“Texas,” I stuttered, my voice breaking. “Houston.”
“Are you married?”
I shook my head, unable to take my eyes off his.
His voice got eerily calm. Like the serenity of a clear sky seconds before a tornado touched down. “Who are you fucking?”
My mouth gaped open. “I’m not answering that!”
“Who are you fucking, Eden?” he roared, his eyes blazing. “Don’t make me ask you twice. You won’t like what happens.”
I believed him. “Brody. His name is Brody, but it’s not serious, so please...whoever you are, leave him alone.”
The man let out a bestial roar that brought tears to my eyes—out of fear, but also out of confusion. My heart hurt to see him like this. A man I didn’t know. A man who frightened me to my core. A man I knew in my soul was a dangerous criminal.
But something inside me also broke for him. And I cried because I didn’t know why.
“Please,” I whispered. “I don’t know what happened or why I’m here, but I just want to go home. I just want my brother.”
His body turned to stone. “You want who?”
“My brother, “I repeated, because fuck, what did I have to lose now? “We don’t have much, but he’ll pay you whatever you want. His name is Nash Lachey.”
I had no idea what to expect from him. My brain told me to shut up. It warned that this man could kill me as soon as look at me. But I couldn’t stop talking. Something drew me to him. It was like some unknown jagged piece inside me fit perfectly with a jagged piece I knew dwelled within him.
It was crazy. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe this was all a dream, or maybe I was already dead. But if not… If this was real, I couldn’t ignore it. Even if it killed me.
“I trust you.”
A callous smirk slowly curved across his mouth. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” I rasped. “But I do. I can’t explain it, but I trust you to do the right thing.”
“The right thing.” His low chuckle sent shivers down my spine. “Well, let me tell you a little secret, Eden Lachey…” The closer he got, the more my heart sank. “I’ve never done the right thing. But you’re correct about one thing. You do trust me. And you gave me that trust even after I stole you away from Houston, Brody, and Nash.”
I was going to be sick.
“You trusted me when I chained you to a metal bed in a dirty stash house. You trusted me when I set you free, and you trusted me when you followed me to Mexico. Three years ago.”
“No…”
“You want to know who I am?” he snarled. “I’m Valentin Carrera, your husband.”
That name. I knew that name.
Carrera. Carrera. Carrera.
Then it hit like a punch to the gut. He was the son of the Mexican cartel drug lord? Oh God, no. No, no, no, no.
“And you’re my wife. My equal. My Cereza. We have two children together, Santiago and Lola.”
The tears flowed like rain now, trickling down the sides of my face like an unholy baptism. In response, this man, this monster, took my mouth in another demanding kiss, and God help me, as weak as I was, with sirens blaring, and the concrete block slowly suffocating me, I responded. My body betrayed me, and I kissed him back.
Why? Why, why, why did I do that?
Groaning, he cradled my face, taking from me one last time before pulling away. The gold glitter in his eyes, I now knew came from the devil himself, captured me and held me prisoner as he made his vow. “I remember everything about our life together, and someday, Eden Carrera, if it’s the last goddamn thing I do, so will you.”
Chapter Twenty
Valentin
“No more! Kérem! Please, I’ll tell you everything.”
What a weak little bitch. I’d barely gotten started. Four cigar burns, two fingers, and a slice across the Achilles tendon, and this fucker was already tapping out.
We were in what had quickly become one of my favorite places—the Carrera Kitchen. It was a dark, dank hole in the wall on the outskirts of Mexico City, far away from my wife and children. It reeked of blood and death, a perfume I greedily inhaled like the freshest air. Inside, the walls were decorated with every horrific torture device a sadistic mind could dream up: knives, guns, pickaxes, clamps, power drills, blowtorches, vices, and a few good old-fashioned hammers.
It had become a sanctuary for me. A place I went to escape the life I used to covet. One I sought out to release the demon that had consumed every shred of morality I once possessed.
Because Eden was my morality.
And now Eden...Well, who knew where the hell she was these days. Most of the time she stayed locked in her room with her face shoved in her phone. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what the hell she was searching on the internet, a suspicion confirmed when one of my hackers tapped into her browsing history.
Valentin Carrera.
Carrera Cartel.
El Muerte.
Eden Lachey kidnapping.
Lachey family murders.
The list went on. Three weeks after regaining consciousness, she still didn’t remember our life together, but she sure as hell could do a book report on all my sins.
The woman I married may still be locked somewhere in Eden’s mind, but unfortunately for Lajos Dalca, his ass was right here tied to a rickety chair. An unfortunate stop through Mexico’s own demented version of Hell’s Kitchen was the price he now paid for being one of the last remaining sons of bitches to try and smuggle young women through my territory. Even if Ava hadn’t offered a nice payout for his head, I would’ve carved up this motherfucker for free.
“It’s a little too late for that, Laj.” Spinning the blade in my hand, I allowed a vicious smile to crawl across my face before catching it mid-twirl. “I already gave you two chances to give up names and you pissed them away. Now, I’m afraid things have to get serious.”
I didn’t offer another opportunity for him to plead his case before sinking the blade straight into his right eye. The Romanian trafficker let out a scream so loud it fucking hurt my ears. Which luckily only lasted a few seconds before he was choking on his own blood.
Head wounds were messy motherfuckers.
My hand tightened around the blade as the memory of opening Dante Santiago’s “gift” flashed through my mind. Rafael’s decapitated head. He expected an immediate retaliation, but that proved he knew nothing about me. I loathed predictability.
I waited until that asshole got nice and comfortable in New York. Then I sent him a housewarming present.
One of his men’s hearts gift wrapped with his own intestines.
Once he sent that fucker across the border to check on his “investment,” I smelled blood and followed it straight to Red Hook Terminal. After all, I did own New Jersey.
“Calm down, pinche cabrón. It’s not like I pushed hard enough to hit that useless brain of yours.” I held out my palm and without asking, a brand-new knife appeared in it. “Gracias, Mateo,” I added before popping the blade.
Lajos’s eyes, well, now eye widened, and he tried squealing through mouthfuls of blood, succeeding only in spraying it all over my crisp white shirt. As I glanced down, a rage rumbled in my gut. It started as a curse and ended as a roar so loud even Mateo took a step back.
“You stupid motherfucker!” Grabbing him by the neck, I squeezed so hard I wouldn’t be surprised if the knife came flying out of his face. “My wife bought me this shirt.”
“Oh shit,” Mateo mumbled under his breath.
“You were always going to die, Lajos, but it was at least going to be mildly entertaining. But now,” I glanced down again at the dark stains, my blood boiling. “Now, you’re going to really wish you hadn’t done that.”
Every man who sat in that chair met his end with my name on his lips. Some I killed quickly, and some, like our friend, Lajos, I took my time inflicting as much pain as humanly possible. Not only in the name of the thousands of women and children he abducted, raped, and sold to s
laughter, but in the name of my wife.
In the name of honor and vengeance.
And in my mind’s eye, every screaming face that met my wrath looked like Dante Santiago—seconds before I cut it off.
“Val…”
“Knives,” I said, ignoring him.
Mateo cleared his throat. “Val, don’t you think…”
I wasn’t in the mood for this bullshit. My body hissed for blood, and at the moment, I didn’t care whose body it spilled from. “I said knives!”
Without another word, Mateo disappeared across the room, returning with four more knives identical to the one lodged in Lajos’s eye. Turning toward the screaming man, I held one up in each hand, a sadistic smile pulling across my face.
“Now let’s have some fun, shall we?”
* * *
Eleven weeks.
That was how long I’d lived with a stranger. How long I’d walked on eggshells in my own house. How long I’d slept alone in a bed I once shared with the woman who now slept in a guest room down the hall.
I thought my life ended when I walked out of that hospital without Eden. Fuck being shot, fuck having a vital organ ripped out of my body, I knew that was it. There couldn’t be a more excruciating pain than being told your heart—the only shield keeping a dark prophecy from devouring your soul—would probably never regain consciousness.
Machines kept her alive. Machines kept her heart beating and her chest rising. For six goddamn months, they tried to make me accept their truth.
She’s gone. There’s nothing there. She wouldn’t want this. Let her go.
Well, fuck what they wanted. Fuck what they thought she wanted. And fuck what anyone who didn’t care what I wanted.
Eden Lachey stood in the courtyard of our estate with the wind blowing her wild red hair across her face and made a promise to me. And when I took her hand and slipped that ring on her finger, I made one back.
I, Valentin, love you, Eden, as a wife, and I give myself to you. I promise to be faithful to you in joys and sorrows, in health and illness, every day of my life.
In joys and sorrows, in health and illness.
I fucking promised.
It was something I didn’t take lightly. Nothing was guaranteed in life, but in cartel life, the best a man could give was his word that he’d fight. Born to fight, and raised to fight, any narco worth his steel would die fighting.
But on that day, I promised.
I’d only made one other promise in my life, and I failed to honor it.
“Valentin! Be a fireman, Valentin! Do as I say! Five alarm fire! Be a fireman now!”
My nod was my promise, and I saw the relief in her eyes. A fireman was a hero. He risked his own life to save the lives of others. My mother spoke to me in words a six-year-old boy would understand. Be a fireman now! She needed a fireman to run and get help, and instead, I hid in the cellar like a coward while she bled to death on our kitchen floor.
So I didn’t care what they thought Eden would want. I made my wife a promise on our wedding day, and until that steady goddamn beep flatlined on its own, I swore I’d keep it.
And I did.
Against everyone’s judgment, I brought my wife home. I converted the entire west wing of the newly renovated estate into a sterilized hospital ward. I staffed the best doctors and nurses money could buy and kept them on a twenty-four-hour rotating schedule. I hired physical therapists to keep her body healthy and brought in world-class musicians to play for her.
For twenty-four weeks, I comforted our son as he cried for his mother. For twenty-four weeks, I got up in the middle of the night and fed our daughter. For twenty-four weeks, I visited the west wing and kissed my wife—one cheek good morning and the other cheek good night. And in between those hours, I beat the living hell out of my men in the downstairs gym and expended any other residual energy doing unspeakable things in the Carrera Kitchen.
But then a miracle happened.
After six months of sleep, my wife opened her eyes.
Only nothing changed. I still held my son while he cried for the mother who didn’t know him. I still woke every night to feed the daughter who caused my wife to shake in fear when she was asked to hold her. And those kisses every morning and night were politely rejected.
And for eleven weeks, those same people tried to make me accept a new truth.
She’s gone through enough. Don’t push. She’ll come around, eventually. Give her time.
Well, eventually wasn’t good enough. Eleven weeks of silent dinners and cold showers tested the most patient of men.
That was why on the twelfth week, everything changed.
Chapter Twenty-One
Valentin
El Muerte had risen.
My father’s prophecy had come to fruition. Without my talisman by my side, the curse he placed on a sixteen-year-old boy who put a bullet in an innocent man’s head consumed me.
The Reaper was no longer just a name used by headline-seeking journalists looking to capitalize on the fear of American citizens. It was now a hunger that dwelled within me. It growled its demands the moment I awoke, and I obeyed, feeding its insatiable appetite for destruction until my head hit the pillow.
El Muerte’s hands were merciless, dripping with the blood of so many nameless men, they’d become scarred from the incessant torture. They were the hands of a monster. The touch of the devil himself.
The man I’d become was so vile even those closest to me kept their distance. My sister and her husband ran US operations from our base in Houston, rarely crossing the border. Updates were short and to the point and never accompanied by small talk. Even the central ring of my inner circle, my second-in-command, stopped questioning my increasingly excessive brutality in the Kitchen after finding himself up against a wall with a meat cleaver to his throat.
However, even with all of El Muerte’s wrath and hate inside me, there were two people who always overpowered him. Two opposing forces radiating such innocence and light, it compelled him back into the shadows.
My children.
It was late. Too late for them to be awake, yet as I stood at the top of the stairs, I heard laughter. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, letting the carefree sound fill my lungs and soak my blackened soul. As always, it dulled the roar, layering a false peace around it that I greedily took. I didn’t know why Luisa had them up at this hour, but I wouldn’t punish her for it.
Ten minutes.
Ten minutes of redemption and then I’d leave them in peace.
But when I made my way down the hall and stood in front of my son’s open bedroom door, it wasn’t the nanny I saw on the floor with a book in her hand. It wasn’t the nanny my two and a half-year-old son sat leaned up against, enraptured and content. And it wasn’t the nanny’s arms that my nine-month-old daughter snuggled into, clapping and laughing with a bright smile on her face.
“Again, mamá!”
Eden laughed. “I’ve already read this story three times, Santi.”
I rolled my eyes. Rookie move. She might as well have been talking to the wall. She of all people should know that reasoning with Carrera men was a fruitless endeavor.
My good mood faded.
No, I suppose she wouldn’t.
As expected, my son refused to accept defeat. “Again.”
That secret smile tugged across her mouth. The one she always knew drove me crazy and did it anyway. “What do you think, Lola?” she asked, squinting down at the squealing baby in her arms. “Are you up for round four?”
Lola’s answer was a wet raspberry right across her face.
“Yucky, Yoya!” Santi glared at his sister and wiped his cheek. Pursing and twisting his lips, he wrinkled his nose as a deep vertical line sank between his dark eyes.
I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Physically, my boy was all Carrera, but that look had his mother written all over it. Not a soul on Earth could give a patronizing glare quite like Eden Lachey.
Or appa
rently, Santiago Carrera.
“Oh, you’re one to talk,” Eden snorted, reaching around his back to tickle his ribs. He fell to the floor in a mass of giggles and protests as she continued her assault. “You were the raspberry king, mijo!”
I laughed.
Until I didn’t.
He was. Santiago’s favorite pastime as a baby was blowing raspberries and sucking on his mother’s neck. Eden spent the first year of his life sporting so many hickies the staff started whispering.
And she called him mijo. She’d called him that since the day he was born.
She remembered.
For the first time in nearly three months, a fire lit inside me. Call it a spark of hope, but it was something other than all this nothing I’d lived with. My hands itched to touch her. My feet ached to step into the room and join them. And my fucking heart—that charred piece of shit in my chest I thought had withered away—ticked for the first time since hers had stopped.
As I stood there arguing with myself on whether or not to intrude, my son, given a reprieve, sat up and looked me dead in the eye.
“Papá!”
Shit!
It was as if someone flipped a light switch. Eden’s spine stiffened, and the cheerful mood in the room plummeted.
I had two choices. I could force her hand or walk away. And I’d done enough walking away.
Gritting my teeth, I walked into the room, ignoring how every step caused her to flinch. “Hola, son. Having fun?”
He nodded vigorously. “Mamá weed ‘towy.”
“Is that right?” I lowered a penetrating stare at her. “Well, I’m always up for a good story.”
And not just the one written on the pages. If Santi wanted a story, I had one that would blow Goodnight fucking Moon out of the water. It starred a sarcastic red-haired queen and the evil king who held her prisoner in his castle until she came to her fucking senses.
Eden kept her eyes averted, but I didn’t have to look at them to know the truth. I felt it and so did she. The connection between us wasn’t just physical. It was a living, breathing entity that could consume a whole room and raze an entire continent. It survived distance and defied death.
Carrera Cartel: The Collection Page 108