“Or it could start a war.”
I never wanted war. War came to me.
I just chose the battleground.
Two footsteps shuffled in behind me, and even with the growing unease brewing in my stomach, I smirked. “What part of we’d talk after the wedding did you not understand, lieutenant?”
All movement stopped, and Brody let out a frustrated sigh. “Do you have eyes in the back of your head now?”
“You walk like you have lead in your shoes,” I snapped, taking a drink from my glass while my gaze settled on the cluster of snipers over the rim. “You couldn’t blindside the dead. It’s a miracle you’re still alive.”
“You could at least pretend to be happy. It’s a party.”
Still scanning the perimeter, I hummed my agreement around the glass. “Yes, one I just spent over a million dollars on, yet somehow I’m still forced to drink Rioja Grand Reserva instead of añejo tequila.”
I slid a sideways glance out of the corner of my eye, the barest hint of a smirk tugging at my mouth as Brody’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. My first lieutenant was no pussy. He’d proven his loyalty too many times for me to question which side of the moral line he stood on.
I just liked fucking with him.
Plus, reminding my men they were invaluable but not irreplaceable was simply good business practice. Whether that man was my new brother-in-law or an unranked street dealer, as the head of one of the most powerful cartels in the world, it was my job to never allow complacency to fuck us over. Predictability was a dangerous thorn.
Thorn.
Settling my gaze back on the strewn carnage of crushed flower petals, a familiar scent hit me. However, it wasn’t the sweet aroma of roses that lingered in the air. It was the metallic tang of blood.
Men like me didn’t forget the smell of it. It was sickeningly dry. A vile, pungent stench capable of smothering senses and stealing breath. A burn that, even long after it had dried, became a part of him, tainting his memories and driving his actions.
But this was different. Taking a deep breath, I tasted it on my tongue.
Salty.
Familiar.
Brody cleared his throat. “It’s after the wedding.” I remained silent, keeping my eyes forward, and my expression neutral as he expelled his frustrations in a low curse. “You said we’d talk after the wedding. Well, Adriana and I have said our vows and exchanged rings. The justice of the peace said some shit in Spanish, I poured thirteen gold coins in your sister’s hands, gave her a box, and then he announced us as Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt.”
Clenching my jaw, I met his stare. “That ‘shit in Spanish’ is called trece mondas de oro, and it’s my culture you pinche cabrón. Giving Adriana the box to keep the coins in symbolized your promise of equal wealth.” When he didn’t say anything, I rolled my eyes. “To give everything that is rightfully yours to her.”
“Hidden prenup, huh? Adriana left that part out.”
Shrugging, I downed the rest of my wine. “You fucking married her.”
I thought he’d let it go. I should have known better. The man spent most of his life arguing for a living.
“Regardless,” he pressed, gesturing around us. “We’re now at the reception. It’s after the wedding.”
“Dios mío, you don’t give up, do you?”
Lifting his own glass, Brody’s lips curled back in a smirk. “I married your sister, didn’t I?”
There was only one thing I hated more than losing and that was losing to Brody Harcourt. Very few men had the balls to talk back to me, and even fewer got away with it. A year ago, I might have retaliated to prove a point, but the man was family now.
Besides, the former prosecutor in him knew damn well he’d proven his case, so he didn’t bother following up with a closing argument. Instead, his eyes scanned the decorated grounds of my estate until they landed on their destination.
Adriana stood off to our right, poised and regal, greeting guests as they offered their congratulations. My sister played the game with pinpoint accuracy. Smiling graciously, she accepted gifts and kisses all while keeping her eye on her surroundings.
Falling in love didn’t blind Adriana to reality. In our world, intentions were rarely pure, and everyone had an agenda. Our allies may have earned an invitation, but it didn’t include our trust.
Brody stiffened as our newest New Orleans port ally wandered away only to be replaced by the source of his irritation: a woman dressed in an elegant white dress who had approached Adriana and placed her hand gently on her arm. Physically, she was as out of place in Mexico as my wife, but like Eden, her pale skin was just an illusion. Only a trained eye could see the invisible armor coating it with a deadly mix of vow, loyalty, and oath.
The two women engaged in what I assumed to be small talk, each of them no doubt keeping the pleasantries simple and mundane.
Brody raked a hand over his blond hair and let out a harsh breath. “What the hell is she saying?”
“Why do you care?”
He swiveled around, the muscles in his jaw twitching with restrained anger. “That’s Eve Santiago.”
“Correct.”
“The wife of Dante Santiago.” When I didn’t respond, he slammed his wineglass onto a nearby table and turned to face me, his eyes blazing. “You know, the asshole who strolled into Senado and shit all over your hospitality? Why the fuck is he still here?”
Why, indeed. If he were anyone else, I would’ve shot him in the face fifteen minutes ago and waltzed with my wife on top of his corpse. However, a man’s power didn’t lie in his steel; it rested in his restraint.
Tick-tock, motherfucker.
“Because it’s customary to cut the cake before firing a bullet.”
“I’m serious, Val. This bullshit silence stops now.”
Again, I said nothing.
Brody bared his teeth, frustration rolling off his tuxedo like a black fog. “Am I, or am I not your first lieutenant?”
“Is that a real question, or—?”
Taking a step forward, he lifted his finger and cut me off. “And as of an hour ago, am I not your brother-in-law?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then what the hell are—?”
Before he could say anything else, I grabbed that fucking finger he’d shoved in my face, and holding it low between us, bent it back until his eyes watered. “An hour ago, I walked in the room I share with my wife to find your face buried between my sister’s legs. Your rank in my cartel or the fact that you’re now family is inconsequential. If you ever interrupt me again, I’ll cut off your balls and stuff them in that goddamn box along with those coins. ¿Comprendes?”
“Yeah…” Brody grumbled.
I bent his finger even farther. “Try again.”
Sweat beaded his forehead, but like a true Carrera, he held my eye, gritting his teeth through the pain. “Yes, Val. I understand.” When I released my hold, he muttered under his breath, “Asshole.”
I’d ignore that. I was an asshole.
“Muy bien.” With curious eyes starting to turn our way, I dropped my hand by my side and stepped back. Brody busied himself with refilling his wineglass while I cataloged the whereabouts of our guests, my gaze darting away from the sight of the blood-red velvet wedding cake being served.
Fucking red.
“Santiago is testing my boundaries,” I confirmed without explanation. “You can’t seriously be surprised he stuck around to leave his stain all over your party.” I motioned my glass to where Joseph Grayson stood beside Rick Sanders. “Honestly, I’d be insulted if he didn’t. Surrounding himself with his shields in my presence proves he sees the Carreras as a threat.”
Brody mulled that around for a moment before shaking his head. “Having him here at the wedding wasn’t just about forging an alliance, was it?” To his credit, he kept his composure, an instinct that won him an explanation.
“At first? Yes. However, there’s a much bigger problem at stake, and wai
ting to solve it wasn’t a consideration.”
“Which is?”
“Santiago planned to take New York by force.” I paused, thinning my eyes at him. “Before Ava and Special Agent Peter Pan got the inside track on Ricci.”
“And you know this because…”
“Because I’m fucking Valentin Carrera, that’s why,” I growled. “Also because there’s a leak in his precious entourage.” Which happened to be one of the nameless few milling around like unwelcome ants. But Brody didn’t need to know that.
I had Cristiano to thank for that, and it was a bloody gift our temporary Colombian ally would receive upon his return to Santiago Island.
“So you’re using my wedding to your sister as ground zero to wine, dine, and fuck the enemy?”
I paused, reminding myself this man just put a ring on my sister’s finger in order to stop a knee-jerk reaction I knew I’d regret. “We’re not fucking the Santiagos,” I growled. “We’re distracting them.”
“What?” he asked, staring into his glass with similar disdain.
“The Feds are moving on Ricci in forty-eight hours.”
“So?”
“So, we move in twenty-four.”
Brody froze, the muscles in his forearms tightening as he glanced up at me in disbelief. “You’re kidding me, right?” When I didn’t answer, he cursed and slammed his glass down for the second time. “And you think Santiago is just going to sit back and let you piss your name on the streets of New York?”
I shrugged, not bothering to hide another grimace as I tossed back the last sip of the overpriced shitty red wine. “Santiago is flying to Monaco with his wife later tonight. Out of sight. Out of mind.”
“And you trust this leak?” he asked, steeling his expression as the lieutenant in him took over. “You’re moving in twenty-four hours? What makes you think Santiago didn’t come here to move in twelve?”
Because he’s a sadist, not a masochist, and he wants those contacts in Mexico too badly.
My eyes slid over to where Eden chatted quietly with Ava, two redheads seated on thrones of untold power. Trust. Of all the outsiders in attendance, the Miami Bratva queen held the most of mine, but that wasn’t saying a lot. Most of a crumb was still a crumb.
I didn’t believe in trust. I believed in actions.
“I have confidence in it.”
He tugged his bowtie loose while shaking his head. “I just think it’s a mistake to trust a man like Santiago to leave here quietly, Val. I’ve had a bad feeling all day.”
There was that word again—trust.
I wasn’t trusting him; I was using him. And if Santiago were half the legend I’d heard him to be, he was doing the same to me. The enemy of my enemy made for strange bedfellows.
While I had no intention of answering any more of Brody’s questions, he had no intention of relenting. Fortunately, as soon as he opened his mouth to offer another opinion, a flow of white material glided by me as my sister wrapped her hand around her new husband’s arm.
“It’s time for our first dance, Mr. Harcourt.”
War could have broken out all around us and Brody wouldn’t have noticed. His attention was firmly focused on Adriana, the face that scowled at me seconds ago, now melting into a lovesick smile. “I’m all yours, Mrs. Harcourt.”
They looked so happy, even the corner of my mouth started to turn up, so I shut that shit down fast with a hard roll of my eyes. “Dios mío, get a fucking room.”
Adriana laughed, flipping her middle finger at me while leading Brody away. “We did. Yours.”
“You’re disinherited!” I shouted, Adriana’s throaty laughter getting louder before fading away. Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off that damn red shawl she still had wrapped around her. An irrational part of me wanted to run after her and rip it to shreds.
But that was crazy.
It was just a shawl.
It was just wine.
And they were just petals.
They meant nothing.
As Brody and Adriana climbed onto the elevated dance floor, I forced the thoughts out of my head. I was serious when I told her I never thought I’d live to see this day, and I’d be damned if I’d allow my own paranoia to ruin it.
So, I watched one of the highest-ranking men in my cartel take my only sister in one arm and hold her hand in the other like it was his only lifeline.
He didn’t see dripping petals or warning shawls.
He saw his wife. His future. His entire world.
And with those three phrases, my gaze swung to my left where Eden still stood talking intently with Ava, her long bright red hair piled on top of her head and secured with dark red pins.
No, not pins.
Roses.
Red roses.
The dark petals splashed across her head in a dripping waterfall of red. They matched the red of her dress, flowing around her swollen belly. They matched her crimson-stained lips.
She was covered in red.
That gnawing sensation returned, and this time it brought an unease so heavy, my hand automatically reached under my tuxedo jacket for my gun. As music played in the background and the happy couple danced, lines blurred, blending the past and present into one indistinguishable memory.
With the cold metal searing into my palm, memories I hadn’t allowed outside a secured space in my mind broke free. Time spun backward, and that metallic smell burned my nose again as I grasped my chest.
Bending down, I traced a smear of blood that beaded on the cold tile floor. Somehow, I knew it was hers. Rubbing it between my fingers I brought my index finger to the left side of my white button-down shirt and drew an “x” over the muscle. Glancing down, the red from my fingers soaked into the white thread, staining the tiny lines a deep crimson color.
X marks the spot.
Cross my heart and hope to die.
Imprinted in blood.
Eden Lachey had branded her name on my heart and her soul in my blood for the rest of my life. However long that life lasted depended on the shape I found her in.
Red.
I remembered how dark her blood had been.
It was the night Manuel Muñoz took Eden from me. He’d wanted both of us dead and didn’t care who went first. I knew all day something had been wrong. For the second time in my life, I’d felt I was about to lose everything.
Something inside me told me I never should have brought her to Mexico that day.
Something inside me warned me not to leave her alone at my father’s estate.
Something inside me knew I’d find red.
Red. Red. Red. Red. Red.
“Cereza!” Her name barely made it past my lips when the world detonated in a simultaneous explosion of red, white, and black. Screams so loud they sounded like applause pierced my ears as the ground shook in violent anger. As another blast hit a fiery crescendo, a searing burn tore through what was left of my soul, sending sparks of hell and tattered pieces of my humanity raining down, along with the final curtain.
Chapter Thirteen
Valentin
Red, white, and black weren’t just colors. They were a sequence of events.
Before I could climb to my feet, there was another blinding flash, and then two more massive balls of fire belched upward, leaving geysers of white-hot ash spewing into the night sky like incandescent road flares.
What the fuck just happened?
Climbing to my feet, I surveyed the destruction, fighting against the roaring hum still echoing in my ears. It looked like a war zone. Tables were strewn about and knocked over onto their sides, red canopies lay broken and twisted across the lawn, and the one thing that kept looping through my head as stunned wedding guests rose from the ground one by one was that the music had stopped.
Someone had just tried to blow up my estate, and I was concerned it burned in silence instead of to the Nero’esque tune of a string quartet.
For a moment, I wondered if I’d taken a hit to the head, but then the
wind whispered her name, and it all came slamming back in a wall of panic and fucking red.
Eden.
Before the blast I was going to find her. No! I needed to find her. Shit, where was she?
“Where the fuck are my guards?” I yelled, frantically searching through the unraveling chaos to find her familiar shock of cherry red hair, but it was nowhere to be found. My mouth formed her name silently at first as my gaze swung toward the stage, my heart seizing in my chest as I saw Brody on his knees, cradling Adriana’s face. It wasn’t until I watched him press his forehead to hers that I let out the breath I’d been holding. She’s safe.
But then I called Eden’s name again, louder this time. Then louder. Then louder. Until I was shouting, fucking roaring it. But there was no answer, and the louder I yelled, the more twisted the voice of truth became.
“You should never underestimate a man like Dante Santiago, Val. He’d burn down a forest before he’d let anyone steal his shade.”
“You’re moving in twenty-four hours? What makes you think Santiago didn’t come here to move in twelve?”
Grabbing a splintered table, I hurled it across the courtyard, roaring out my bitter resentment.
He did this. Fucking Santiago. I planned a backdoor blindside, but Mateo was right. He didn’t come here oblivious to it. He came here armed with his own.
“Eve!” roared a familiar voice behind me, causing my shoulders to stiffen and my fists to curl into my palms. Traces of the sharp-edged amusement from earlier had broken into cracked desperation that mirrored my own. I slowed my steps as he repeated the same strained word over and over. Eve. Eve. Eve. Eve. “Where the fuck are you?”
Acting on rage and adrenaline, I spun around and wrapped my hand around his throat. Kill. The word blotted my mind in thick layers of black rage as I squeezed harder, something inhuman inside me taking over.
“You son of a bitch! What have you done?”
Darkness exploded in Santiago’s eyes. Clamping one hand around my wrist, he prevented me from strangling him by grabbing my bow tie and twisting hard enough to cut off my own oxygen supply. “You think I’d sacrifice my own? With Eve here? This is on you, Carrera, and your shitty security setup. You better pray to God or the fucking devil that Eve doesn’t have a scratch on her.”
Carrera Cartel: The Collection Page 103