The Vargas Cartel Trilogy: Books 1 - 3

by Lisa Cardiff

  “There’s a bathroom down the hall on the right. You need to be quiet and listen to everything I say. If you try to run or attack me, you won’t like the consequences.” His words were harsh, and the frozen mask of fury on his face told me he meant it.

  I nodded, unable and unwilling to form words of gratitude or anger. He restrained my hands behind my back with one hand. He placed his other hand around the front of my neck, warning me what would happen if I tried to resist or escape.

  I stumbled as he muscled me into a small, dark room and then flipped on the lights. The room had a toilet, a cabinet with a sink, a square mirror, and a small shower stall. Everything was white with concrete floors just like the room where Ryker held me captive.

  He pulled a robe from underneath the sink and draped it over a hook next to the shower. “You can shower and use the bathroom,” he said as he folded his arms across his chest, leaning against the door.

  I snatched the robe off the hook. “Are you staying?”

  “Can I trust you not to run?”

  “No,” I shot back before I contemplated the consequences of my answer. Dumbass.

  “Then I’ll wait here. Go ahead.” He nodded his head in the direction of the shower.

  “No,” I shouted. My heart seized with a sickening terror. I imagined his silvery eyes crawling over my naked body. Enough guilt and self-hatred already assaulted my conscience for having sex with him. I didn’t need any more.

  He rolled his eyes. “For fuck’s sake, Hattie, I have no interest in your naked body or touching any part of you. There’s no need to be modest.” His eyes danced with amusement like he found the whole situation hilarious, and it stung for too many reasons to contemplate.

  Asshole.

  Asshole.

  Asshole.

  Humiliation heated my cheekbones and quickly spread down my face to my neck. “Then, why’d you touch me last night?” My voice was so small and pathetic I wanted to shrink into nothingness and disappear. His words plunged into my heart like an invisible spear. Logically, why he fucked me wasn’t important. It happened. Given the chance, I’d rewind history. Regrets were a waste of time and brainpower. Unfortunately, my emotional mind snubbed my rational mind.

  His eyebrows lifted, his eyes void of all emotion once again. “It was my job to procure you by any means necessary. You were open to sex, so that’s the tool I used.” He crossed his ankles and the corners of his mouth twitched. “It worked.”

  My mouth opened and then closed quickly as my mind spun in circles. I pinched the bridge of my nose trying to find balance and calm. I took a deep breath, and resignation settled into my bones. I wanted to be clean and wash every ounce of him from my body. Then, I’d regroup and figure out how to sneak away from him. “Fine,” I whispered, turning my back to him and pulling the tattered remains of my dress over my head. I crumbled it into a ball and tossed it in the trashcan next to the sink. At least the tiny shower stall had a curtain rather than glass.

  I stepped into the shower and turned it on full force. Ice-cold water ran down my skin and I gasped. Numb with defeat, I didn’t care. I stood there with my eyes closed, frozen and shivering under the stream of water until the temperature adjusted.

  I didn’t know how much time had passed when the shower curtain scraped across the rusted metal bar. I flinched, but kept my eyes closed choosing to ignore reality. Ryker pulled my body toward the opening. “Don’t.”

  “I’m going to wash you.”

  “No.” My eyes popped open, and I ripped the bar of soap out of his hands. “I don’t want you to touch me.”

  “Fine.” His face impassive, his voice bland, he drew the shower curtain closed. “Do it yourself, but be quick because you only have two more minutes. I’m done playing games with you. I have shit to do today that doesn’t involve pampering a worthless socialite.”

  My hand contracted around the soap so hard I thought it’d crumble, and at that moment I made myself a promise. I’d eat. I’d drink. I’d tell him and anyone else what they wanted to hear. I’d learn his vulnerabilities. I’d be totally compliant, but the minute Ryker’s watchfulness faltered, I’d fucking run and I’d be free. I didn’t brush up against the masters of manipulation my entire life without learning more than I’d ever wanted to know about survival and deceit.

  Chapter Eight

  “Here’s where you’ll live for the next few weeks.” Ryker threw open a white steel door.

  I tightened the belt on my robe as my eyes scanned the room. No window. White walls. Narrow bed. White coverlet. White linens. Painted white concrete floors. I always liked the perceived elegance and simplicity of white, but right then I promised myself a life full of color when I escaped. Not if, but when, because there wasn’t an alternative. I refused to die at the age of twenty-four in the middle of nowhere before I had the opportunity to do anything with my life. And when I got my life back, I wouldn’t cave to my parents’ demands or expectations…ever.

  “It’s like my private padded cell minus the padding,” I mumbled under my breath. If he heard me, he didn’t care.

  “Most of the items from your suitcase are on the shelves in the closet.” His arm waved in the direction of the door at the far end of the room.

  “Most?” I questioned, brushing my damp hair behind my ears.

  “I discarded anything that you might use to harm yourself or us.”

  “Us?” I glanced over my shoulder.

  “Yes.” He chuckled. “There are others.”

  “How flattering,” I mocked, flinging myself onto the narrow bed. Unfortunately, it was as hard as it looked and nearly knocked the air from my lungs when I landed. “An entire team of deranged assholes all dedicated to restraining a hundred and fifteen pound woman.”

  “Someone will bring you food within an hour.” He smirked. “It’s probably not what you’re used to, but I think you’ll you find it acceptable.”

  “I’ll be fine. I don’t care what I eat.”

  Ignoring the plastic chair in the corner, he reclined on the edge of my bed, his long muscular legs stretching out in from of him. I wished he would move. Up close, he was just as mesmerizing as the first time my eyes connected with his last night. I didn’t want him to lull me into a false sense of security.

  “So who do you think will come to your rescue? Your dad or your lover’s family?”

  My brow furrowed. “How do you know about Evan?”

  He shrugged. “I know a lot of things.”

  My body stiffened. “How?”

  His lips curled into a slow, unsettling, almost predatory smile. Vivid, heated images of his lips exploring mine flashed through my mind. Shame raced through my body. I jerked my head to the side, closing my eyes, trying to erase the image from my mind.

  He trailed his finger down the exposed flesh of my thigh. My stomach twisted in knots.

  “Do you think Evan would still want you if he knew you spread your legs for me?”

  I covered my face with my hands, but a rough-edged sob escaped my mouth. It didn’t matter what he said. I didn’t care.

  He peeled my hands from my face, tilting my chin, forcing me to look at him with his icy gray eyes. He leaned toward me, his body braced above mine. “Don’t look so stricken. Maybe he wouldn’t care.” One side of his mouth lifted. “He has some unusual tastes, but you don’t know that yet, do you? He usually goes elsewhere for those needs.”

  He said it to bait me. I wasn’t dumb. I realized that, but for some reason my mind wasn’t 100 percent sure he had lied. I knew Evan cheated. I saw it. He admitted to it and more, but maybe Evan held something back. Something darker. Something unforgivable.

  A tear rolled down my face, but not because I still loved Evan. I didn’t. I wasn’t sure I ever did, but Ryker had kicked me in the gut while I was down. “Given that we broke up weeks ago, what Evan likes is no longer relevant,” I said, my voice choked and shaky, instead of unconcerned and confident as I intended. I cleared my throat. “I will neve
r get back together with him. Never.”

  “Really? Are you sure about that?” He raised one eyebrow, his jaw clenched and his lips pressed into a tight line.

  I hit him hard in the middle of his chest with my palm, shoving him backward and out of my space. I searched his intense face, and then it hit me. He didn’t know I broke up with Evan. He wanted Evan to care, to be franticly searching for his lost love. Unbidden, a bitter laugh spilled from my mouth as tears rained down my face. One point for me. “You couldn’t have been watching me very closely if you missed that fact. Everyone knows I caught him cheating on me. I guess you don’t know as much as you think you do.”

  He stood up. “Hopefully he still cares enough to help you. Senator Deveron would be a useful ally. If not, you’ll only have one person to dissect the months of red tape to pardon my brother and secure your release. You might not make it that long.” He stalked toward the door.

  “Maybe your brother won’t either.”

  “I’m not worried. The U.S. government doesn’t torture its prisoners, especially a high profile one with useful connections and information.” He shrugged and glanced over his shoulder, his silver eyes glowing with a sinister light. “I can’t say the same about the Vargas Cartel.”

  My mind swirled as he slammed the door and locked it, cutting me off from the world. Not that there was much to see and explore outside my white prison cell, but I hated being alone. I hated silence more, and it appeared I’d have a heavy dose of both in the foreseeable future. The soft hum of silence reminded me of a lifetime of disapproval when I didn’t wear the right outfit, say the right thing, or eat the right food. From an early age, those all too frequent occasions always ended the same way…with me alone in my room contemplating how I would do better next time.

  As I opened the closet, I found a small stack of clothing. Dropping my robe on the floor, I pulled a dress over my head. I didn’t know much about the Vargas Cartel, just a few tidbits of information from my Latin American politics class.

  From what I recalled, they controlled the vast stretch of land from Nuevo Leon, which bordered Texas, all the way south to the Yucatan—which included my vacation destination. From all accounts, the Vargas Cartel had a distinguished record as drug traffickers, human traffickers, arms traffickers, highly efficient executors…and those were just the offenses I remembered off the top of my head. They were equal opportunity players, ruthlessly diving into anything that made money. According to some experts, their range of influence extended to the U.S.

  I sank down onto the floor next to the bed, dropping my head into my shaky hands. I was fucked. Of all the places in the world where Vera could have convinced me to go for Spring Break, she’d picked an area associated with the Vargas Cartel. Instead of taking a vacation to escape my nagging parents and Evan’s pathetic apologies, I had taken a vacation to the center of hell with little hope of escape.

  How would my dad get me out of this mess? Miles of red tape stood in the way of my release. Securing Rever Vargas’s release wouldn’t be easy either. My dad would have to call in every political favor in his arsenal and then some. The U.S. government rarely negotiated with criminal organizations and terrorists, which sounded like a good policy until it directly impacted me.

  Even if my dad succeeded, I still might not make it out of this mess alive. Every day I spent as a prisoner of the Vargas Cartel increased the chances that I’d learn too much and inadvertently sign my death warrant.

  Chapter Nine

  When I crawled into the small bed, I knew I’d never be able to fall asleep. Every inch of my body vibrated with anger. I wanted to tear apart the room and turn it upside down. My wrists, ankles, and head throbbed in unison. I should have begged for food when I had the chance. My stomach felt sunken and nauseous—a combination of too little food, too much alcohol, and the lingering effects of whatever Ryker injected into my neck.

  I heard a click at my door, and I shot up in bed. A man I didn’t recognize walked through the door carrying a tray of food. Without a word, he sat it on the edge of the bed. Unlike Ryker, he wasn’t tall. In fact, he was probably a good three inches shorter than me. He wore a white collared shirt and tan pants. He had dark hair and wide-set eyes, and black tattoos covering both of his arms.

  “I’m not hungry,” I shouted at him, despite the relentless growling and churning of my stomach.

  He cocked his head to the side but didn’t say anything.

  “How long do I have to stay in this room?”

  Again, he didn’t answer.

  Frustration boiled under my skin. I picked up the bottle of water on the tray and tossed at the wall, grazing the side of the man’s head. “Can’t you talk or is your silence part of the plan to torture me?”

  His lips drew back over his yellowed teeth, and he stalked toward me, his entire body rigid. He had an odd, jittery intensity that caused the hair on my arms to rise in protest. Confused, I took a few steps backward until my back hit the cold, cement wall. I lunged sideways, but his hand encircled the base of my throat, the pressure enough to restrict, but not sever the airflow to my lungs. His fingers bit into my skin.

  “I can hear you,” he barked through clenched teeth, a faint accent flavoring his words. “But I don’t give a fuck what you have to say or what you want. If it were up to me, you’d be dead, puta.” His breath smelled of onions and garlic, and I shifted my head to the side, but he snapped my head forward, forcing me to look at him.

  His pupils contracted to a black pinpoint, and the hand on my neck tightened until edges of my vision blurred. Woozy, I shook my head wildly from side to side as tears rolled freely down my cheeks. “I’m sorry. Let me go,” I said, but the words were garbled and meaningless to him.

  Desperately trying to free my neck from his grip, my fingers clawed at his hand without success. A harsh, sinister laugh erupted from his mouth, and he lifted a shiny, short blade in front of my face, twirling it back and forth, taunting me. Then, he trailed it down my cheek, along my neck to the hollow at the base of my throat. Even though he didn’t puncture my skin, my heart pounded so hard, I thought it’d rip through the walls of my chest.

  With soulless, vacant eyes, he sliced one strap of my sundress and then the other. His hand pressed even tighter around my neck, and I wondered if this was how I would die…at the hands of a nameless man, in a nondescript room, my body buried somewhere in the Yucatan jungle. With one final burst of effort, I tried to lift my leg to knee him in the balls, but the muscles in my legs refused to cooperate. They were boneless, collapsing under the weight of my body held up only by the press of his hand.

  Suddenly, the door flew opened so hard it rebounded and almost closed again. With gray eyes the color of thunderclouds, Ryker stalked through the door, his hands fisted at his sides, color staining his cheeks.

  One.

  Two.

  Three steps and he stood next to me, hovering over us like an avenging specter. Not wasting a second, he yanked the man’s hands from my neck. Like a lifeless doll, I collapsed to my knees, bracing my throbbing neck with my fingers and gasping for air.

  Ryker shoved the man into the wall, his hand fisted in the man’s shirt. “¿Qué mierda estás haciendo?”

  “Ella arrojó una botella hacia mi cabeza. Tienes suerte que no la maté,” the nameless man spat, his face the color of molten lava, his eyes flashing, and his hands fisted in the material of his tan pants.

  “No importa,” Ryker yelled, along with hundreds of other words I couldn’t begin to understand. He repeatedly slammed the stranger into the wall, punctuating each sentence or thought with the thud of flesh hitting cement.

  My mind swirled watching the exchange of rapid-fire Spanish. I took three years of Spanish in high school, and I recognized a few words, but not enough to decipher the conversation. I heard kill, head, and bottle, but the other words meant nothing.

  I should have screamed or ran. Instead, I sat unmoving as tremors ravaged my limbs, and air slowly refueled my
oxygen-deprived body.

  “Find someone else to babysit her,” the man screamed, switching to English as he flung his hand toward me.

  “Déjanos!” Ryker tossed the man toward the door by his shirt.

  The door to the bedroom slammed shut, echoing off the barren walls and concrete floors. Ryker turned his back to me, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jeans, and his head bent. Shouts in Spanish and loud crashes filtered through the heavy door.

  When the voices stopped, Ryker turned, crouching down in front of me. Breathing heavily, he grazed my neck with his fingertips. I recoiled, not wanting to be touched by him or anybody else. My hands shaking, I jammed my fist into my mouth, suddenly overwhelmed by the reality of my situation. A brutal cartel had drugged and abducted me. I’d be lucky if I walked away from this situation with my life, because I was starting to realize my only way out might be in a body bag.

  “Stop,” he whispered, his voice raw. “I need to check your injuries.”

  “I’m fine, not that you care.” I crab-walked backward, but I didn’t get far before the cold wall pressed into my back, trapping me.

  “No, you’re not fine, and your condition definitely matters,” he said gruffly as he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me from the ground. I kicked him. I elbowed him and pulled at his hair. Nothing worked. He restrained me with minimal effort. The hard planes of his chest were warm against the front of my body, and his heart drummed wildly against his ribcage, which seemed wrong. He should feel icy, cold, and inhuman, because he was. He was a criminal.

  Ryker dumped me on the bed. “What the hell?”

  Shit. Tears rushed down my face, mingling with the snot from my nose. If I could see myself I’d be horrified, but I didn’t have the luxury of caring about my appearance any longer. I just needed him to leave. I tried to shield my face from him, but he snatched my hands, pressing them into the rock hard mattress as his eyes surveyed every inch of my body. I closed my eyes, unable to witness his icy perusal as though I were an inanimate object.