Dawn broke on the bruise-colored mountains, the trees lime green as the rising sun hit their leaves. The peaceful vista of the sprawling, sleeping Badlands was disrupted by a revving engine. One of the security vehicles always posted at the Badlands’ front gates barreled up the side of the mountain.
I shielded my eyes, squinting ahead. The truck kicked up a dust cloud as we walked down the front steps. When we stopped at the end of the drive, Alejandro, Eduardo, and Barto appeared next to us.
“Is that . . .” Alejandro started.
The car stopped, and one of Cristiano’s uniformed gatekeepers jumped out of the driver’s side before hurrying around to the side door. “¡Ayuda!” he called for help, then wrenched open the door. As the passenger stumbled out, all four men sprinted forward.
The sun peeked out, shining down on the man as if he’d fallen from the skies. Dragging a foot and with a swollen face the color of the purple mountains at his back, he was almost unrecognizable. Except for the glass eye. “Max,” I whispered.
He fell to his knees and curled his fingers into the grass. Cristiano reached him first and fell to Max’s side.
I glanced over my shoulder. My father stood in the doorway along with half the staff, hands over their mouths. “Call Doctor Sosa.”
Max pushed himself off the ground to sit back on his heels. “Agua,” he pleaded.
As I walked forward, I called back, “And get water—now!”
“You escaped?” Cristiano asked as I reached them.
With a grimace, Max shook his head. “They . . . let me go,” he rasped.
Cristiano glanced up at me. “But why?”
“Truce,” Max said hoarsely.
Truce? I was immediately doubtful. That didn’t make sense. “Why would they ever call a truce?” I asked.
Max’s face contorted as he swallowed and formed fists against the ground. “Leave their business alone.”
“Why would I?” Cristiano asked. His anger sent a tremor through the air. “Because they returned a man they took? And tortured? I have even more reason to destroy them.”
“They’ll get out . . .” Max said. “They’ll stop.”
“Stop what?” I asked.
“Trafficking.”
Cristiano froze. He hadn’t expected that answer, and neither had I. It was what he’d wanted—to end their business. But could we trust that information? Concern also registered on Cristiano’s face.
Jaz delivered a bottle of water and stood back, crossing her thin arms over her stomach. Max drank it down in one go, tossed the empty plastic aside, and tried to get up.
Cristiano rose and helped him. Watching Max struggle to stand on his own two feet was painful to watch, and Cristiano must’ve felt the same. “There’s no truce,” he said. “BR will pay for this, my friend. They’ve done too much damage—”
Max held up a hand to stop him and wiped his mouth on his sleeve before accepting another water bottle. As he cracked open the twist top, he managed, “Diego.”
The name sent chills down my spine. Instinctively, I reached for Cristiano as he opened his arm and pulled me to his side. “He had a part in this?” Cristiano asked.
Max started to nod, then coughed and sputtered, turned away, and puked.
Cristiano looked at Alejandro. “Find Diego, and execute him. Now. Throw him over a cliff for all I care. I no longer need to watch the life drain from him.” Cristiano lowered his eyes to mine. “Do you?”
I shook my head. “I just want him gone.”
“My wife demands his death,” Cristiano said. “So kill him—and make it swift.”
Max, panting for breath, cringed as he hunched over, his hands on his knees. “We—we can’t kill Diego.”
“Why not?” Cristiano ran his tongue back and forth over his front teeth. “Give me one goddamn reason I shouldn’t—”
With great struggle, Max lifted his head. “He’s already dead.”
20
Natalia
Max lay in a dark guest bedroom, freshly bathed and gripping a bottle of painkillers. The nurse Doctor Sosa had arranged for us placed a damp towel over his swollen eyes, careful of his cheeks marred with cuts and bruises. He thanked her.
Clutching my mother’s rosary, I fell into a chair and pressed my thumb to the crucifix.
Diego was . . . dead.
What was I supposed to feel about it? Triumph? Pity? He could’ve had love, and offered forgiveness. Instead, he’d chosen hatred and revenge—and it’d been the wrong path. Nostalgia tinged my relief that he was gone. There’d been good times. Genuine moments of laughter and fondness. Riding the property line on our horses, racing from one end of a fence to the other. In my mother’s art studio, turning our yellow-painted handprints into chickens by adding red feathers and beaks to the thumbprint. And taking turns with the telescope, pointing out constellations to each other. I remembered his wide smile, patient eyes, and his concern for my wellbeing whenever we’d spoken on the phone—but was any of it real if it’d all been built on a lie?
It didn’t matter anymore. He was out of our lives, and that was the way it had to be. I’d thought maybe I’d want to face him at the end, even taunt him—but I didn’t need it. It was enough to know he was gone.
Max removed the cloth and set his pills on the nightstand. The nurse helped him ease into a sitting position, then arranged his pillows against the headboard.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Sore,” he answered, “but grateful to be alive.”
At the rasp in his voice, the nurse refilled his water from a pitcher on the nightstand.
Worry etched lines around Cristiano’s eyes as he dismissed her with a nod. “What happened?” he asked when we were alone.
Max looked at me and then picked at a blackened fingernail. “I’ll tell you everything later. For now, the thing to know is that Belmonte-Ruiz put Diego in the ground.”
“Are you certain, Maksim?”
Even with Max’s puffy eyelids and the bloated, Byzantium-purple welts around his lips, I could see his expression tighten. “I saw it with my one good eye. Diego is gone.”
“I want to say I’m not surprised,” Cristiano said, looking from me to Max. “But I knew, in the church, that when I turned my brother free, he wouldn’t make it as long as I had out in the wild. I underestimated him, but in the end, I was right.”
“How’d it happen?” I asked.
“When I learned Diego was dead, I said I wouldn’t deliver the message to you unless I could be sure. They allowed me to see the body before they disposed of it. Diego was cold and lifeless in a body bag. Involuntary overdose . . .”
The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I crossed myself. Even as my stomach somersaulted at the thought of my childhood best friend’s decaying body, I welcomed the confirmation of his death.
Cristiano covered his mouth with his fist. “Reason?”
“An offering to make peace with you and Costa,” Max explained, “but there’s more to it than that. From what I gathered during my time there, Diego was costing them money, making promises he couldn’t keep.”
“Like with the Maldonados,” Cristiano said. “History repeats itself. Diego never learns. What kinds of promises?”
Max’s face contorted as he shifted. I stood to help him fix his pillow. “My guess?” Max said. “Based on what I picked up from the guards and other prisoners—Diego told BR he could get you working for them, not against them.”
“Why the fuck would I ever work for them? No dollar amount could convince me, nothing on the planet would—” Cristiano ran his hand down his face as he shook his head. He sighed. “Natalia.”
“What?” I asked.
Max nodded up at me. “I heard about the security breach here the same night they attacked us at the hotel. Could they have been trying to kidnap you?”
“Sí,” Cristiano said through his teeth. “They would take my wife. For payback and for strategy.”
“Strategy?
” My palm ached as the rosary beads dug into it. I looked between the two of them. “To do what with me?”
Cristiano had ensured the world thought I was nothing to him. Only few people understood, from the beginning, that the opposite was true. Diego had been the first. He had set all this in motion.
He had gone to Belmonte-Ruiz and told them what I was worth.
And how to get me.
My nostalgia vanished as I was reminded how conniving Diego had been all along.
My throat closed as I realized the answer to my question was obvious given what their business had been built on. “They would’ve sold me.”
“No,” Cristiano said. He paced Max’s bedside, massaging his jaw. “That would’ve only started a war between us, and it wouldn’t have benefited Diego at all. He’s always thinking of how to come out on top. If I were in his shoes, my need for control would win over pride.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“If they were able to hold Max just outside my grasp, they could do the same to you. I’d be forced to cooperate to keep you safe.”
“Cooperate . . . how?”
“Our infrastructure when combined with Costa’s shipping solutions spans not only the Americas, but Europe, and parts of Asia, too,” Max explained. “Working with us could grow their business overnight.”
Cristiano nodded and finished Max’s thought. “But after the lengths I’ve gone to just to handicap them, they must’ve known I’d never agree to partner up—not for any amount of money.”
My fingers went cold as I put the pieces together. “They wanted you to traffic people.”
Cristiano dropped his arm to his side. “Diego knows there’s nothing in the world that could get me to do it.”
“Except for the one weakness he’s exploited before,” Max said.
Me. I was the weakness. The little girl he’d been charged with protecting. And then, when he’d come back to town, I’d become a whole other kind of weakness. Cristiano had confessed more than once that he’d done all this for selfish reasons. Because he wanted love. My love. My family. He wanted me.
And he’d been willing to let Diego live in order to have all of it—giving Diego all the ammunition he’d needed. He’d planned to use me as leverage to turn Cristiano’s life into a living hell. To force Cristiano to do the one thing he’d sworn never to do. What he’d built a whole life around preventing. And in the process, Diego would have gotten more control, more wealth, and turned the knife in his brother’s back—all at the same time. And what would’ve become of me?
I would never find out, and for that, I thanked God for keeping the devil safe. And I thanked my devil for protecting me.
When I caught Cristiano staring at me, his face etched with pain, I crossed the room to him and cocooned one of his enormous, mighty hands in both of mine. What would it have done to Cristiano to have to decide between me and the lives of many innocent men, women, and children? I recognized the tormented look in his eyes for what it was. He was beating himself up for not knowing what he would’ve chosen.
I put my mouth against the warm, sinewy back of his hand and swallowed to control the emotion in my voice. “You would never have gone through with it,” I assured him. “You’re too good of a man. You would’ve let me go in order to save them, and it would’ve been the right choice.”
“Too good of a man?” he repeated. “You know what I am. I could never let you go, and that makes me the kind of monster I’ve been fighting against.”
I shook my head and clenched my teeth against a wave of tears. It was too horrible to even think of. Cristiano would’ve done the right thing. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll never have to make that choice.”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. I turned my cheek against his chest, and he covered the opposite one, holding me there. “Diego got off easy if he’d promised them he’d deliver me,” he said, his voice rumbling against my ear.
“Yes,” Max said. “But if you don’t stop fucking with Belmonte-Ruiz, they’ll always be an enemy.”
“I want to believe the possibility that they’d stop,” Cristiano said. “But why would they? Their entire business is a trafficking ring.”
“They have something going on the narcotic side,” Max said. “All I know is what I picked up here and there, but perhaps the informant Alejo uncovered can find out more.”
“If it’s not trafficking, it doesn’t matter,” Cristiano said. “Let them have their drugs. They can even get into arms and try to steal my territories for all I care. As long as they move on.”
I turned my face into Cristiano’s palm and kissed it, grateful for its comforting warmth, before pulling his hand away. Max had to be exhausted. We needed to let him rest. But first, I had to ask. “You’d accept the truce?”
After what he’d been through, I’d expect him to say no. He had all the reason to want to strike back. But he only narrowed his eyes and said, “It’s not my call alone, but if I set aside my own personal vendetta . . . they made two offerings in good faith—taking Diego’s life, and sparing mine. If they stop because we do, then we all get what we want.”
Cristiano nodded. “Do you agree, Natalia?”
It felt like the end. Diego was no longer trying to hurt us. Belmonte-Ruiz wanted us off their backs, and in exchange, there would be a little less suffering in the world. That was what Cristiano had aimed for. I nodded. “I think if it’s true . . . we should accept.”
Diego was gone, and the only regret I felt was that he hadn’t been able to overcome his own demons to make something of his life. But if he had, I may never have known the love rooted deep inside me for his brother. I was glad, if it had to be us or him, that Cristiano and I were still standing.
I twisted to wrap my arms around Cristiano’s neck. “It’s over, mi rey,” I said with a genuine smile. “My king.”
He searched my face with dark, skeptical eyes. Cristiano had spent eleven years waiting for this moment, and it had eluded him more than once.
I gripped his neck, ran my thumbs up the hollows under his cheekbones that always made him look so grim, and reassured him. “It’s over.”
Months of danger and strife had ended. And yet, I wasn’t sure it was a history I’d trade for an easier one. It had prepared me. Educated me. Fortified me. And it had brought me Cristiano.
Together, we would walk into the future stronger than ever.
21
Natalia
Five Months Later
Cristiano and Papá waited for me downstairs so we could leave for the Day of the Dead parade, but I wanted just a few more moments to myself on the balcony of my old bedroom. The mariachi music seemed fainter now than it had in my childhood. I remembered dancing to it, skipping through the house as I’d hummed to myself, my worn leather sandals clicking on the tile.
I returned to my bedroom and checked my outfit once more in a floor-length mirror. Today, my colorful, off-the-shoulder dress—an explosion of marigold-orange, fuchsia, and rose-red against bone—was a tribute to Mamá as I’d stand by my father while the town honored him with a ride on the final float.
Strong arms slipped around my middle, and I met Cristiano’s molten-brown eyes in the reflection. “Even more a symphony than usual in this dress, and music to my ears,” he said in my ear. “You look beautiful. You look like her.”
In a suit and tie, he was handsome as ever. I covered his forearms with mine, lacing our fingers together. “She should be here with us.”
“She is.” He kissed the back of my head. “Today, we’ll go to the Día de los Muertos parade and celebrate her life.”
“With the whole town,” I added.
“They adored her, as they do you,” he said, resting his hands on my waist, fingers inched inward . . .
I inhaled and shivered as a chill ran up my spine.
“Cold?” he asked.
No. It wasn’t that. Did he know? Could he sense what grew under his fingertips? I a
djusted my crown of red roses in the reflection. “With your hands on me? Jamás. Never.”
It was true. Cold was one thing Cristiano and I would never be. With Cristiano, there was only warmth. Contentment. Even when we fought, fire burned between us.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Life was as lively as ever at the Badlands, but it’d been relatively peaceful since our truce with Belmonte-Ruiz.
I had everything I could possibly ask for—a community that kept us both on our toes. My husband’s and my father’s fruitful business. My family in good health. A full and promising future.
A loving husband.
And the blessing of his child in my belly.
I’d first suspected I was pregnant last week, after overwhelming nausea three days in a row, but I’d wanted to be certain before telling Cristiano. It was nearly impossible to do anything in the Badlands without him finding out, so I’d snuck away to see Paula at the medical clinic right before we’d left to come here.
This morning, she’d stopped by the house to quietly press an envelope into my hands so Cristiano could see for himself.
We were having a baby.
My heart fluttered thinking of the sonogram in my purse downstairs. Cristiano would be nothing but thrilled to learn the news, but still, nerves edged my excitement.
Especially on the anniversary of my mother’s death.
It wasn’t the life I’d imagined for myself. To be a cartel wife, married to a narco king, and a mother by the age of twenty-one. Cartel queens and kings fell all the time, and where did that leave their princes and princesses? Cristiano and I knew all too well—once upon a time, we’d been them.
It was a great responsibility—one neither of us would take lightly. It came with risk. Already, fear bloomed in me in a new way knowing what I did of this life and what emotional attachments could bring. Cristiano and I had both lost parents early on. I didn’t want that possibility for my child, but it was the life we lived.
And I had the greatest man in the world to lean on. I would be that same support for him.
Violent Triumphs (White Monarch Book 3) Page 20