The Bargain

by Lisa Cardiff

  “What does FEDI mean?” I asked Ryker.

  “Fuerzas Especiales de Ignacio, or Ignacio’s Special Forces.”

  I guess that explained why the town inhabitants hovered near the doors of their homes and businesses, gawking at the Vargas Cartel’s show of force. Regret twisted in my gut. I hated that I played a part in lying to these people, and in doing so, I had invited the Vargas Cartel into their small town. Who knows what sort of atrocities they had committed here? I’m sure the Vargas Cartel had victimized someone’s son, daughter, or husband. I didn’t know a lot about the Mexican drug wars, but I did know it had claimed thousands of innocent and not so innocent lives.

  I kept my head buried against my chest, avoiding the curious and accusing stares burning up every inch of my exposed skin. Ryker slipped into the front passenger seat of the first SUV. I reached for the door handle of the same vehicle.

  Ignacio snagged my wrist. “No. You’re driving with me.”

  My eyes darted to Ryker, but he slammed the door without acknowledging me. I swallowed back my fear of being alone with Ignacio, and I nodded.

  Guiding me down the uneven sidewalk, Ignacio opened the back door of the next vehicle and gestured for me to get in.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ignacio didn’t utter a single word for the first ten minutes of the drive back to the villa. Part of me should’ve appreciated his silence, but I knew he had something to say, and waiting for him to start talking rattled my nerves. If he wanted to yell at me, interrogate me, or hurt me, I wished he’d go ahead and do it.

  Turning my head toward the window, I watched the blurred landscape as the car ate up the distance. I concentrated on keeping my breathing even and my mind clear. Ignacio had ruled the Vargas Cartel for a long time. He knew exactly how to torture me without saying a word or lifting a finger. Waiting for his judgment tangled my nerves and transported me on a horror-filled journey of what-ifs.

  “I’m sorry I cut your neck. At the time I believed it was necessary, but I don’t like that it happened. I don’t like to hurt women.”

  I turned to face him so fast, I probably had whiplash. “What?” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I had a few theories about why he wanted me ride in the car with him, but an apology certainly wasn’t one of them.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I did it to make a point, but I should have found a different way to do it…one that didn’t involve physically harming you. Hurting you wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “Okay.” I tapped my fingers on the gray leather seat, trying to release some nervous energy. “Thanks, I guess.”

  “As a parent, I would do almost anything for my children.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t answer. What the hell did he expect me to say—that I forgave him for orchestrating my abduction because he wanted to rescue his son? Not fucking likely.

  Ignacio shifted in his seat. “I couldn’t let Rever rot away in an American prison, regardless of what he did. For better or worse, I love him unconditionally. Ryker too.”

  “What did he do?” It wasn’t my business, but I wanted to know the crime he committed. My comfort and my future were being sacrificed to resurrect his freedom. In my opinion, that sacrifice entitled me to something.

  “He was arrested in Las Vegas for money laundering.”

  I snorted. I couldn’t help it. The charge was hardly surprising or unexpected. Of course he was arrested for something related to the criminal activities of the Vargas Cartel. Ignacio’s words led me to believe he did something else—something unforgivable. “That’s what happens when you launder money for a drug cartel. How did he get caught?” ”

  “He exchanged fifty million dollars for a gambling credit in a casino on the Strip. He lost forty percent of it. The casino returned half of his losses in the form of luxury cars and gifts, then cut him a check for the balance of his gambling credit,” Ignacio answered, curling his hands into fists beside his pants.

  My eyes widened. “Seriously? That really works?”

  “It’s a method cartels have been using to clean dirty money for years.”

  “But you lose millions.”

  Ignacio rubbed his thumb and forefinger along his chin. “Most cartel members think of it as a tax of sorts. We help the casino’s bottom line. They help us legitimize the money.”

  “Wow,” I muttered, utterly dumbfounded because it was almost brilliant in its simplicity. “Impressive.”

  “Unfortunately, it wasn’t his money. He stole the money from me…from the Vargas Cartel. He betrayed his family, his history, his heritage, and my legacy. He wanted to start a new life. He didn’t like being under my thumb, so he threw us away like we meant nothing to him.”

  I shrugged, even as the intensity of his heavy-lidded stare burned up my skin. “Well, good for him. He succeeded. It sounds like he found his new life… a justified prison term. What’s he looking at? A life term?”

  Ignacio slammed his hands on the leather seat. “I won’t let the U.S. government determine his punishment. It’s not their job. It’s mine.”

  “Fine. Then, go get him, but leave me out of your plans. I didn’t steal your fucking money. I didn’t shit on the Vargas Cartel and its criminal legacy. I’m just a graduate student with a dad who has an important job. That’s it. I don’t deserve this. I want my life back.”

  “Exactly. You’re the woman with a dad who can wave his bureaucratic wand and make all my problems—and the problems of some very important people—disappear.”

  Frost coated my veins. “What important people?”

  “People who don’t want Rever to leak their connections to the Vargas Cartel.”

  My mind raced with the implications of his confession. “What kind of people? Corrupt politicians?” I speculated. Who else would orchestrate something like this? I wasn’t naïve. I grew up in D.C. I heard fragments of hushed conversations in shadowed rooms. Some politicians had as many connections with criminal organizations as they did with lobbyists, unions, and government officials.

  “So cynical,” Ignacio chided. Then, he grinned. “But you’re on to something, though it goes much deeper than that.”

  “What am I? Collateral damage? You don’t care you’re ruining my life to get what you want, just like you ruin innocent people’s lives with the drugs you smuggle into my country. All for what?” I raised my hands in the air. “To line your pockets with dirty money built on the destruction of countless lives.”

  His eyes combed over my body, studying me, analyzing me…judging me. My mom knew how to stare down her nose with the best of them. I channeled her. I became her. I narrowed by eyes. I tipped up my chin. I pursed my lips. I curled my hands into a tight fist, refusing to blink, refusing to look away. I demanded respect. In that flash of time, he was my overlord. He could do whatever he wanted with me, but I wouldn’t cower. I wouldn’t bend.

  “Collateral damage,” he whispered, almost as though he tasted the words as they rolled over his tongue. “Interesting choice of words.”

  I raised my eyebrows and lifted my chin. “How so?” I shouldn’t argue with him. He could kill me any second, but I was tired of accepting my fate. I wanted answers. I deserved answers. Ignacio probably didn’t agree, but I needed to try.

  He raised his open palms in the air with a faint smile on his face. “The United States and Mexico have a unique relationship. The countries share one of the longest borders in the world, stretching nearly two thousand miles, and they also share a narcotics problem. Mexico is one of the largest suppliers in the world, while the United States is the largest consumer. As long as the demand exists, the supply will be met. It could be my cartel, or another one servicing the demand. It’s irrelevant. If we don’t do it, somebody else will. The addicts are collateral damage…just like you.”

  I glared at him, and my body shook as outrage spiraled through me, twist after twist, each one hotter and wilder than the previous one. “And you don’t care that those drugs
ruin people’s lives? That you’ve built an empire on the backs of the lives you’ve destroyed?” I challenged.

  “I don’t ruin lives. Bad choices ruin lives.”

  “But you give them the ability to make a bad choice.” I corkscrewed my fingers in the hem of my shirt.

  “They use drugs to fill some hole in their life. I didn’t put that hole there. Drug addiction is the symptom of a deeper problem.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Great. Wash your hands of any moral responsibility.”

  He chuckled, sounding way too much like Ryker. I didn’t want to see any similarities between this cruel drug lord and the man my heart and soul craved even though my mind knew it was wrong. “Speaking of moral responsibility, what’s going on between Ryker and you?”

  Heat flooded my cheeks, and my heart skipped a beat or two. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Ignacio smiled. “Ryker and Rever have different mothers. Did he tell you that?”

  I sucked my lower lip into my mouth, debating how to answer this, but in the end I decided it was irrelevant if I told him the truth. Ryker would likely tell him everything and anything he wanted to know anyway. “Yes.”

  “Ryker was the product of an affair. He spent the summers with me, but for the most part his mother raised him. I raised Rever, though. From his first breath, I groomed him to be my successor. I focused all of my efforts on ensuring Rever would be ready when I wanted to retire. Ryker was an afterthought. I love him. My blood flows through his veins, but I poured all of my blood, sweat, and tears into shaping Rever.”

  “I don’t understand what any of that has to do with me,” I said when he stopped talking.

  “Just that Ryker has worked hard for everything he’s achieved—”

  “A career as a kidnapper. Is that your idea of achievement?” I mocked, interrupting him. “I can see why you have one kid in jail and the other on his way.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, so I’ll overlook your disrespectful comment,” Ignacio snapped. “All of them.”

  “Then enlighten me,” I challenged.

  Ignacio glanced out the window. “No. You don’t need to know anything, except that there’s a lot going on beneath the surface here. If you want your life back, you need to keep to yourself, and stay away from Ryker. Everything will be over within the next few days.”

  “Stay away from Ryker?” I repeated robotically. “Why?”

  His head snapped toward me, his black as coal eyes blazed with anger, and his hands curled into fists beside his legs. “Because I don’t need whatever the fuck is going on between you and Ryker to screw up everything I’ve worked for over the last decade.”

  “He doesn’t care about me. He can barely stand to be in the same room as me. You don’t have anything to worry about,” I muttered, even though a small part of me believed Ryker did care. I wanted him to care.

  He stroked his hand back and forth over his lips, contemplating and evaluating his next words. After an extended beat, he dropped his hand into his lap. “That’s not what it looked like on the video.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “I’m sure Ryker intended to delete the video, but then you ran, so he didn’t get the chance.”

  “What video?” I asked, but I suspected the truth. I knew exactly where this conversation was headed. I should’ve shut my mouth and let the suspicion remain a suspicion rather than forcing Ignacio to validate it with words.

  Stupid me.

  His black as night eyes burned into mine, and his lips ticked up just a notch, or maybe I imagined it. “The one from the bathroom after our video conference with Senator Deveron and your lovesick suitor.”

  Blood roared through my ears, and my vision tunneled. That video was a travesty on so many levels. My mind refused to wrap itself around the implications, both future and present. That video would hang over my head for infinity, and I’d be a puppet dancing to Ignacio’s tune to avoid exposure.

  My life in politics…gone.

  The possibility of any future with Evan…gone.

  Any position of significance, doing anything I loved…gone.

  Ignacio had taken the shattered pieces of my life and tossed them in my face like confetti. Jerking my head from side to side, I reined in my runaway thoughts. “You have cameras in your son’s room? Don’t you trust him?”

  Ignacio folded his arms across his chest and studied my face before he responded. “I don’t trust anyone—not my sons, not my business partners, and certainly not spoiled rich girls. You don’t get far in my world on trust. You need power, money, weapons, and cunning.”

  “What are you going to do with the video?” My voice came out strangled and rough even to my ears.

  “Nothing right now. Stay away from Ryker, and I’ll make sure it’s destroyed. If not…” He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll send it to Senator Deveron’s son as a Christmas gift or an engagement gift if you patch things up with him.”

  The car stopped in front of the villa. “Perfect. Then I’ll use evidence to prosecute you and Ryker,” I bluffed. I didn’t have any leverage. He knew it. I knew it. My threat was empty.

  Ignacio smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “That will be an interesting conversation. I wonder how they will interpret the video.” He ran his finger across his pursed lips. Then, he opened the car door, and for an instant I thought he was done with our conversation. “Maybe they’ll think you collaborated with your lover to secure the release of his brother.”

  My body went deathly still as his comment reverberated through my mind. “They wouldn’t…they couldn’t,” I whispered, but I realized it was a real possibility. I’d have a lot of explaining to do if anyone from my life saw that video.

  He reached across the backseat and squeezed my thigh. “Now that I think about it, I’m impressed by Ryker’s ingenuity. He didn’t discuss this with me, but it was a brilliant move. He turned the victim into a co-conspirator, thereby insuring your silence.” He stepped down from the car without looking back. “Ryker will accompany you to your room.”

  Speechless, I didn’t say anything as I watched Ignacio march up the steps of the monster-sized villa. He left me alone, gambling I wouldn’t run again. But what was the point? They had the video, which meant I was along for the ride, regardless of where it took me. Granted, I already decided I wouldn’t try to escape, but the video cemented my compliance.

  This was my new reality. For better or worse, my fate was intertwined with Rever’s, a man I didn’t know—a man who had lost his battle with the Vargas Cartel too.

  Sunlight streamed into the car through the open door, replacing the cool air with the sticky humidity I’d become accustom to over the past two weeks. Conversations in Spanish hummed outside my door, but I didn’t care what was being said. For the first time since Ryker had taken me, I didn’t even try to pick out words I recognized.

  Was I really supposed to receive my graduate degree in two months? Did I really secure that internship at the International Foreign Policy Council? Did I really think I could slip back into my old relationship with Evan like nothing had happened?

  In one impulsive second, I tossed it all away. And for what? A flash in time with Ryker—a man who offered nothing. Promised nothing. A million explanations filtered through my mind that I could offer the authorities to justify the images on the screen.

  That I suffered from Stockholm syndrome.

  That someone held a gun to my head.

  That I had been drugged.

  But I’d know the truth. It haunted me. It tortured me. I was addicted to Ryker. I would never say no to him. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not three years from now. I wanted him, even though I knew wanting him was wrong.

  I couldn’t help it.

  I couldn’t stop it.

  I didn’t want to.

  Yes, Ryker knew about the cameras. Yes, I’m sure he realized we were being recorded. Yes, that was proba
bly part of his plan. And yes, the video threatened my ability to recapture my future…a future I didn’t even know if I wanted anymore. None of it seemed as real as what I felt for a man I loved to hate and hated that I loved. It was a demoralizing, gut-churning conclusion that had me curling into my seat of the car.

  No, not my seat.

  Ignacio’s seat.

  Ignacio’s car.

  Ignacio’s driveway.

  Ignacio’s house.

  Ignacio’s video.

  I was surviving on the charity of a man known for his cruelty, a man who had just threatened to destroy me.

  I had officially hit the bottom. My life was broken. I was broken. Every fucking thing was broken. Shattered. Destroyed. I couldn’t even pretend otherwise.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Do you want to go inside or do you plan to sleep in the car?” Ryker asked leaning inside the backseat of the car, his hands braced against the doorjamb.

  “Did you know?” I asked, my mind still reeling with the implications of the conversation with Ignacio. I didn’t know how long I’d sat, unmoving in the backseat of the car with the door still open. When I scanned the exterior of the villa, I noticed that everyone had long since gone inside.

  He cocked his head to the side, and his eyes drifted over me. Undoubtedly, I looked like a wreck. I felt like one, both mentally and physically.

  “About what?” he asked.

  My eyes fell to my lap, and I ran my finger along the frayed hem of my too long t-shirt. “About the video?”

  “The video conference with your father scheduled for tomorrow morning? Is that what you’re talking about?”

  My eyes flickered to his as I chewed on my lower lip, rolling it between my teeth. “No.” I cleared my throat, piecing together the courage to ask the next question. “The one of us together in your bathroom.” Waiting in frozen silence, I momentarily stopped breathing.

  His eyes widened. “Fuck.” He slammed his hand against the outside of the car. The hollow metal sound echoed through my ears. “Fuck,” he said again, as he pushed away from the door and took a few steps back, his body rigid, his nose flared. “I knew there was a camera in the bathroom. There are cameras everywhere. Ignacio records everything…everyone.”