He was now in critical condition.
Alive and breathing, but not out of the woods. The doc said the next twenty-four hours were crucial. If he made it out of that and they could keep him stable, he should pull through.
Hearing those words had led me to a place I doubted I was even worthy enough to step inside anymore. I didn’t know if it was blasphemy to hold company with a holy deity when I’d done so many unholy things in my life. Committed what the church would define as sinful atrocities.
More often than not, my thoughts were more devilish than angelic.
More unrepentant than contrite.
Most of my acts of violence had been carried out in service of someone innocent or in need. Someone far more deserving of mercy than me. To be contrite would have required a sense of remorse over the lives I’d taken. To regret those deaths.
But how could I regret any of them when the pain I’d delivered against the bad had in some way helped the good?
I prayed the Holy Father understood that.
Prayed he would grant absolution.
And if he couldn’t do that, all I asked was that he spared Rome’s life.
Even if he had to take mine in exchange.
The door to the hospital’s chapel squeaked open. Illumination from the hallway’s fluorescent lights spilled into the dark room. I once thought having that sixth sense with another person was exclusive to twins. Before I met Cat, that is. Now, I knew you could also have that connection with someone you were deeply, insanely, obsessively in love with.
Which was why I knew it was her soft footsteps that padded down the center aisle of pews toward me. I raised my head and watched her walk toward the rows of candles at the base of the altar. I was transfixed on her, entranced by her, as she lit one and whispered prayers in Spanish. Offering up her own requests to the man I hoped like crazy was listening with both ears.
I also had to offer him my thanks.
Because he’d sent me an angel.
A dark angel, maybe, because Cat was familiar with living in the shadows. She’d experienced her own share of evil. But when someone like her dwelled in the darkness, it only meant their light shined even brighter. Cat was the most benevolent, pure-hearted person I’d ever met.
An angel, indeed.
And now, more than ever, I needed her to be my anchor. As the brother I’d gone to Hell and back with—my other half—clung to life down the hall, I needed Cat to keep me grounded in her light. Otherwise, I would spiral down the one-way track to ruination.
I knew something was off the instant I saw her face. The way she squared her shoulders, like she was coming to grips with something unpleasant. Like she wasn’t about to address the same man she’d been making frequent, intense love with the past couple of weeks, but a stranger.
And it was love we’d been making together.
Whether she wanted to own up to it or not, that’s exactly what had been happening. The hottest fucking of my life, obviously. But during that time, we’d been solidifying something else between us. Fortifying something much stronger than a regular hookup. I might not have been the flowers and soft music kind of guy, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t been treating Cat the way she’d needed to be treated. The way I knew she wanted, craved. We had a different language, she and I. One most people probably wouldn’t understand. But it worked for us.
Only, you wouldn’t know that by the way she was looking at me.
“What’s wrong?”
Her head reared back. “En serio? You just carried your bleeding brother out of a nightmare. He briefly died. Your sister was kidnapped by human traffickers. What’s wrong with me doesn’t matter. How are you?”
I narrowed my eyes, but otherwise remained completely still. “Your feelings do matter, Cat. Your sister is still missing. You had to see what happens after they’re taken with your own eyes. What you’re feeling right now really fucking matters.”
Her arms fell limply at her sides, as if the air had been knocked out of her. “Okay. I’m miserable. Not just because Luciana is still missing, but because you and your family are hurting. Because Rome died on that operating table. Because as long as I stay with you, your family will be in danger. Something like this could happen again. Something worse.”
I slowly unlocked my fingers from between my knees. Then I slowly rose to my feet without taking my eyes off her. And when I spoke, my words came out slowly. “I need you to be very clear here, Cat. What exactly are you trying to say?”
She swallowed nervously. Then went back to wringing her hands in front of her. “I just—You’ve got Gia back now. You can be done with this whole nasty business. Luciana is not your concern. She’s mine and mine alone. You don’t need to deal with these people anymore.”
Tense silence engulfed us as I stared her down. To her credit, she didn’t cower. Cat never would. She stood there facing me down with a straight spine, but her eyes were begging. Begging for another solution. Any other option.
“Did you really just say that to me? Luciana—a girl I’ve never met before in my life—is my fucking concern because you are my fucking concern. How could you even assume I would ever think otherwise?”
Her face crumpled in pain. “Please, Luka. If I’m gone, they’ll be out of your life. No other member of your family will be taken. Or shot. You’ll all be safe if I just left.”
I lunged at her before she could even finish speaking and hauled her to me. “Newsflash, baby girl. Gia was kidnapped by our enemy.”
She frowned, lower lip quivering. “Wh-what?”
“Raphael Esposito operates that trafficking ring. He’s been seeking revenge against my family for over a year. But he wasn’t there to arrest tonight. Which means he’s still out there, walking around as a free man. Which means our problems haven’t magically gone away. Whether you’re here or not, they aren’t going anywhere until we remove Raphael from the equation.”
“But that was Alonso Garcia down there tonight,” she whispered. “He’s kingpin of the Garcia cartel. I thought he and the other one you mentioned—El Escorpion—were in charge.”
My hands tightened on her arms, my inner alarms blaring. “How did you know who he was? Alonso. How did you recognize him?”
If I hadn’t heard the subtle hitch in her breath, I wouldn’t have sensed that she was about to lie to me.
“Everyone in my country knows his face,” she answered shakily. “He’s our Raphael.”
Like other times before, I knew she wasn’t giving me the full truth. And it was about to drive me fucking insane. With the emotional rollercoaster of today, I was about at the end of my rope. I was sick of playing investigator, especially when it came to Cat.
Somehow, though, I managed to keep my cool long enough to lay things out for her. “Based on what we’ve learned, the cartel is trafficking the women up from Mexico. Whether El Escorpion is a member of the cartel or someone completely separate from the organization, we’re not sure. But he’s supposedly the one calling the shots down there. And because Raphael runs the auctions here in New York, we were hoping he might show up tonight.”
Though I wasn’t at all surprised he hadn’t, considering how low of a profile he’d been keeping since escaping police custody.
She digested that information for several moments before eventually shaking her head in resolve. “But they may not even have Luciana anymore. She could have already been sold off to someone halfway around the world. I’m not asking you to comb the earth for my sister. I’ll figure out a way to find her that doesn’t involve putting your family’s lives at risk. You’ve all been through enough.”
How could she voice the idea of leaving me? How could she even think it? Did she not feel the same way I did? If I tried to verbalize the notion of putting distance between us—separating us—I’d vomit before the words ever left my mouth.
I deliberately placed my mouth right over hers, so she could taste the conviction of my words. “And so have you. Do you honestly know so l
ittle about me that you think I could just let you walk away now? That I wouldn’t be fully invested in you? In us?”
Her eyes watered. “You have to think about your family, Luka. Look what’s happened since I’ve been here. This is why I never wanted to ask for your help. My troubles are not worth sacrificing their safety.”
I shook her before I could stop myself. “That’s the thing about being in love with someone, Cat. You never have to ask for their help because whatever is important to them is important to you. Making that person happy is worth facing danger.”
I didn’t realize her body had gone stiff halfway through my rant until my lips finally clamped shut. Her hazel eyes gazed up at me in disbelief, her tongue licking across her fat bottom lip.
“You…love me?”
I took a quick nip out of that lip. “What have I told you about asking stupid questions?”
Her shocked expression confirmed that she didn’t feel the same way about me. Not if she was contemplating walking away and never seeing me again. The mere thought of never having her in my arms like this again was like getting the flu. My forehead broke out in a cold sweat, I had full body chills, I felt feverish, and I wanted to dump all the contents of my stomach into the nearest toilet. She wouldn’t choose the flu over staying with me, so she simply couldn’t have felt the same way.
“I love you too.”
My lips parted.
Wait…that was the full truth.
For once, I didn’t suspect Cat was holding back from me.
This wasn’t just me obsessing over a woman who would forever be out of my reach? A woman who was way too fucking good for me? She actually wanted someone like me? Someone with a tattered heart and a tainted soul?
I could actually…have Cat as my own?
I was afraid that speaking might shatter the moment and reveal the whole thing to be an illusion. Or a figment of my imagination. All I managed to get out was, “Yeah?”
Hesitating at first, she slowly nodded. “That’s what scares me. Bad things tend to happen to the people I love.”
I wasn’t going to lie to her and promise that nothing bad would happen to me. I lived in a world of extremes, where fate and destiny played for keeps. Even if you didn’t live by the sword, you could easily die by it.
“Whatever happens next, however long we have in this life, I would rather spend each day pursuing happiness with someone I love, rather than succumbing to fear and spending the rest of my days alone. That’s all we can really do.”
Something about the simplicity of my words seemed to mollify her. I had never been a man of words, never claimed to be. But with Cat, I seemed to choose a lot of the right ones. Thank Christ.
Cat’s gaze lowered to my mouth. With a desperate whimper, her hand flew to my nape and yanked my head toward hers.
In my mind, I vowed to kiss her like that for the rest of her life.
Like she was my life blood, the very force that kept it pumping through my veins. Like nothing and no one would be more cherished and worshipped on this earth than her. If loving and protecting Cat was the best thing I would ever do with my life, then I would die a rich, successful man with absolutely no regrets.
After my tongue swept through every inch of her mouth, reacquainting itself with her taste, I thrust it a little deeper. I wanted her to choke on my desperation for her, how badly I needed her by my side. My love for her had only intensified my physical lusts to unfathomable degrees—the kind of heat that disintegrates all life forms in its path. And I refused to stop until she understood that.
Then I just held her.
Wrapped my arms around her so tightly her ribs heaved. I could never allow her to think that my life would ever be worse for her having been in it. It was my responsibility to make sure she saw how brightly she lit it up. How she’d actually given me a reason to not only keep going, but to want more and more out of each day.
She was the sail, the rutter, the anchor, the goddamn wind.
I was just the poor soul praying she wouldn’t cast me adrift.
“I need you, Cat,” I found myself confessing in a whisper. “I can’t…be here…and hold it all together if you’re not. If you give up, what reason would I have to not follow?”
With a shuddering breath, she tucked her face into the crook of my neck. “I won’t give up, Luka. From now on, we fight together.”
It was fitting that she spoke those words inside a chapel, with the cross hanging above our heads.
Because they were a blessing straight from God himself.
Two hours later, I had paced probably a thousand laps around Rome’s room in the ICU. Between the image of him lying on that thin bed, strapped to a bunch of machines and looking weaker and more lifeless than I’d ever seen him, the fact that Gia was currently arguing with Mom and Dad about speaking with the psychologist waiting out in the hall, and the knowledge that Cat was out in the city all alone because she’d insisted on bringing me clothes that didn’t have blood on them, I was jittery as hell. Sure, I’d wanted her out of that see-through white dress, especially since one male doctor had been paying her more attention than he had been his patients. But that didn’t mean I wanted her traipsing around the goddamn city by herself after everything that happened.
A lot of arrests may have been made tonight, but there were still plenty of monsters prowling the streets.
Namely, Raphael.
Bryce suddenly trudged into Rome’s room, looking weary and exhausted. He still wore his black tactical gear, minus the Kevlar vest and gun. “How is he?” he asked no one in particular.
“Still critical, but his vitals are stable for now,” Cris answered from a chair in the corner, where Jaz sat on his lap, holding his hand.
Ace and Roxy were in a similar position on the loveseat. Lexi sat on the opposite end, with Nico standing behind her, rubbing her shoulders with worry marring his features. And Mom and Dad stood near the door, hovering protectively over Gia, who looked like she just wanted to get the hell out of here.
Cat belongs here with us.
Since she wasn’t going anywhere—because I said she wasn’t—she was as much a member of the family as anyone else.
Bryce then looked at me with an odd expression. My senses went on high alert. It was never a good sign whenever a police detective showed you pity like that, no matter how well you knew him.
“What?”
He sighed. “I finally got the information you asked for. A lieutenant with the Mexican police sent me her file.”
He handed over a manila folder I almost didn’t want to take. To me, it represented a snake that was about to lash out and inject me with poisonous venom.
But I forced myself to accept it. “What did you find out?”
Bryce shook his head. “You’re not gonna like it, man.”
I shot him a stop fucking around look.
“The Mexican police have a warrant out for Catalina Vasquez’s arrest. For murder.”
“You want to say that again?”
Because his information was dead fucking wrong.
My Cat was not a murderer.
Bryce waved at the file. “It’s all there. Robbery gone bad. Happened not far outside of the village she lived in. Store owner was shot, and the cash register was cleaned out. Only a few hundred bucks, but the police suspect she didn’t think the owner would be there.”
I whipped open the folder, my eyes frantically scanning the documents inside. “What evidence did they have?”
“Fingerprints,” he answered gravely. “They matched those of Catalina Vasquez.”
No way.
There was no fucking way.
“That’s not all either,” he continued. “She has a whole rap sheet of petty crimes, going back to her pre-teen years. Shoplifting. Vandalism. One time she was even brought in under suspicion of prostitution.”
I wanted to chuck that lying ass folder out the goddamn window. Because it was dripping with countless false statements about my woman.
That wasn’t Cat. None of it.
“Who did you talk to down there?” Dad asked in a hard voice.
“Guy by the name of Lieutenant Javier Ortega, out of Mexico City. He knows the detectives working the murder case, so he was willing to help. Seemed solid. Been with the department for almost ten years.”
The more I looked through her file, the more off something felt. There wasn’t much information on the murder case, and what police reports there were seemed sloppy. In fact, her supposed “rap sheet” didn’t have many details about her at all, not even a mug shot. There were copies of her prints, but that was about it. It was like someone had gone through and checked all the boxes to make her look like a criminal, but there wasn’t much in the file to actually substantiate that she was.
As always, I listened to my unflappable instincts.
I pointed at Bryce with the folder. “This is fucking bullshit. I don’t believe a word of it.”
“I don’t know, man…” Nico said contemplatively. “Think about it. How much do you actually know about her? She shows up out of nowhere and refuses to talk about where she came from. You don’t know anything about her life before she showed up in Brooklyn.”
I glowered at my oldest brother. “I know enough. Let’s not forget that when similar doubts were voiced about your wife, you refused to listen.” My apologetic gaze met Lexi’s. “And thank God you decided to be a stubborn asshole because you were right.”
Even though Nico’s face hardened with anger, Lexi smiled softly at me.
“Still,” Ace spoke up, addressing me. “When all that was going down, you told Nico to be objective toward the situation. Follow your own advice now. The sister she said was missing wasn’t even at the auction tonight. How do we know she’s even telling the truth about her disappearance?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mom and Dad’s arms go around Gia, who was hunched in on herself.
“She could have already been sold,” I pointed out. “That doesn’t prove that Cat’s been lying about anything.”
“You said she recognized Alonso Garcia,” Dad threw out. “What if she has cartel connections?”
Glitter and Greed (Brooklyn Brothers #4) Page 27