripped from my hands. Pulling myself to my feet, I staggered across my room until I reached my bed. The sheets were fresh. Carmen had prepared my room for my return. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I opened my drawer and took out my secret box. I opened it, and warmth filled my empty heart when I brought out the cott
on ring Tanner had given me.
As I lay on the bed, I slipped the ring on my finger and pictured his smiling face. Diego could come and take me. He could kill me as slowly and as painfully as he wanted. But I would die with Tanner’s ring on my finger and my promise to him in my heart. So that if we ever met in the afterlife, he would know I’d been with him until the end. Dying with the hope of marrying him still firmly in my heart.
Somehow.
Someday.
I would see him again.
Chapter Thirteen
Tanner
My head ached like I had a hangover. My mind was foggy, too full of a thick mist I couldn’t clear. My mouth was dry; my tongue felt swollen. I moved my legs and arms, but they were numb and lethargic. And the minute I tried to get up, something held me in place. My heart started racing, like it knew what was wrong before my mind could catch up. I opened my eyes, the light from outside slicing through my head like a blade.
“Fuck!” I hissed, my words slurring. My heart was a fucking drum as I fought to push the rest of the fog from my brain. I thrashed against whatever held me trapped. Cable ties. I was tied to a bed . . . my bed . . . in the compound. I fought against the light stabbing my eyes and noticed a needle on the table beside the bed.
A needle . . .
Images started barreling into my brain. I dream that one day, in another life, we might find one another again . . . I dream that we meet each other in some distant future and recognize one another’s souls. And we’ll be found . . .
I felt like a crowbar had been taken to my chest, remembering everything she’d said. Every fucking thing she’d said before she’d left. “Adelita . . .” I rasped, and pulled against the ties. My pulse pounded in my neck. “Adelita!” I hissed as my eyes searched the room. It was empty. I saw the sun again and tried to think if it was light or dark the last time I’d seen her.
I shook my head when I couldn’t piece it together. I pulled harder at the ties. The plastic only tightened, ripping into my flesh. I didn’t give a fuck as the blood ran down my skin. I pulled and pulled, but the fuckers wouldn’t give.
“Adelita!” I shouted, dread cutting me down to my bones. She wouldn’t have gone. She couldn’t have gone. But then I froze as I remembered the tears in her eyes.
It’s a suicide mission . . .
“Adelita!” I boomed out, and gave everything I had to tear these fuckers off the bed posts. “ADELITA!” The cable tie on my right arm gave way. I yanked on my left arm, when someone crashed through the door to my room.
I looked to the doorway. Tank was in his jeans, no shirt, gun in hand. His eyes were bloodshot, like he’d just woken up.
“Tanner. What the fuck?”
“Cut me the fuck free!” I demanded. Tank didn’t hesitate. He pulled his pocket knife from his jeans and snapped the cable ties at my ankles and wrist, ignoring the blood and torn flesh. I launched from the bed and threw on my jeans and boots. In seconds I burst out from my door. “Adelita!” I searched every room I could find, but she wasn’t anywhere. I punched through the door of the bar. There was no one there either.
“Adelita!” I screamed. I turned and raced back to my room. Tank was right behind me.
“What happened?” he asked. Viking and Rudge appeared at my door.
“What the fuck’s all the noise, mate? Some of us are about to fuck our sluts for the fourth time and all I can hear is your fucking mouth. It’s off-putting,” Rudge informed me.
“Four?” Vike asked Rudge, shocked . . . then he smiled and folded his arms over his big chest. “I’m on round six.” Tank went over to the door and slammed it shut.
“Tell me what the fuck is happening.”
Pushing past him, I went to the monitors in my room. In minutes I was searching for any airports nearby. Any of them which had a last-minute private flight booked in. I stopped when I saw a small airport not too far away had a last-minute flight scheduled before it had been quickly deleted from its system. But I hacked my way in enough to find a trace. It hadn’t had a time or flight numbers logged—that told me everything I needed to fucking know.
I was on my feet and throwing my shirt and cut on. I rushed to the door, but Tank grabbed my arm. “Tanner. Where the fuck is Lita?”
“Gone!” I snapped and pulled my arm back. My heart fired off again, and panic fucking whipped through me. “She fucked me, tied me to the bed, drugged me, then left.”
“What? Why?”
I ran my hands down my face. I could still feel the last of the drug in my system. My legs and arms moved slowly. But I had to go. I had to stop her from fucking leaving. “I’m going to stop her.”
I pushed out of the door and ran to my bike in the yard. I hadn’t even started the engine when Tank came out and jumped on his bike too. I didn’t say anything to him. At first he didn’t say anything to me.
“There’s a war, in case you didn’t hear. We ain’t supposed to leave.”
“Just fucking drive to wherever we’re going.”
Tank waited for me to pull out and then was right on my tail. I didn’t fucking care if the Klan or cartel were near. I’d fucking welcome the chance to tear someone apart right now. I drove so fast my Fat Boy roared along the back roads.
I pulled into the small airport. The runway was little more than a dust path. An old control tower sat to the left. Blood like rapids in my veins, I parked up and smashed through the door. Racing up the stairs, I busted through the entrance to the main center. Some middle-aged fucker jumped to his feet. My hands were on his collar in seconds. “You have a plane going to Mexico?” The guy’s face turned bright red as my hands tightened. “Speak, cunt! Is there a plane to Mexico?”
“Tann,” Tank’s hand came down on my shoulder. “Fucker can’t breathe.”
Forcing myself to calm, I slackened my hands on his collar. The guy looked about ready to have a heart attack.
“It’s gone,” he said, and I felt my stomach fucking drop. “It left earlier. To Mexico.”
I couldn’t fucking speak. My eyes wandered to the runway. To the fresh track marks that were dug into the dust.
“Was there a woman on board?” Tank must have realized I couldn’t speak, so he did it for me.
“Yes.” I closed my fucking eyes and pushed the guy from me. “Her and a couple of men. All Mexican.” I heard the guy swallow. “They paid me to give them clearance last minute. A lot of money. I immediately deleted it from the system so I wouldn’t be found out. They told me when they arrived to leave no trace. How . . . how did you know—”
Anger burned inside me. So fucking insidious, it was all I became. Just a walking fucking volcano ready to explode. My hands fisted, and on a growl, I slammed them into the controls below me. I punched the fucking things until the lights started flickering out. “Tann!” Tank’s voice cut through my red mist. But I only pushed past him and rushed down the stairs. As soon as I hit the fresh air, I held my head and fucking screamed. Adelita was gone. She was fucking gone!
I was too late.
I heard Tank come out of the door behind me. Yanking on my arm, he pulled me around and gripped my face. “We’ll get her. We’ll tell Styx and go in after her. We’ll get her back.”
“They’ll kill her,” I rasped, as the truth of those words started to hit me. “They’ll fucking kill her because she’s with me . . . and she knew it. She went knowing they’d kill her.”
“It might not be too late,” Tank said, trying to be convincing, and pushed me to my bike. “We’ll go tell Styx.”
I got on my bike and pulled out of the airport, heading back toward the compound. But I fucking knew. She’d be killed. Some dark kind of intuition tore in my gut, telling me so.
The minute we got back to the compound, all the Austin chapter brothers were in the bar. Tank must have called them from his bike. I hadn’t seen him do it. But then I hadn’t noticed much of anything on the way back. All I was thinking about was Adelita. About her face as she told me goodbye. All to save t
he club. This club . . . and me.
Bitch was wrong. Without her, there was no fucking me. Everything I’d done so we could be together was for nothing.
We entered the bar, and all the brothers looked my way. Styx and Ky got to their feet. “She’s gone,” I said before anyone else could speak.
“We just checked. She left on a plane this morning to Mexico,” Tank added.
I could see the suspicious looks on the faces of my brothers. Apart from Smiler and Ash. Smiler just looked fucking dead inside. Eyes lifeless. And Ash looked like he was about to stab any fucker that pissed him off.
“She didn’t leave because she wanted to.” I made sure all my brothers were listening. “She left because she knew if she didn’t go they’d be coming for her.” I met Styx’s and Ky’s eyes. “She wanted to protect your old ladies from getting hurt. Your old ladies and your kids.” I fisted my hands. “And she did it knowing she’d fucking die the minute Diego got her back.”
“She did it to protect us.” Tank backed me up. “She risked her life to help us. To protect our families. To try and stop another cartel attack on us. So we gotta go and get her. She’s Tann’s old lady. She’s one of us now. It’s what we do.”
I couldn’t read Styx’s face, couldn’t tell what the fuck he was thinking. He raised his hands to say something, when Wrox and the brothers from his chapter came bursting through the door. Wrox plowed past us and flew his fist straight into Flame’s face. Flame launched off his chair. Vike and AK were beside him in seconds. Flame rushed at Wrox and knocked the stupid motherfucker on his ass. Flame jumped on top of him and started smashing at his face. AK and Vike charged at Wrox’s men who had tried to rip Flame from Wrox.