I can't remember the last time I wore clothes. They were torn from me days ago, and I stink of abuse and neglect. I wish I felt shame, but I don't feel much of anything anymore. My face tilts forward, defeated; my hair is plastered to my shoulders with dirt and dejection; my eyes are unseeing to the night unfolding all around me. I’m trying hard to cover my naked chest, but my arm keeps slipping.
All the caged girls are in the same pathetic state. I don’t know their names, but we’re all united in our horror and humiliation.
Sexual abuse triggers the worst kind of memories.
I can't remember happiness.
I can't remember fun.
I can’t even remember why they took me in the first place, but the effects of what they’ve done are stamped all over my brain.
I smell their cocktails and canapés as they mill about underneath our cages. The auction will begin soon, and then I’ll be sold into a fresh hell.
I’m exhausted. I can’t keep my eyes open, but a fist keeps banging loudly on the bottom of my cage. Sleeping is against the rules. Crying is against the rules. Dying is against the rules.
I’m vaguely aware of someone staring at me. Nothing new there—I’m standing naked in a cage, exposed and shamed—but I don't feel the same anger and revulsion that I usually do. I blink and scan, and then my stomach lurches. I see a man I once knew—a man I once craved. A man who held me spellbound on a sidewalk in Miami. He’s standing at the back of the room with the devil himself, his icy gray-blue oceans offering me a tidal surge of hope.
Are they here to rescue me?
I can’t breathe. I don’t dare.
The beats of anticipation stretch on and on… And then they strike.
The force of the first blast blows the windows clean out, rocking the foundations, swinging my cage violently and sending everyone else crashing to the floor. Three more blasts follow outside, causing devastation and confusion everywhere I look.
When the guns start firing, I crouch down as low as I can, flinching as stray bullets ricochet off my metal bars. Men dressed in black army gear rappel from the roof and into the gaping holes where the glass panes used to be.
I sift through the chaos, my eyes never leaving him once I find him, watching as he cuts down three men in his path like a warrior in a storybook. Like a white prince riding a black horse with bloody scars and torn colors. Another tries to knife him in the neck, but the guy’s head evaporates into a crimson void.
I can’t stand it any longer. Freedom is too close a friend for him to betray me now.
“Get me out of here!” I scream, kicking desperately at the locked door. It’s not shifting and panic overwhelms me. The last thing I want is to die in this cage.
I hear him yelling at me to stand back, but there’s nowhere for me to go. He aims his gun at the lock mechanism and fires anyway. The metal flies apart and I find myself tumbling into his warmth; my senses swathed in the strongest, safest scent. I can't let him go. I can’t. So I snake my body around him, legs linked around his waist, my nakedness pressed up against his clothes.
“Thank you so much.” I’m sobbing with relief as he carries me through the raging battlefield. He finds a side room, some kind of an office, and kicks the door shut. It’s a temporary shelter from the crying and the screaming, the bullet shells and the acrid tang of death in the air.
“Don’t thank me yet.” He settles me down on the top of a desk like I’m precious and fragile, but doesn't he know? There are no more parts of me left to crack. “You’ll be safe here. I’ll be back shortly.”
“Don’t leave me!” My hands won’t untie from his neck. Only his strength is keeping me breathing when everything else wants to lie down and die.
“I need to help the other girls, Anna,” he says, but I feel his reluctance.
Horror filters through me. There are six others out there, bleeding and frantic.
“Oh my God, yes. Go!” My arms slither free, and I swipe my fingers across my face to catch my tears.
But he doesn’t leave right away. There’s a pregnant beat as he stands there, looking down at me, securing me in a new cage with his chilly gaze.
Who is this illogicality? He’s a killer and a savior. A soldier to another, and a betrayer to all the evil I assumed he was.
I haven’t felt shame in so long, but I can feel her creeping over my face again. I’m naked and filthy and—
“Here.” He shrugs out of his black jacket and hangs it around my shoulders. More strength. More warmth. Keep on breathing, Anna.
“Thank you,” I croak, pulling it tighter around my body.
“Are you hurt?” He leans down to touch my shoulder and I flinch away. I’m hurt in ways I can’t even calculate yet. He frowns. “I’m coming back for you, okay?”
“How did you find me?”
“Let’s get out of here first.”
I watch him close the door behind him, and then suddenly he’s re-appearing again. It’s the first time I’ll experience dissociative amnesia as a coping mechanism.
A few days later, I won’t remember anything about this night or this conversation, until the same man who saved me heals me whole again.
“Can you walk?” He crouches down to assess my injuries. My cuts and bruises weave a tale of abuse, but the dried blood on the inside of my thighs tells of a much darker story. I meet his eyes and an unspoken tragedy passes between us.
“I–I’m not so sure,” I stutter.
“I need to shoot. I can't do that with you in my arms.”
I nod again, slow and hesitant. I can't seem to take anything in. My brain is shaking as hard as the rest of me, making everything loose and unreal.
“Stay close to me,” he says, cupping my cheeks with his hands, absorbing my flinch; refusing to let me go anyway. “I won’t let them touch you again.”
“Are you my moon?” The words fly from my mouth in a tangle of hope and desperation. Is he the one to guide me home?
There’s a pause. “No, sweetheart. You’re your own moon.”
“But I can't find her! I can’t find her!” My voice rises hysterically. “My sky is all black. I don’t know how to fix me!”
“One day at a time, sweetheart.” His grip tightens on my face. “You and I are goddamn survivors, Anna. You hear me?”
“I can't do it on my own. Find me, Joseph Grayson,” I beg him. “When all of this is over… Help me put the pieces back together again.”
“I will find you again, Anna. I will protect you until you’re strong enough to protect yourself.”
“How will I know?” I say, crying softly, needing his reassurance like air and water. “How will I know you’ll keep your word?”
There’s a pause. “Because I will hang my promise around my neck for all to see, my Luna girl. I will hang it there to remind you of just how fucking committed I am to it. And when you see it, and you want to take it, I’ll be here waiting for you to fucking claim it.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Okay,” he says, pulling out his gun.
There’s a twister blowing up inside of him as he takes my hand and leads me from the room. It’s a storm that’s binding us together. It’s a blizzard to blow all of our pain away. It’s something that was set in motion long before there was a sidewalk, a stare and a red dress, but tonight?
Tonight, that twister is turning for me.
33
Joseph
The jet banks sharply and then rights itself for our final descent. The ocean is a strip of violent blue beneath us. Dante’s island is glinting like a not-too-distant jewel on the horizon, and Anna can’t seem to take her eyes off it.
“Holy shit,” she breathes. “Now I get why she married you, Santiago.”
His resultant glare is tossed across the aisle at her, but she returns it with a flick of her middle finger.
“Bad girl,” I murmur into her ear and she wriggles her ass against my dick as sweet punishment.
“A bad guy wouldn’t ha
ve any other,” she says, locking her arm around my neck and drowning me in her scent again. I steal a taste of her happiness in a kiss and feel a small hand toying with the rings on my chain. “Just tell me one thing. Did you buy them to prove a point, or are you actually intending to—?”
I shut her up with another kiss. “A shadow never shares his secrets,” I murmur, trapping her jaw between my fingers. The outlines of her bruises are still visible from the car accident in Colombia, but she’s never looked more alive. Beneath her skin is that emerging butterfly again, and I want to be present for every beat of those beautiful new wings. “Get back in your seat. We’re landing.” I tip her off my knee, but her river-deeps are still gleaming at me.
“Keep on turning, Joseph,” she says quietly. “Whatever happens, just keep on turning for me.”
I frown at her. “What—?”
This time it’s her who shuts me up, not with a kiss, but with the lightest touch of her finger to my mouth. “I don't know who you are or where you’ve come from,” she says, her eyes darting across my face in a way that makes me forget my own fucking name. “There are scars on your soul that may never heal. You’re a killer and a savage, and the secrets in your past scare me more than your trigger finger sometimes. But you showed me I had too much time running through my veins to stop all the clocks.”
I think of my brother in that moment. I think of sitting on straw bales the day the Texas sun set on his life. I remember him telling me I’d catch the right one when it came my way.
“Does this mean your pussy’s back on the menu later?” I shake off her finger and temper my crude words with a smirk.
“On the bed, against the wall… I’m not sure Eve will appreciate us fucking in her kitchen, though.” Her laughter breaks through her battle lines.
“Then we need our own kitchen someday.”
“Maybe we do.”
There’s a pause as she traces my jaw with her fingers. “You may have this big, frozen wall around your heart, Joseph Grayson, but it was still big enough to beat for the both of us when—”
“Oh, stop with the bullshit,” drawls a bored voice. “He’s just some lucky asshole who drinks all of my bourbon and aims a gun better than me.” Dante’s standing across the aisle, arms crossed, one eyebrow cocked in disdain. “When you two have finished sucking each other off, you might want to notice we’ve landed. My wife is waiting for me, and it’s been a while since my dick has enjoyed the same attention.”
“You still can't help yourself, can you, Santiago?” Anna glares at him as she unclips her belt. “Third time’s a charm, you know?” She waves her fist in his direction with a scowl.
“If it means not having to listen to you word vomit for hours on end, then go right ahead,” he responds dryly.
“What’s that?” I say, pointing to the iPad in his hand.
“New trouble,” he says, holding it out to me. “Roman Peters believes we have issues in New York again. Some Bratva piece of shit called Benni Morozov who’s not staying dead.”
“Want me to handle it?” I rise to my feet and scan my eyes over the email from the FBI special agent.
“We’ll monitor it. If needs be, I’ll let Sanders know.”
“And Colombia?”
“I’ve giving Viviana an army and a month to introduce the new Santiago cartel order. If she can’t fortify the distribution channels in that time, we’ll think again.”
I watch him exit the jet into Eve’s waiting arms, suppressing another smirk as he spins his wife around on the spot like a lovesick fool.
“Do you think Eve and I will ever be close again?” asks Anna anxiously, following my gaze. “We haven’t spoken in so long…”
“Don’t sweat it.” I draw her into my embrace, feeling her arms twist around my waist as she seeks out my reassurance. “Good friends always stay close, no matter what the fucking distance is.”
“True,” she whispers, placing her cheek against my chest. “But shadows stay even closer.”
Epilogue
One month later
It’s past midnight. The warehouses are deathly silent. The light rests on the surface of the water like a vengeance that never dies.
I’m tempted to dive in and disperse the worst of it. Then I remember what he’s done. What they’ve all done, and I resolve to leave the diving to those who still have a splash of morality left in this world.
I hear the car pulling up behind me, followed by the heavy slam of a door. The click clack of his metal cane shoots sparks off the concrete while I stand and wait for him. As he draws closer, I hear snatches of his labored breathing, courtesy of the lung surgery and the tracheostomy he required after the first three bullets hit the side of his face and chest. The subsequent two hit him in the thigh, crippling his walk indefinitely. He’s adapted to his new body, though. He’s grown in so many other ways.
“Viviana,” he greets gruffly, his accent still thick and generous, despite living these past two years in the healing environment of the sunshine state. “You did well, mi vida. You befriended the weakness, perverted it to your advantage, and now you’ve rooted yourself in the organization like a festering, weeping sore. I couldn’t be more proud of you if you’d killed them yourself.”
I turn to face him, recoiling slightly as I always do. The day they killed him, they let the monster on the inside climb out and obliterate his skin with scars.
But he didn’t die.
Not completely.
They left him in a lake of blood when they dived headfirst into the same stretch of water running alongside us. They never checked to see if he was striking a bargain with another devil in his stillness.
He bought his anonymity and freedom from a crooked system.
He paid handsomely to disappear back into the shadows.
And now he’s back to reap the revenge we both so richly deserve.
“First we unpick, and then we unravel,” he declares, cracking his cane against the concrete again to bolster the plan.
“Just give me the details.” I glance back at the water. “My flight to Leticia departs in four hours.”
“We eliminate their support networks, starting with their business associates, and then the wives and children. When they die, they will die alone and screaming out my name.” He cackles in amusement.
I used to laugh too, but after everything that’s happened in the last month, it’s a sound that’s resting on shifting sands now. My allegiance is being tested every day by a friendship that caught me unawares.
“Alberto Fernandez went too far with me in Colombia,” I tell him, my censure as subtle as his hate is palpable.
The cackling stops abruptly. “And he paid dearly for his folly. Maybe not by our hand, but still… Justice is close, mi vida. The Santiago Cartel is ours again. The partners are waiting for our signal. All our chess pieces are in place.”
I take one last look at the water, and then I’m turning back to him with a smile.
“Whatever you say…. Father.”
To be continued…..
Acknowledgments
To my husband and my two beautiful girls. So many sacrifices were made for me to be able to write this book, and I’ll be forever grateful. I’m leaving pieces of my heart and my soul inside all of my stories for you to find when I’m gone.
To Cora Kenborn. Where the heck have you been all my writing life?? Thank you, endlessly, for your guidance and love. There’s no one else I’d rather message at four in the morning (because sleep is for losers, right?) Special thanks to Eve Recinella as well for introducing us. Corrupt Gods have a couple of Corrupt Goddesses at the helm, and I can’t wait to get started.
Sammy Baker and Julia Lis. My beta besties. You rescued this book from the brink when I was all set to burn it. Thank you for your love and encouragement.
Ashley Allen. Thank you for hopping onboard the Santiago show and for keeping my chaotic life in order!
To my awesome street team. Still sharing. Still pimp
ing. Special thanks to Sally, Laura, Ruby, Bibi, Paula, Tania, Joy, Melissa and Crystal and all of my chief cheerleading squad.
Amanda Marie and Sheri Glaesman. Thank you for your excellent last minute (because it’s always last minute with me) editing and proof-reading skills. And thanks to Ginger for your awesome translation, not to mention all those lovely new Spanish curse words!
To all the book bloggers and bookstagrammers who are still taking a chance on a sort-of rookie. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
To Kathi G and your Dark Angels. It’s time to reiterate, once again, what a filthy and fabulous group you are! Every romance writer should have a couple of your angels dancing on their shoulders and cheering them on.
To Claire & Wendy at Bare Naked Words PR. Thank you for being so wonderful and supportive in every aspect of my life! #fuckcancer
To Maria at Steamy Designs. Thank you for taking on all my demands, not disowning me, and for weaving your magic!
And finally to the readers. You make every invasive scan, test and operation worth it. I’ll be writing these stories for you until they prise my laptop away from my lifeless fingers! Thank you for making all my dreams come true.
Catherine
P.S. Please consider leaving me a review on Goodreads and Amazon. I’d be so very grateful.
Devils & Dust
Prologue
Nina (Sixteen Years Ago)
Sad and fierce.
These are my two least favorite words…ever.
I’ve decided this with all the stubbornness of my six-year-old self as I trail behind my older sister, Tatiana, on our way to the park. They’ve been invading our home for two days now, ever since our mama died. I keep rolling them around my head like I’m choosing an outfit for my doll, and I still don't know which one to try on first. I guess I’m both sad and fierce about everything that’s happened.
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