As he did everything else with unrivaled passion, fervor, and heart—so would he do fatherhood. This child would know the greatest love from both its parents.
“Ready to head over to the parade?” he asked.
I nodded. First, we would celebrate my mother’s life, along with everyone expecting visits from their loved ones on this, the Day of the Dead.
And then we would rejoice in the gift of life growing inside me.
We rode through the parade on the last float, the grand finale—a skeleton in a tuxedo with a cigar stuck in one side of its mouth. Cristiano and my father each puffed on his own Montecristo as Papá grumbled about the obligation of his presence, even as he waved and smiled. Secretly, he was pleased by the honor.
Sugar skulls in white and black danced around us, while ladies dressed as La Catrina twirled in colorful dresses, and masked men on the floats gestured with both hands to get the crowds to cheer.
A woman smiled at Cristiano, swaying her hips as she circled him. He winked at me.
We crawled along the main road of shops, fruit carts, and mercados advertising cigarettes and Coca-Cola.
“I’m going to send the kid to get me a mezcal,” my father said as fine, white, cinnamon-scented cigar smoke wafted into the wind.
“Gabe is working,” I reminded him.
“He’s hopeless with a rifle. Should’ve been Barto up here.”
I glanced down at Gabriel Valverde, his gun at the ready as he rode on the lower tier of the float. Cristiano hadn’t protested when I’d been asked to join my father in the parade, but being out in the open at any time made him anxious.
“I’m trying to build Gabriel’s confidence, and Barto has no shortage of that,” I said, smiling down at where Gabriel was stationed below us, out of earshot. “He’s improved a lot. Can’t you see how much stronger he looks?”
“The kid is a genius.” Father had been reluctant to accept a Valverde in his life, and still wouldn’t call him anything other than “kid” or “boy,” but at least he recognized his talent. “He should be in front of a computer. You need his brain indoors, not splattered all over a papier-mâché skeleton.”
He had a point.
Both Barto and Cristiano had made the same argument—and even though it’d been the only thing they’d agreed on in a while, I’d put my foot down. The parade was the perfect opportunity to show Gabriel how much I believed in him. With Barto somewhere patrolling the street, every overprotective man in my life was within a fifteen-meter radius. I’d never felt safer.
A fizzy drink did sound pretty good, though, considering my stomach had been so uneasy. I touched my hand to it briefly. “I’ll go get you the mezcal,” I said. “An iced horchata sounds perfect anyway.”
“Better than a warm Coca Light?” Cristiano asked. “Since when?”
My cheeks warmed. My body was experiencing new and unusual things. “Just a craving for something different,” I said.
“Oh . . .?” He arched an eyebrow. “A craving?”
I raised to the balls of my feet and kissed his cheek before he could follow whatever train of thought was forming in his mind. “I’ll be right back.”
“You stay.” He reached by me to put down his cigar. “I’ll go.”
“Stay here and enjoy your cigar,” I said and gave him a scolding look. “It’ll be the last one you have for a while.”
When I’d learned of Cristiano’s indigestion, I’d made him stop smoking, limited him to a couple drinks a week, and had been working with Fisker on healthier meal recipes that didn’t make Cristiano want to skip straight to dessert.
But it was a special day.
I picked up my purse from where I’d stowed it, put it over my shoulder, and started to walk away when a hand at my elbow drew me back. I turned around to reassure Cristiano I’d be fine, but when I met his eyes, there was only a spark of excitement in them.
He raised them to the sky. “Look.”
A small kaleidoscope of monarch butterflies fluttered over our heads. “Papá,” I called, and he ambled over to us, following our gazes.
The monarch migration passed through during early November—like now, on All Souls’ Days, when the deceased came to visit the living. That was why monarchs were believed to hold the spirits of the departed. It happened every year, but it was never any less special to believe Mamá was with us. On my wedding day, I’d thought her presence a warning. I now knew it had been approval. I put my hand over my stomach. Today, she returned to bless me and my unborn child.
“Te extraño mucho, Bianca.” Telling her he missed her very much, my father smiled, flicked ash from his cigar onto the live marigolds surrounding us, and walked away.
Cristiano took his Montecristo from his mouth, pulled my face to his with one hand, and pecked my lips.
I walked around to the rear of the float, waving back at the throngs of parade-goers. With the rat-a-tat-tat of poppers that sounded too close to gunshots, the crowd released a collective gasp. I descended the stairs of the float and hopped off, into the street.
As I made my way through the crowd toward a drink vendor, a dancing skeleton bumped into me so hard, I stumbled in my high heels. Instead of trying to catch my purse as it fell, I covered my stomach. Once I’d righted my footing, it hit me for the first time that my body would change—as would the way I treated it. I’d have to be more careful everywhere I went. I bent and picked up the envelope with the sonogram first, then bit my lip to hide a smile as I tucked it into a side pocket.
As people walked around me, I shoveled my things back into my handbag. I searched the street for my cell phone, then checked to see if it was still in my purse. Unable to find it, I stood and turned, my gaze landing on a mariachi in the crowd with a familiar pair of eyes.
A piercing gaze that sent a chill straight down my spine, then vanished under a sombrero as the man disappeared back into the crowd.
Diego.
No—Diego is dead.
I took a deep breath to try to calm my thumping heart. It wasn’t possible. My current condition was doing things to my brain, and my emotions were overwrought from being back home on the anniversary of Mamá’s death. I rubbed my temples and took a few more steps, squatting again to try to locate my phone.
Mariachi music started from somewhere. I’d been hearing it on and off all day, but now that Diego was on my mind, it took me back to my parents’ room on this same morning twelve years earlier. The haunting echoes of the music through the house. The fan rotating with a breeze from the open windows, casting shadows over Mamá’s body on the tile floor. Diego running in, his gun drawn, acting surprised. Cristiano’s forearm a bar around my waist as his hand clamped over my mouth.
A bout of nausea hit me. Something didn’t feel right. I got back to my feet and started back for the float when a man in a ski mask started toward me.
Fuck. I willed my breathing to slow so I could think. We had no enemies at the moment, but as Cristiano said—the fight was never over. I couldn’t be too careful. I ducked left and hid in a group of dancing women while maneuvering my way back toward the float. They spun, their skirts blending together into reds, greens, and purples.
Diego’s face flashed through the crowd.
But . . . how?
I stepped up onto a curb and furtively looked around. The man’s height set him apart. He removed his sombrero and shook out golden-brown hair. It couldn’t be him. And yet, Diego’s mannerisms were seared into my brain. As long as I lived, I’d never forget the way his long fingers tracked through the strands of his hair. He palmed the sombrero the way he had his cowboy hat at the costume party. As he started to turn toward me, I noticed a bolo tie—but I wouldn’t wait to see if it bore the de la Rosa family crest.
I ran, sprinting through the crowd, pushing people aside.
A man in chalky white face paint and blackened eye sockets stepped in my way, and I stopped short. The skeleton that had bumped into me earlier. I whirled to go another way, but th
e man dressed in black closed in from another direction.
I had a knife in my purse. I reached in and grabbed it as a voice said in my ear, “If you make a scene, your daddy gets a bullet in the back. Then we start shooting up the crowd, Natalia.”
Air sucked out of my lungs as my scalp prickled. “Who are you?” I asked. “Belmonte-Ruiz?”
He didn’t answer.
My palm sweat around the handle of the knife. I needed to fight back—but as of this morning, physical violence had taken on a new meaning for me. Since my arrival at the Badlands, Cristiano had impressed upon me that I couldn’t ever be afraid to get hurt. I wasn’t. But now that I was carrying his child?
That was different.
I had to protect my body at any cost.
He grabbed my handbag and the knife with it as armed men dressed in black with ski masks over their faces appeared all around me, closing in. With a screeching sound, yelling started. A white van barreled toward us, sending people jumping out of the way.
I opened my mouth to scream, and a damp towel covered it, suffocating me with a sickly-sweet reek. I held my breath, fighting not to inhale. I was surrounded. My vision blurred with little bursts of light. Not even the tight hold on me could disguise the feeling of my lungs caving in. Nor could people’s screams and mariachi music drown out one single word in my ear as the world around me faded to black.
“Princesa.”
22
Natalia
My head lolled somewhere soft, but the backs of my eyeballs throbbed. Lying on my side, my body jostled with the whir and hum of an engine.
My baby.
My eyes flew open to pitch-dark nothingness. I went to cover my stomach, but my elbows were bound behind my back and had been long enough that I couldn’t feel my hands.
“Sleeping Beauty stirs.” The voice sounded both muffled and directly above me and its familiarity tugged me from my dull consciousness. Aching shoulders. Burning throat. My cheek scratched against burlap. I was . . . on a lap?
“We didn’t even get to the part where the prince kisses you,” he added.
Diego.
My heart lurched in my chest as my entire body stilled.
On All Souls Day, Diego had risen from the dead. My head pounded with pain and questions. How was he still alive? Where had he been the last several months? What did he want with me?
Traces of earthy soil and pungent gasoline mixed with Diego’s familiar smell. Never get in the van. It was rule number one around here. I had no idea how long we’d even been driving, but a victim in a vehicle was as good as dead.
Then again, it seemed death wasn’t always permanent.
“You were . . .” My vocal chords protested from whatever he’d used to knock me out. “You died.”
“Not yet. Not without you.” The sack lifted, and my skin cooled as I blinked open my eyes to two armed skeletons across from me. We rode in the back of a gutted, windowless van with a bench along each side panel. The skeleton who’d helped corner me laid his gun on his knee, and it pointed directly at me. One major pothole and I could be done for.
I shifted, turning my face up to see Diego looking down at me. His golden-streaked, cocoa-colored hair fell around high, regal cheekbones. A black shirt with dust on the collar lent masculinity that offset features pretty enough that he could’ve been a movie star. I saw the same patience and kindness in his mesmerizing green eyes as I had many times before, but now, I could only interpret it as an act to get what he wanted.
I could act, too, though.
He stroked my hair. “I promised I’d come back for you, didn’t I? I risked my life to get you away from him.”
Him.
They could’ve hurt or taken Cristiano, too. Everything had happened so fast. My throat thickened with emotion. “Where is he?”
“You’re free of him now, muñequita.”
Muñequita—his little doll. Fury snuffed out my confusion as a million rebuttals raced through my head. I could never be, and never wanted to be, free of Cristiano. He was my husband, my rock, and my future. He was ten times the man Diego would ever be—and he’d never treated me like a helpless doll.
But I had to think straight. To be smart, like the queen Cristiano demanded I be. One worthy of standing at his side. I was responsible for more than Cristiano and myself now. I couldn’t act recklessly or out of emotion. Raging at Diego wouldn’t get me anywhere, especially while I was tied up and at his mercy. While I carried a baby, my body was my priority.
Despite years and years of Diego’s deceit, it couldn’t have all been a performance. There had to be some part of him that cared for me. Cristiano had called it fondness. Diego had spent day in and day out by my father’s side, picking up my calls, and listening to me go on for hours about school, or how I missed him or my mother.
I couldn’t be the girl I was with him anymore—even if I wanted to be—but I could act the part. Cristiano had tried to warn me early on that this was a game, and I had to compete.
I steadied my breathing. One thing Cristiano had imparted: if I’d failed to incapacitate a captor, as I had now, I should act compliant, even if it felt unnatural, until I had an escape plan in place.
“Everything hurts,” I said softly.
“I’m sorry we had to ambush you like that,” Diego said. “I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t scream or fight back. I’m sure my desperate brother has tried hard to convince you that you want to be in the Badlands.”
“I’ve had to make my life there bearable.” The lie soured on my tongue as it came out, but it wasn’t hard to sound convincing. After all, before I’d loved Cristiano, I’d fought against anything to do with him. “But that doesn’t mean I forgive you for trading me to him.”
“I didn’t trade you. I let him think he had you for a while so I could ensure our survival—and it worked, didn’t it? We’re both still standing.”
That he should live while the heavens had taken Mamá . . .
I inhaled through my nose to control my urge to unleash on Diego the way I’d fantasized. I still didn’t know if Cristiano was okay. I had to play along until I knew more, as difficult as it was.
“I’m really uncomfortable,” I said gently. “Will you please untie me?”
His eyes roamed from my face down to my breasts, stomach, and thighs. “You look different,” he said. “Leaner. Stronger. How do I know you won’t try to fight back?”
“Fight you? Even if I knew how, I wouldn’t do anything that stupid. You can easily overpower me.” He’d always treated me like his breakable princess, so I’d play the role that had once come easily to me. Diego was right, though—I was stronger. And with enough time, I could free my hands from almost any binding. Solomon and I continued to train almost daily, and Cristiano especially liked Solomon to put me through potentially life-threatening scenarios. It had been a rigorous few months.
At least, up until last week when I’d started faking a wrist injury until I could go see Paula at the clinic for a pregnancy test.
“I didn’t do anything at Cristiano’s house but ride my horse and play soccer with the staff to keep myself occupied. And anyway,” I added, nodding across the aisle of the open van, “I can’t exactly fight back with guns trained on me.”
Diego clucked at the man with the 9mm on his knee, and he holstered it. “They’re overly cautious,” Diego explained. “They think this is a kidnapping, not a rescue.”
Diego no doubt picked his words carefully, hoping they’d influence my point of view. This wasn’t a rescue—to him or to me.
Diego wanted me alive for a reason, which meant he needed me.
I was leverage against Cristiano and my father—but to what end? He’d obviously joined forces with another group, most likely Belmonte-Ruiz. Which meant after five months, they’d broken their truce. If it had ever been real.
Diego took a knife from the leg pocket of his utility pants, flipped it open, and cut the restraints at my elbows. I rolled my shoulders fo
rward, stretching my arms as I sat up slowly.
I could see him in all his glory now. Tall, muscular, with the baby-faced version of Cristiano’s brutally beautiful face. It was Cristiano’s black hair and eyes, and his hollowed, high cheekbones that made him too much for the silver screen. The world couldn’t handle it, sadly for them.
I tried tapping into that attraction for Diego again. “Where have you been?” I asked. “In the church you said you’d come back for me. You didn’t.”
“That’s why I’m here now.” He took my hand, bringing it to his mouth. “Poor girl. You’ve always had someone to rescue you. Me, Barto, Costa, Cristiano. And yet, we’ve all hurt you, too.”
“The Diego I knew would never hurt me.” I took back my hand, rolling my wrists with exaggeration, hoping to lean in to the frailty he expected of me.
“I’m not the one who changed. My brother did.” He put his knife away. “First, Cristiano took my parents from me. Then he took you and Costa. He made the first move—I’m just playing the game.”
Diego believed he was the one who’d been wronged. He’d have carried on his parents’ gruesome business without hesitation despite all the lives it would ruin.
I couldn’t make my move now, and seeing Diego in the flesh had thrown me—but while he’d spent practically a lifetime scheming, that didn’t mean he couldn’t trip up. He knew me well—but I knew him, too. I just needed to be patient. To think strategically. To stay alert and learn as much as possible about what he was planning.
Max wouldn’t have lied to Cristiano. Since his return, he’d been as loyal as ever. If anything, he was more protective of us. So there had to be another explanation for Diego’s sudden return. “Max saw you in a body bag.”
“I know. As I said, I risked my life for you—I almost died that day.”
That day. I remembered it well—at least, the moments when Max had come stumbling home to us and broken the news. Diego had put Max, Cristiano, my father, my mother, and myself in harm’s way too many times. I licked my lips, finding my mouth dry. “How’d you do it?” I asked. “And why?”
Violent Triumphs (White Monarch Book 3) Page 21