His grip loosened as he inhaled. “Yeah,” I said.
Flattening my foot against his thigh and using the advice he constantly repeated to me, I put my weight behind my shoulder, pushed off his leg, and rolled out from under him.
“Oof.” He flopped onto his back, clutching his abdomen.
I jumped up to straddle him, careful not to sit near his wounds. “Sorry, but I win,” I said, smiling down at him. “Did I hurt you?”
“Nothing a few new stitches won’t fix.”
As I leaned forward, my ponytail hung over my shoulder, the ends brushing his chest. “You left yourself open.”
“I did.” He seized my biceps, yanking me down until our bodies were flush—and I was back under his control. “But, no, you didn’t win. The fight is never over.”
His heart pounded against my breasts—or maybe it was mine. Either way, our breath mingled, and our eyes searched each other’s faces. In the weeks since we’d kissed, the electricity between us hadn’t dimmed. Just the opposite—it’d become even more charged. At one time it’d been exactly what I’d been worried would happen—that a kiss would be powerful enough to make me forget why I hated him.
But I’d already forgotten. Or maybe he’d given me enough reasons to change my mindset.
Not for the first time since he’d opened up to me about his past, I didn’t just want to kiss him. I craved it.
The need in his eyes had been growing even stronger since he’d begun to fully heal, and it betrayed his powerlessness. I could’ve asked for anything in that moment. Or, I could be the one to initiate, sliding up the hard length of his shaft, controlling my tempo, his orgasm, and mine . . .
I’d been sleeping by his side as I had the first weeks I’d arrived—only now, he’d pull me into his embrace each night, mouth in my hair, my hips nestled into his, our bodies learning how to share a bed. How to have restraint.
He’d woken up this morning ready to spar. And if he could wrestle me to the ground, then I knew what was next. It’d been coming a long time. He’d been waiting even longer. His unwilling bride would ask for it, and he would answer tenfold. With the ache growing stronger between my legs each day, maybe I’d even beg. He’d warned me I would.
“I see you’re fully recovered, sir,” Alejandro called cheerfully from somewhere far too near.
I shot into a sitting position so quickly, I almost tumbled back into the grass.
Alejo sauntered toward us, not bothering to hide his grin.
Cristiano fixed my shorts and patted my hips to get me to climb off him. “What are you doing back? You’re supposed to be in the south.”
After our meal with Alejandro, Pilar, and Tasha—which had turned into dinner for one when Cristiano had decided to eat out instead—Alejandro had assembled a team and taken them on an attempt to recover Max . . . against my advice. They’d loaded Tasha in a car to return her to wherever she’d come from, and according to Cristiano, they hadn’t had much to report since.
In this case, I worried no news wasn’t good news. But by the spring in Alejandro’s step, it looked as if I was wrong.
“Did you locate Max?” I asked as I stood, brushing grass off my legs.
“Afraid not. Believe me, Cristiano will be the first to know when we do.”
When Cristiano moved me in front of him, I didn’t have to ask why—the reason pressed into my backside. “You have that look,” Cristiano said.
“Which one?” Alejandro asked.
Like a cat who’d caught the canary. I noticed it, too. “You know something,” I said.
“I know two things. First, Max’s trail went cold again, but we’re extremely close to securing a rat within Belmonte-Ruiz.”
“Someone’s willing to help?” I asked.
“Willing? No. But he agreed when I presented him with an alternative that didn’t end well for his family in the States. Now, we put on the pressure until he caves, then wait for the right time to pounce.”
“Then why aren’t you closing the deal?” Cristiano asked.
“I don’t need to be there for that.” He widened his stance and crossed his fists under his arms. “I wanted to deliver this next part in person—we were successful in a different mission.” He winked, and, in a very odd turn of events, he hooted. Like an owl.
Cristiano’s hands tightened on my shoulders. “¿El Búho?”
“Sí, patrón. When we took Tasha back to the city, we got more information from her family. Since we’ve been waiting around a lot while trying to track down Max, we decided to put that intel to good use.”
“Fuck,” Cristiano said, but there was no anger behind his curse. If anything, he sounded pleased. “You know where the Valverdes are, don’t you?”
“The Valverdes?” I asked, the apellido a faint echo in the back of my mind. “Why do I know that name?”
Alejandro nodded, and if he’d looked smug earlier, now he looked downright prideful. “They’re closer than you think, boss.”
“Not in the south?”
“Not anymore.”
Cristiano stiffened behind me. “Don’t fuck with me, Alejandro.”
I glanced back, twisting to look up at Cristiano. “Are they what you left to find?”
“Sí, mi corazón,” he said, but his attention stayed on Alejandro. “Where are they?”
Alejandro tipped his chin forward. “Downstairs.”
I touched the neckline of my tank top. Downstairs? The only downstairs I’d seen was the panic room and storage space, and at the opposite end of the house, the subterranean dining room where the party had been held my first night. “Are they eating?” I asked.
Cristiano laughed, and Alejandro joined in before responding, “No. They may not even have a meal left.”
Cristiano’s chest pressed against my back. “How’d you pull this off?”
“You’ve had some bad luck, and it has distracted you,” Alejandro said. “We thought you needed a win after the past few weeks.”
Cristiano slid his hands to rest in the curves of my neck, his fingers stretching over my collarbone. “How many?”
“Four. Once we located the head, the others weren’t far behind.”
“Four?” he asked and released a string of awed curses. “I hoped for one at best.”
“One person?” I asked.
“We’ll resume our lesson later.” Cristiano pressed a kiss to the back of my head and moved his mouth to my ear. “Don’t count on me forgetting the position you got me in.”
Every day brought more questions, but I was lucky to make it through with even one answer. Who were these people Cristiano had seemingly chased to the ends of the Earth? And what did that family have to do with mine?
“Wait.” I turned to face him, grabbing the front of his t-shirt before he could walk away.
He arched an eyebrow at my fist in his shirt, then raised his eyes to me. “Yes?”
“Who are the Valverdes? Why do you need them?”
“I’ll tell you everything, but not now.” He wiped sweat from his lip and glanced over his shoulder. “First, I need to see what we’re dealing with.”
I released his shirt and let him walk away. Even though I believed he’d fill me in later, it was still a no that transported me back to my first days in the Badlands. I didn’t want to return to the moments when my imagination had been left to its own devices, spinning out of control, conjuring up terrible—and ultimately false—theories.
“You said you wanted . . . that we’d do this together,” I called after him. “Like my parents.”
Cristiano stopped where he was, then turned back. “We will do it together.”
The drop in his voice registered deep in my stomach, a threat. “Then why can’t I come with you?”
“Now?”
“Yes. Now. Show me what’s downstairs.”
He strolled back to me, his eyes roaming from my ankles to my eyes. “You haven’t got the first clue what you’re asking to be a part of.”
&
nbsp; “So tell me.”
He massaged his chest. Fisker said Cristiano sometimes got heartburn. He liked his liquor, cigars and cigarettes, and red meat—the constant stress didn’t help. I made a mental note to request something light for dinner.
“The Valverdes were around when you were a child,” Cristiano said. “Rivals of your father’s.”
“Some of the old guard, then,” I said. Many of my father’s original associates had been murdered or demoted, their cartels dissolved, overthrown, or eliminated. My father had mainly survived due to his shift from narcotics into his safer business around shipping logistics.
“Something like that.” Cristiano rubbed his temples. “It could be dangerous down there. I’ll assess the situation and come upstairs when I know more.”
“So you get to pick and choose what I see? How is that a partnership?”
“Partnership? Mmm.” He wet his lips, giving me a onceover. “I have to say, I like to hear you own it, my love. I like it very much.”
A pleasant warmth traveled up my chest. I hadn’t even realized that’s what I was doing. The word had just come out. But that’s what was developing between us. Cristiano had sought me out to be his queen, and every day, it became truer.
Because what life was there for me now that I’d seen all that I had here?
Now that I’d known a man like Cristiano?
California hadn’t been home. It’d been a place to escape my fears and responsibilities. And I didn’t want that anymore, which was good—because I’d never be able to go back to that.
Choosing this life left no room for hesitation. Either I was in or out, and Cristiano had to know my decision. “I heard what you said the other night about Mamá wanting me to live honestly,” I said. “I don’t want to be a victim of my fear. I don’t want to be a bystander in my life. I choose this. Whatever’s in there, I can handle it.”
“I know you can, but certain things, you can’t come back from.”
He warned me with haunting words, but I couldn’t ignore the one truth that had persisted since I’d stepped foot in the church over a month ago. “I can’t go back anyway, can I?”
Alejandro whistled for Cristiano.
Cristiano retreated. “Wait upstairs. I’ll come soon.”
With him, soon could’ve meant minutes or hours.
He turned and strode around the side of the house where the mountainside had the thickest vegetation. I hadn’t explored much in that area. I hadn’t thought there was anything there but overgrown trees. Now I wondered how it could possibly have a “downstairs.”
I returned to our bedroom, turned on the shower, and started to remove my racerback tank when I caught sight of the new definition in my shoulders and biceps. My body was changing. Strengthening. Just like my emotional and mental state.
I left my top on and leaned over the sink to look in the mirror. My first night here, I’d found myself in the ground floor bathroom staring at the reflection of a terrified, angry, and exhausted girl who thought she was headed upstairs to be proverbially torn limb from limb by her greatest enemy.
How much had changed since then. I’d been willfully naïve. Scared to learn truths I’d assumed would be ugly. The result of a lifetime of being coddled by Papá and Diego.
Would I trade the darkness of Cristiano’s world to go back to living blindly if I could?
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t. At least it was honest here.
Steam curled over the shower door. My ponytail had come loose during our sparring and hung over my shoulder. Scars began to take form, a tiny one on my cheek, and a slash under my chin. My cheeks flushed from my morning workout and the running hot water. My eyes had seen things I couldn’t forget.
“Certain things, you can’t come back from.”
What things? I’d already watched Cristiano slit the throats of the men who’d tried to kidnap Sandra. I’d seen the faces of the lost, but not forgotten, taped to a whiteboard, probably no longer waiting for saviors like Calavera. I’d fought off my own attacker. But there was a more horrific side to what Cristiano did. El Polvo pouring sand down the throats of his worst enemies. I’d heard of a slow death, but had not witnessed the intricacies and unspoken truths of what it really meant.
Was that what was happening downstairs? A slow death for my father’s rivals? An enemy so old and obscure I barely remembered their name? Before the assaults, Cristiano had gone in search of a key to unlock everything he wanted. I’d been learning that his unmet need was me. Us. Our partnership. Our marriage. So why had an old guard family stood between Cristiano and me?
My pulse quickened as the puzzle pieces formed a bigger picture. He’d said it had to do with closure. Jaz had said it was proof. And as with everything here, revenge played a part—Cristiano had admitted that our last night alone before he’d left town.
Revenge in my name. In my father’s name. Closure for us. Proof. I curled my fists against the counter as the answer formed in my mind.
Papá had told me the morning after the costume party that my mother’s sicario had been hired by a rival cartel that was no longer in existence.
But maybe they were. And maybe they were here.
11
Natalia
I’d waited almost twelve years for answers about my mother’s death, and now, the people responsible were here. Close by. Somewhere under my feet.
Cristiano had asked me to hold on a little longer, but I squirmed at just the thought of more puzzle pieces waiting in some cryptic place Alejandro had called “downstairs.”
I pushed away from the bathroom counter, turned off the shower, and went to my closet. After zipping a hoodie over my tank top, I tightened my ponytail and headed to the ground floor and around the side of the house where Cristiano had disappeared.
What was I doing? What was I asking for by opening this door that had been locked to me for so long? What if I couldn’t handle it?
Cristiano had said I could. But if what I suspected was true, this family was responsible for more than my mother’s death. They’d take the blame for the eleven years Cristiano had been on the run. For his poverty and struggle, and the irreparable rift between him and his brother. For bearing the hatred of his mentor and future wife for so long.
And for all of that, they would pay.
Cristiano had exacted torturous death on many an enemy, and there might be no greater foe than the Valverde family.
The farther I walked from the house, the more wooded it became. Dirt began to soften as twigs crunched under my sneakers. Leafy tree tops blocked out the sky. Wings flapped as birds whistled. Ah, nature—
With the metal click of a gun, I froze.
“Alto.” Stop.
I looked around for the male voice but saw nothing—until a nearly completely camouflaged Eduardo stepped out from between some trees. “Natalia?”
My shoulders loosened. “¿Dónde está Cristiano?” I asked.
If Eduardo knew where Cristiano was, he didn’t answer.
“Get him for me,” I said with a sigh. “Now—it’s urgent.”
Eduardo removed the handheld radio attached to his bulletproof vest. “Jefe,” he said into it. “Natalia’s here.”
Cristiano responded right away. “Bring her down.”
Eduardo led me a few meters through the trees. When we reached the mountainside, he pulled on a rock that wasn’t a rock, but a steel cover disguising a keypad. He pressed his thumb to a fingerprint scanner, and part of the mountain in front of us slid open like the entrance to a vault.
Dios santo. The door was the mountain. I never would’ve found this on my own.
Eduardo went first, disappearing down a dark stairwell.
My feet wouldn’t move, though. Since childhood, I tried not to willingly go down into dark spaces. With the smell of soil, this particular staircase reminded me of the tunnel Cristiano had taken me into.
Unlike that one, though, he wasn’t going to leave me down there.
I force
d myself to take the first step, then the next, until I stood at the bottom of a stone staircase and before another secure door. Eduardo entered his credentials, and once it opened, he breezed right in without a second thought.
My only company was the sound of my heartbeat. I got the feeling once I stepped inside, I’d come out slightly changed. But I’d learned more during my metamorphosis since I’d arrived than I had years at university, and I took comfort that it was turning out to be for the best—even when it didn’t always feel that way.
This was the underbelly of an already gruesome world. I’d spent years running from it, trying to pretend it didn’t exist, and distancing myself from my childhood. Yet I was walking into it with eyes wide open now.
It would show Cristiano—and myself—that I was choosing this life. Choosing him. All of him.
And I deserved answers. I deserved the chance to look my mother’s murderers in the eyes.
“It’s not too late to turn around.” Cristiano materialized in the darkness, shadows turning his eyes into sockets.
Awe, and a hint of fear, mingled within me as I stepped into a cool, dimly lit steel room. Little green, yellow, and red lights flashed with the hum of machinery. Not appliances, I realized as my eyes adjusted. Computers and monitors. Combined with the glass cases of books and folders lining the walls, the space looked like a high-tech museum.
And nothing like a place to keep prisoners—but how deep did it run?
I walked farther into the temperature-controlled room. Eduardo had vanished. “Is this where you store the body parts?” I asked.
“Huh?”
I turned to Cristiano. “Legend has it you keep something from every person you kill and put it on display.”
“Ay. Señor, dame paciencia.” He ran his hands over his face as he asked God for patience, then laughed. “Another rumor. What kind of unhinged cabrón do you take me for, Natalia? I’m no saint, but I don’t keep a souvenir from every kill. For one, I’d need a bigger building.”
Violent Triumphs Page 11