The Muscle Part Two

by Michelle St. James

  You shouldn’t have had a drink with a room full of men, punta.

  You know you liked it.

  I saw the way you looked at Juan…

  By saying them, Diego seemed to make these things true, and Isabel had spent the last year wondering if maybe he was right. Maybe she deserved what had happened to her. Maybe she’d even asked for it.

  But she knew now that it was just another one of Diego’s lies. Just another way to keep her under his thumb. She had been drugged. Raped. Violated further by Diego’s video of the assault. There was a kind of relief in the knowledge. At least it wasn’t her fault. It was liberating, and it made her want to fight harder for the life she knew she and Sofia deserved.

  “Have you heard any more about the new guards?” Isabel asked, looking out over the water. A woman stood in the shallow surf with a toddler, lifting the baby into the air every time a little wave rolled in. Isabel could hear the child giggle even from up on the beach. “About your friend, Marco?”

  “Not yet,” Luca said. “Diego’s playing it close to the vest, and I’m keeping my contact with Marco to a minimum. But I know someone who will vouch for him when the time comes, and I sent him to the man who found me the job. If Diego has put the word out, Aldo will know, and he’ll send Marco.”

  “You won’t be able to let Diego know he’s a friend,” Isabel said. “That would make him an enemy of Diego’s.”

  “I know,” he said. “And you’ll have to act like he’s your enemy, too. Like any of the other guards.”

  That was most important of all, Isabel knew, because any friend of Isabel’s wasn’t only an enemy of Diego’s, but a target for his mercurial wrath.

  She smiled up at him. “Except you.”

  He leaned down, kissed her so they staggered a little in the sand, then steadied her with his big arm. “You weren’t crazy about me in the beginning,” he reminded her.

  She laughed. “I liked you more than I was willing to admit, even to myself.”

  His expression grew tender. “The feeling was mutual, sweetheart.”

  They kept walking, and Isabel leaned her head against his arm as the rhythm of the waves soothed her frantic thoughts. The rush of them speeding up the sand, the gentle withdrawal back into the sea. It was hypnotic, and she took a deep breath and said what was on her mind.

  “We can’t do this forever. Diego is up to something, and whatever it is, we’re not going to like it when it plays out. He’s keeping you close for some reason when he has every reason to kick you out of the house — or worse.”

  Luca nodded, letting her take her time. She loved that about him. The way he always seemed to know when she was thinking out loud. The way he let her take as long as she needed to get her thoughts out, circling back to the point she was trying to make. Sometimes she even thought he knew what she wanted to say ahead of time. But he never said it for her. He waited patiently, letting her find the words in her own time and then acting like it was all new to him.

  “He’s not a good man,” Isabel continued. “I know it’s true. But I can’t have him killed. I’ve thought about it over and over again, and I just wouldn’t be able to live with myself. It would be a dishonor to the memory of my parents, and I’d never be able to look Sofia in the eye again knowing that I was the one who okayed Diego’s death. He’s our blood, for better or worse.”

  “I understand,” Luca said, kissing the top of her head.

  “The other thing — setting Diego up with Lorenzo Sanchez — is an option.” She laughed a little as Luca looked down at her in surprise. “You don't think I know about Lorenzo?” She continued without waiting for his answer. “I keep quiet, but I listen. I probably know as much about the business as Diego.”

  “That could be useful,” Luca said.

  “Maybe, but I also know enough to understand how conflict among rivals is resolved, and that makes it feel too much like an execution.” She paused, searching out the woman and child in the waves. She was carrying the toddler to shore, the child’s dark hair curling around its cherubic face like a little Botticelli angel. “I guess I could live with it if I had to, but it’s still not my first choice.”

  “I hear you,” Luca said. “And to be honest, it’s not my first choice either. Sanchez isn’t exactly a pussycat. We’re talking Columbian cartel. I’m not in a hurry to put you and Sofa on his radar.”

  She drew in a breath. “Which means there’s only one thing left.”

  He squeezed her hand. “We have to find the video.”

  She nodded. “We have to find the video.”

  8

  A week after his meeting with Farrell, Luca entered Diego’s office to find Marco sitting with two other men in front of Diego’s desk. He entered the room and gazed at his old friend dispassionately, careful not to register any kind of familiarity.

  “Ah, good,” Diego said, puffing on his cigar and not getting up. “Luca. These are our new guards, Eduardo, Marco, and John.”

  Luca nodded and held out his hand. He was relieved to see that Marco’s expression was entirely blank. Keeping him here — and alive — would rely on them maintaining the same relationship Luca would have with Eduardo and John, at least outwardly.

  “Luca is my head of security,” Diego said. “He will speak to you about your pay, the job requirements, and the rules of the house.”

  It was the first time Luca realized Diego kept all his guards under close watch. The other guards had lived on the premises under Hector’s leadership, but Luca had never been sure if it was optional. He’d planned to get his own place when he came to Miami. Then Diego had offered him a room in the house, and Luca had made the mistake of thinking it was temporary. Now they would all be under one roof, just as they’d been when Hector was in charge, and Luca couldn’t help feeling like a piece on Diego’s fucked up chess board.

  The trick was letting Diego believe he was a pawn, when Luca was in fact a knight.

  Diego went on about the house and potential threats — most arising from rivalries and other negative aspects of the drug trade. Luca used the opportunity to study the two new guards. They’d been hand-chosen by Diego, so Luca would have to assume they were well-versed in personal security. Eduardo looked very much like Hector, Robert, and Albert — big, beefy, some kind of Hispanic descent. He glanced at John, then tried to figure out why he seemed slightly familiar. Tall and fair haired, he didn’t fit the profile of the men Diego tended to hire, and when he spoke, Luca thought he caught the hint of an Irish accent. He wondered if maybe the guy had been connected to the Irish division of the Syndicate. Luca would have to keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t recognize him or Marco.

  “Luca will show you to your rooms,” Diego said, “and give you a tour of the house.”

  He stood, and the others followed suit, a king and his loyal subjects. Luca led them out of the room and gave them the same tour Robert had given him less than a month before. He wondered idly what had happened to Robert and the others. Had they been unceremoniously fired after the incident in the media room? And what about Hector? Had he faced an even more severe punishment after Luca beat the shit out of him? He couldn’t help hoping so. He wished Hector a slow and painful death for what he’d done to Isabel.

  He assigned Eduardo and John to patrol the property, putting them on rotating shifts that covered both the house and grounds. Like so many of the things Diego did, security was half-assed. No wonder Isabel had been able to sneak off on her own. Diego liked to put on a big show, but there were holes everywhere. The guy was too hopped up on coke and his own ego to realize he was his biggest liability.

  It would be easy to discount him as a threat. His attempts at security were uneven, his hold over his men due to fear and not respect. It wasn’t the way to lead. Luca knew that from his time with the Vitales, from working with Nico. You could keep people in line through fear for awhile, but eventually they’d turn on you, and when they did, they’d rip out your throat.

  But the dan
ger in Diego lay in his disorganization. He was surrounded by an aura of chaos and disorder so that it was impossible to know which Diego you were dealing with — the magnanimous leader or the coke-fueled five-year-old who was still pissed Daddy left all his money to his little sister. Sometimes Luca saw both of them within minutes of each other, and he found himself twitching for his weapon more often than he cared to admit, ready to take Diego down in spite of Isabel’s wishes if he went too far.

  Once he got Eduardo and John settled in their private quarters, he took Marco to Isabel’s room, keeping up a bored patter as they moved through the richly furnished halls. He told Marco all the things he would have told any new guard — about Isabel and the rules surrounding her ability to leave the house, about Sofia, about Isabel’s history of escaping the house’s security measures — just in case Diego overheard them.

  He was oddly relieved. He prided himself on his self-containment. Need no one and you have nothing to lose. That had always been his motto and it had always worked.

  Until now.

  He needed Isabel in ways he couldn’t yet define, and that made him vulnerable in a way he didn’t much like. He felt new empathy for Nico. The poor bastard had been hit hard with his feelings for Angel, and he’d risked — and lost — everything to prove it. Luca had half thought Nico was crazy at the time, and he had the sudden urge to contact his old friend and apologize.

  But there was no time for that. He would get Isabel out, and one day, he and Nico would talk about it over beers on a beach somewhere. In the meantime, Marco was here, and Elia was on the outside looking in. They were his brothers, and they would do whatever it took to help him save Isabel and Sofia.

  They got to Isabel’s door, and Luca knocked. “It’s me.”

  She opened the door, and her smile lit up his heart. It was just for him, that smile, and for a second he felt like the happiest man on earth. Then he remembered how easy it would be for Diego to take it away from him and he hurriedly moved into the room and shut the door behind Marco.

  “Isabel, this is Marco. He’s going to be your new bodyguard.”

  Luca would have preferred to keep the role himself, but this was part of Diego’s game, and Marco was the next best thing.

  She smiled, and held out her hand. “Nice to finally meet you.”

  “I’m assigning Marco to your personal detail,” Luca said softly. “He’ll take Sofia to school, take you to do errands — anything I would normally do — to avoid suspicion.”

  “You and I won’t be able to leave the house together at all?”

  He heard the panic in her voice and reached out to smooth her hair. “We just have to be careful.” He spoke quietly, wanting to be sure Diego wouldn’t be able to overhear. “I’m sure we can make it work now and then, but until we find the video, we need to play Diego’s game, let Marco act as your bodyguard.”

  Isabel nodded. “Whatever it takes.”

  “So what now?” Marco asked.

  “Now we find the video,” Luca said. He looked at Isabel. “Have you thought about where it might be?”

  “I think his study is our best bet,” she said. “It’s where he spends most of his time, and I know he locks his computer in one of the desk drawers when he’s not in there.”

  “How do you know?” Luca asked.

  She leveled her gaze at him, and he was reminded how strong she was. How strong and brave to have come so far with so much grace.

  “I know,” she said with certainty.

  He nodded. “The study it is then. Now we just have to figure out how to get access to it.”

  “Can’t we just search it when he’s not home?” Marco asked. “The guy’s a drug lord. I assume he has to leave the house at some point.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Luca said. “Unlike the bedrooms, the study has 24/7 video surveillance, and Diego hasn’t given me access to the surveillance room.”

  “Leave that to me,” Marco said. “I’ll dig around, see what I can find.”

  “Sounds good,” Luca said. “In the meantime, keep your head down. Diego is a loose cannon. There’s no telling what will set him off. And be careful with the other guys, too. One of them could be a plant to get everybody talking.”

  9

  “Come in, Isa,” Sofia called from the water.

  Isabel looked up from the chaise and shielded her eyes. She’d been in that pleasant state between wakefulness and sleep, her body warm from the sun, mind languidly thinking about Luca the night before. The way he touched her, a mixture of tenderness and urgency that somehow made her feel like he would do anything to have her even as she knew he’d never do anything to hurt her. He’d made her come with his mouth and his fingers, then twice more when he was inside her. She was still reeling from the pleasure he gave her. Still surprised by the way her body and soul could open to him, by the way she burned for him.

  “Come on!” Sofia prodded.

  Isabel sat up and draped her legs over the side of the chaise. “Okay,” she said. “I’m coming.”

  She walked across the patio to the pool, adjusting the bottoms on her tiny white bikini as she went. Sofia was old enough to swim on her own, but Isabel had long ago gotten into the habit of staying with her whenever she moved through the house. It’s not that Isabel was afraid for her little sister. Sofia was still young to become a victim of Diego’s twisted sense of game play.

  But Isabel wasn’t taking any chances.

  She slipped into the deep end and sunk to the bottom, then came up next to Sofia. They flipped onto their backs without speaking, continuing a well-established ritual by floating side by side as they held hands.

  “Isa?” Sofia asked.

  Isabel kept her eyes closed to the sun. “Yes, nena.”

  “Do you think it’s okay that we stay here?”

  Isabel turned her head a little and opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Diego is always mad,” Sofia said. “Always yelling and acting…”

  “Acting how?” Isabel asked, her heart thudding in her chest.

  “Acting crazy.”

  Isabel righted herself and started treading water while Sofia did the same. “You know how he is, Sofia. He gets himself worked up, that’s all. He wouldn’t hurt you.”

  She hated herself for saying it. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but she couldn’t promise that it was true, and that left her angry and frustrated by her own impotence.

  “What about you?” Sofia asked softly, her mouth dipping below the water after she spoke, beads of water dotting her upper lip.

  “What about me?” But she knew what Sofia was asking. She just needed more time to figure out how to answer.

  “Would he hurt you?” Sofia asked.

  Isabel forced a smile. “He’s just Diego. He likes to be a big man.” She glanced around the patio, wanting to make sure no one was around, then lowered her voice anyway. “Besides, we won’t be here forever.”

  “We won’t?”

  Isabel shook her head.

  “Where will we go?”

  “Where would you like to go?” Isabel asked.

  Sofia seemed to think about it. “California. Or maybe New York.”

  Isabel laughed. “California or New York? Those are two very different places.”

  “Well, in California we have sun, like here in Florida. Plus I could learn to surf.”

  Isabel smiled. “I didn’t know you wanted to learn to surf. We can do that here, too, you know.”

  “Yeah, but it seems like more of a California thing.”

  “Okay, so why New York?” Isabel asked.

  “We could go to the top of the Empire State building like that couple in the movie we watched.”

  She was talking about Sleepless in Seattle. They had watched it one night curled in Isabel’s bed, trying to block out the sound of Diego’s music, the laughter of the girl he was with, and later, his rage as he trashed stuff in his bedroom.

  “We could,” Isabel said. “And w
e could wear coats and boots in the winter, eat toasted nuts off street carts, walk through Central Park.”

  “And go to that toy store,” Isabel said. “The one with the big piano.”

  Isabel nodded. “We could do all of those things.”

  They treaded water in silence for a couple minutes.

  “Do you think we’ll get to do those things, Isa?”

  Isabel had to swallow around the lump in her throat, blink back the tears stinging her eyes. It wasn’t fair that Sofia wasn’t sure she would get to do those things. She was just a little girl. Everything should seem possible. And yet in spite of Isabel’s attempt to make thing normal for her little sister, Sofia knew instinctively that they were in danger, wondered even if she would have a chance to do and see all the things she wanted to do and see.

  Resolve hardened within her. This is not the life her sister would have. And it wasn’t the life she would have either. They both deserved better.

  “I do,” Isabel said. “I really do. But until then, want to race to the shallow end?”

  Sofia grinned. “Last one there has to do the dishes after dinner!”

  She disappeared under the water. Isabel gave her a couple seconds head start before following, her sister’s words ringing in her ears.

  Yes, Sofia. We will do all those things someday soon. I promise.

  10

  Luca buttoned his cuffs and pulled on his jacket on his way out of his room. His weapon was in its holster against his body. It gave him some comfort as he headed to the dining room for what Diego was calling a “welcome dinner” for the new guards. Luca had no idea what kind of welcome Diego had in mind, but being that he was Diego, he figured he better be prepared for anything.

  He was surprised to find Isabel and Sofia at the table, Marco sitting next to Isabel like the bulldog he was supposed to be. Luca had expected it to be men only, and his senses suddenly became more alert with the knowledge that Isabel and Sofia were in the room. John was there, too, and he and Luca exchanged a perfunctory greeting just before Eduardo stepped into the room on Diego’s heels.