CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
COLOMBIA, 2014
MARIANA
‘Lindsay,’ I said, smiling broadly as two machine-gun toting guards flanked me – one male, one female. You could never be too careful when the world believed you were dead. Especially when you alone controlled an eighty-something per cent stake in the South and Central American cocaine trade. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Lindsay smirked back at me, raising his arms as Guillermo patted him down for weapons or wires. I might have been happy to see my old FBI handler, but that didn’t mean I trusted him. Men – especially extremely attractive men – were not to be trusted.
After finding nothing, Guillermo slapped him hard on the back and Lindsay lowered his arms to his sides.
My two guards, a black-belt badass by the name of Maria, and a hulk-sized Colombian called Alejandro, followed Guillermo out of my sitting room, the door closing behind them.
Lindsay shoved his hands in his suit pockets and paced the length of the large room where I spent most of my time. It’s not that I was afraid to go outdoors, but it was summer in Colombia, and as soon as I went outside my flesh turned an angry red. For a native Colombian, it was annoying that I could no longer tolerate the sun in my own country, but ten years spent largely indoors had made my skin and my eyes incredibly sensitive.
‘You haven’t been here in months,’ I said.
Lindsay threw his hands up in mock frustration. ‘You won’t let me see you.’
‘I let you today.’
He laughed.
‘You look beautiful in that dress,’ he said in Spanish. He spoke the language almost as well as I did, a girl who was born and raised speaking the mother tongue.
‘Thank you,’ I replied, in English, smoothing down the black dress I wore. I would only address him in English, which annoyed him greatly, since he’d learned the language purely to impress me. I didn’t need his silver tongue or his sweet Spanish adorations turning me soft. I knew he wanted me; I wanted him, too, and it had been a very long time between lovers. The last man I had slept with was Dornan. But I couldn’t trust anyone, and so I was alone.
It was easier that way. Men only broke your heart. Burrowed in and settled, and then shattered you from within.
My heart was mine alone. It belonged to my children. No man would ever breach its solid walls again.
‘Uncle!’ Adelita cried, her long, messy hair flying behind her as she ran into the room and barrelled straight into Lindsay.
His eyes lit up, a smile he only smiled for her. They were not related to each other in any way, and they didn’t see each other for months or years at a time, but Adelita loved Lindsay as if he were her family.
My darling Adelita. Almost six years old now, and beautiful, a female version of her father.
The blue eyes. The wide cheeks and angular cheekbones. The dirty blonde hair, thick and impossible to untangle. They have the same toes, the same fingers. Until the day I gave birth to her, I did not know who her father was. Whether I’d carried a part of Dornan or a part of John for nine dangerous months, as I fled and hid and swelled with a baby I was terrified to bring into my chaotic existence, where we’d be forced to live in the shadows until fate caught up with us.
I loved her anyway, my baby girl. I didn’t care who her father was. I didn’t hope one way or the other, because despite everything, despite the blood and the lies and the betrayal, Dornan had let me run. He had let me go. Even as I hated him bitterly for everything he’d done – for murdering John, and Juliette, for beating me so badly that I’d miscarried the baby that was his – I still loved him, deep down, somewhere where the light could never quite get in, in the dark. I loved him because he let me go free.
But when I’d given birth in a makeshift hospital room inside an FBI safehouse, Lindsay by my side, Luis pacing anxiously in the hallway, I’d known. My Adelita had cried, and before they’d even placed her wet, howling little body on my bare chest, I saw a tuft of her blonde hair sticking up, and I knew she was John’s daughter.
‘Lindsay, are you staying for dinner?’ Adelita asked.
He shrugged his shoulders, looking to me. I nodded. ‘Of course I am!’ he said, wrapping her up in another hug, her little face pressed up against his neck. For a moment I imagined Lindsay was John and my throat ached.
‘Why don’t you go play, bebe,’ I said to Adelita. ‘We need to talk for just a minute. Can you find Lindsay some of that cake you baked the other day?’
Adelita agreed, skipping off to the kitchen in search of cake. That would keep her busy for at least a few minutes, and I could figure out what Lindsay was here for. Once she was gone, I gestured to the couch. ‘Sit. You want a drink?’
‘Please,’ he replied, sitting down.
I went to the large oak cabinet that ran along one wall, and selected a bottle of whiskey. I grabbed two tumblers and poured us each a double, because from the look on Lindsay’s face, we were going to need it. I handed one to Lindsay and sat beside him, waiting for him to speak.
‘You look pale, Ana,’ Lindsay said finally, his smile shrinking. ‘You look tired.’
I smiled, despite myself. ‘Your eyes look heavy,’ I said quietly. ‘Like they’re weighed down with a terrible secret.’
He looked at the floor, a self-deprecating smile reappearing on his lips. ‘You always did know how to read me,’ he said.
‘What is it, Lindsay? What is so important that you had to come to Colombia to tell me?’
He lifted his head and met my eyes again. ‘We raided the Gypsy Brothers’ clubhouse. We found a fingerprint in Dornan’s room. Juliette Portland’s fingerprint.’
I stared at him in horror, disbelief settling into my chest like an old friend. There was a chance that John’s daughter – Adelita’s half-sister – was still alive?
‘It’s old. It has to be,’ I breathed.
‘It’s a fresh fingerprint, Mariana. We have reason to believe that, somehow, Juliette is alive. And she is with the Gypsy Brothers.’
EPILOGUE
MARIANA
When I was a girl, I’d dream about marrying my king.
When I met Esteban, I knew. I knew he was the one for me. Something about the way he looked at me seeped into my bones and settled there. Warm. Familiar. I loved him so much, there was this constant ache in my chest.
I was nineteen when I felt him take his last breath, in my arms in a dirty alley. My life was over. I thought I’d die, too.
I didn’t. That heart of mine kept beating and aching, missing my lover, missing our son.
When I was a girl, I’d dream about marrying my king.
I never thought Dornan Ross would end up my king. But he did. He made me his queen.
I didn’t want it.
He didn’t care.
Our wedding night was spent in a hotel room in Vegas, with me locked in the bathroom, staring at the wall as he threatened to smash the door down and then beat my head in.
He’d already killed our child. I wasn’t going to let him get inside me again. Wasn’t going to let him poison me.
I wasn’t going to let him corrupt me ever again.
It didn’t matter. He broke the door down eventually.
He got inside me again.
And that’s where he stayed, until the bitter end.
Because of all the things in life, love is the most confusing. The most all-consuming. The reason we breathe, the light in our darkness.
At sixteen, love devastated me, his perfect button nose and sweet baby smell overwhelming as my father took him from my arms and into the night.
At nineteen, love saved me, a dangerous man with a heart that was determined to own mine.
At twenty-nine love almost freed me . . . but in the end, love broke me.
I wish I could tell you that things ended differently – but I’d be lying. I don’t know if he regrets what he did, or if he’s happy, but it doesn’t matter, really.
It doesn’t change the fact
that the man who loved me ended up being the same man who would destroy me.
CARTEL
The first searing novel in the Cartel trilogy
When her father’s drug run goes horribly wrong, Mariana is the debt he repays to the Gypsy Brothers motorcycle club. Doing everything she can to survive, falling in love with the man who owns her isn’t part of Mariana’s plan.
KINGPIN
The second scorching novel in the Cartel trilogy
Mariana and Dornan struggle to define their twisted relationship amid the wreckage of their warring families. With their forbidden love built on a foundation of lies, it’s only a matter of time before everything they’ve built comes crashing down around them.
About the Author
LILI ST. GERMAIN is a publishing phenomenon. The first of her seven serialised dark romance novellas, Seven Sons, came out in early 2014, with the following books in the series released in quick succession and selling over a million copies worldwide. The bestselling Gypsy Brothers series focuses on a morally bankrupt biker gang and the girl who seeks her vengeance upon them. Empire is the gripping conclusion to the Cartel series, a prequel trilogy of full-length novels that explores the beginnings of the club.
Lili quit corporate life to focus on writing and is relishing every minute of it. Her other loves include her gorgeous husband and beautiful daughter, good coffee and Tarantino movies.
Find out more about the author at lilisaintgermain.com
Praise for Lili St. Germain and the Cartel trilogy
‘Good lord, this series . . . this book . . . these characters . . . they are seriously playing all sorts of havoc with my emotions, my feelings, my nerves and my anxiety levels’
THE HOPELESS ROMANTICS BOOK BLOG
‘Possibly the best series I’ve ever read. Powerful, emotional, entertaining, confronting yet clever storyline with plots, twists and shocks – I could not put these books down’
NAT COOLS FROM OZ, iBooks
‘Had me on a tight grip for the entire ride . . . I was completely immersed’
THE READING ESCAPADE
‘Finally, a book that grabbed and kept my attention from start to finish!’
BOOK VIGILANTE REVIEWS
‘Awesome job Lili . . . I am ready to hop on the back of a bike and join the club!’
THE LITERARYGOSSIP BOOK BLOG
‘Sensational, shocking, compelling and totally addictive . . . the best when it comes to dark, brooding and bloody romance’
KELLY, PERUSING PRINCESSES
Lili takes you for a walk on the dark and dirty side of life. She makes you question how far you’d be willing to go to save those you loved and what lengths you’d go to to survive. What happens when the lines of right and wrong blur and when the lines of hate and love are crossed . . .’ OBSESSED BY BOOKS
‘Fast-paced. Thrilling. Violent. Dark. Raw. Ruthless’
WICKED READS
‘Cartel is just the beginning to what promises to be an erotic, twisted journey’
THE ROMANCE REVIEWS
Also by Lili St. Germain
THE CARTEL TRILOGY
Cartel
Kingpin
Empire
THE GYPSY BROTHERS SERIES
Seven Sons
Six Brothers
Five Miles
Four Score
Three Years
Two Roads
One Love
Zero Hour
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2017
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Lili Saint Germain 2017
The right of Lili Saint Germain to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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ISBN: 978 1 4607 5006 3 (paperback)
ISBN: 978 1 4607 0430 1 (ebook)
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Saint Germain, Lili, author.
Empire / Lili St Germain.
Series: Saint Germain, Lili. Cartel trilogy ; 3.
Subjects: Man-woman relationships – Fiction.
Drug dealers – Colombia – Fiction.
Fathers and daughters – Fiction.
Colombia – Fiction.
813.6
Cover design by HarperCollins Design Studio
Front cover image by shutterstock.com
Back cover image by Sybille Sterk / Arcangel
Author photo by Rachel Roscoe
Empire Page 24