I put a hand on his chest before he could help me down. “Wait.”
With our faces inches apart, dark, nearly black eyes, looked back at me. Nose to nose, I could see their deep brown color and slight amber flecks.
“Hmm?” he asked, staring at my lips.
His skin warmed my palm, even through his shirt. I imagined all the strength under my hand aimed at anyone who tried to come at him. At me. At us.
“Your knot is crooked,” I said. As I adjusted his tie, a tiny black spot in a sea of white fabric caught my eye. I ran my fingertip over it. “There’s blood on this.”
“That’s why I chose this shirt,” he said gravely. “I don’t want to ruin a second one.”
A half mile outside the gates of the Badlands, Cristiano parked in the driveway of a large, freestanding garage.
This, it seemed, was the everyone who’d been waiting for us: two SUVs, a Dodge Ram, an Audi, and a couple of shoddy Hondas—all black with tinted windows.
Cristiano stepped out of the car and joined a circle made up of some of the men who’d been at the Easter party. I knew better than to follow or even open my door until Cristiano came for me. Instead, I watched from where I was as a very young blonde girl in a denim skirt and a tank top exited one of the SUVs.
Cristiano gave her a once-over before circling her.
I knew that walk. That stare. That scrutinization. He’d done it to me on our wedding day before he’d ripped off my dress.
As she kept Cristiano in her sights, Max approached her from behind, grabbed her elbows, and yanked her down onto her knees so she crumpled like a ragdoll.
She thrashed, threw her head back, and he released her as he keeled over. Jumping to her feet right from her knees, she turned and kneed him in the face so he fell back onto his back.
She put a foot on his chest in triumph, then backed away.
Cristiano smiled as he helped Max off the ground, then slapped him on the back and nodded at the girl before she got into one of the SUVs. The rest of the men dispersed into other vehicles that left the garage.
Only Cristiano remained, looking in my direction. As he walked over, he signaled for me to lower my window.
“Who was that girl?” I asked when Cristiano neared. “Where are they taking her?”
He stuck an arm on the roof of the car and leaned into the car. “If you want answers, come with me.” He straightened and called over his shoulder as he walked away, “But you might not be ready. If you’re not, Eduardo can take you home.”
When Cristiano had mentioned the Belmonte-Ruiz cartel, all sorts of scenarios had run through my head, most ending with me in the trunk of a car. But we’d come this far without Cristiano hurting me—or letting me get hurt. And I was finding that being in the dark was far worse than anything I’d learned yet. I held fast to the instinct that he’d keep me safe as I popped open the door and exited the car.
My spiked heels stuck in the rubber garage floor, but I wobbled along to one of the Hondas, where he opened the trunk and handed me a bulletproof vest. I’d seen plenty in my lifetime, but I’d never worn one.
“What’s this for?” I asked, holding it with both hands.
“What do you think?” He shot me a grim glance. “Still want to come?”
I put the vest on under the blazer and pulled back my shoulders to keep from slouching beneath the weight.
Moments later, we were pulling out of the garage in the Honda. The first in a line of vehicles took off in the opposite direction of the Badlands, and we followed.
“Why are we in this car?” I asked.
“To remain inconspicuous.”
It wasn’t a long drive, but Cristiano’s silence made it seem that way. With permanently furrowed eyebrows, he focused out the windshield, only breaking his concentration to speak into a two-way radio.
As darkness spread around us, I glimpsed a side of him I’d expected to see more of—the determined security team member I’d known as a girl. It was how I knew we were heading somewhere important, and in this world, that was usually synonymous with dangerous. There was an allure to seeing him in his element. I could picture him wearing the same grave expression in the bedroom as he found ways to exert his domination. Maybe he was this serious, too, each time he’d had to jerk off because he wouldn’t let himself touch me.
He could control my body, but he couldn’t control his own. The thought made me shiver with a heady mix of lust and control.
Cristiano cursed as we took a pothole too fast. He slowed the car as the pavement became uneven and we entered an unfamiliar neighborhood. Dim, yellow streetlamps barely lit the people sitting along a chain-link fence on upside-down crates, smoking and watching us.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Get down in your seat,” he ordered.
I slipped low enough to appease him but continued watching through the window as we turned a corner onto an unlit street. As we passed an alley, a flame lit a ghoulish-looking face and disappeared.
Cristiano parked, turned off the engine, and lowered his phone between his knees to send a text. “The side panels and windows are all bulletproof. The car looks like shit, but it’s secure and runs well,” he said absentmindedly. “Nobody should get close enough to try anything, but you may hear gunshots. Try not to scream.”
“That’s like asking you to look approachable or gentle—it’s just not the natural way of things.”
He stopped typing to look at me sidelong. “You had gentle. How was it?”
My cheeks warmed as I slouched against the car door. How could he possibly know what it’d been like with Diego? But he was right. It was gentle. Satisfying. Pleasant.
Nothing like being told I was going to get my mouth fucked and throat choked.
I bit my lip a little too hard and forced my eyes back out the window, ignoring his question. A woman walked down the street, her blonde hair as impossible to miss as the moon in the sky. “Cristiano, look,” I said. “Isn’t that the girl Max was just fighting?”
He shut off his phone and stuck it in a cup holder, sinking down with me. “That’s Sandra. She’s Estonian.”
She sat on a bench and took out her phone. I’d never been here, but it didn’t take a genius to see this wasn’t a good neighborhood. She should be paying attention to her surroundings. I balled my hands in my lap and surveyed the area. “Why is she so far from home?”
He sniffed. “Her aunt sold her to Brazilian traffickers when she was thirteen,” he said. “Unfortunately, we only got her out a couple years ago, so she was forced into prostitution for a while.”
My stomach dropped. That was a betrayal unlike any I’d ever heard. What Diego had done to me paled in comparison. “Her own aunt?” I repeated, my nose tingling.
“People get desperate. The weak ones break.” He touched my hand. It took me a moment to realize he was trying to uncurl my fist. I opened it, and his warm palm took mine. “Young, light-skinned, light hair—she’s easy bait, but this is the first time we’ve put her in the field. The important thing is that she wants to be here. To help.”
It took me a moment to adjust to the simple act of holding his hand. Was it for comfort? I checked myself before reacting to the word bait, remembering what Alejandro had said about trying to keep an open mind. Cristiano had also said help. I relaxed my hand into his. “Is she the eighteen-year-old who looks fourteen?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m trying not to think the worst, Cristiano.”
“And what’s the worst?”
I glanced over at him. “That you’re prostituting her now.”
“I’ve spent a fortune on girls like her.” His eyes grew distant as he looked at her with obvious affection. “It’s why I’ve worked so hard to earn it. They’re worth every penny.”
Again, I had to work to read his ambiguity so I wouldn’t jump to conclusions. He’d told me earlier in the week that when I was young, he’d tried to scare me. I sensed he was doing that n
ow. “What do you mean?”
He squeezed my hand. “Sandra has intimate, inside knowledge of these operations. Sad but true. Just by sharing what she knows, she has helped us free more than twenty girls—and more tonight, we hope.”
My heart began to pump, and I felt the rush of blood in my veins. “I don’t understand.”
His two-way radio went staticky, and a voice came through. “Hay viene un hombre.”
Someone was coming. Cristiano stuck a baseball cap on his head. I started to glance over my shoulder, but he grabbed the back of my head and shoved my face into his lap. “What—”
“Suck my dick like your life depends on it,” he said. “Or at least pretend to.”
“Cristiano—”
“I shouldn’t be making jokes—this is serious. Stay down. He’s about to walk by.” He curled his fist against my scalp then smoothed a hand over my hair. “Do you know this area?”
My irritation with talking to his zipper dissipated as uneasiness settled in. “No.”
“It’s a forgotten neighborhood. The next one over is a hotbed for trafficking, but law enforcement in both is owned by Belmonte-Ruiz, and they’re paid to look the other way. Every person we’ve seen is either a drug addict, dealer, or prostitute, and they’re all spies for BR. We have to blend in, or we’ll stand out.”
“Fortunately, playing your whore isn’t too much of a stretch,” I said, even though I was near purring by the way he stroked my hair.
His hand stilled. I doubted he even realized he’d been petting me. “In that case, if you have any impulses while you’re down there, feel free to indulge them.”
Your curiosity is an affliction. Papá’s words continued to haunt me into adulthood.
With Cristiano, my curiosity was as strong as ever. He was an enigma. My favorite part of business school had been case studies of the inner workings of companies—their mistakes and triumphs. Here was one right in front of me. Nothing about him added up. Nothing about him and me added up. Not only could I stomach being this close to him, but I felt safe here, as I had the other times I’d sought solace in him when he’d been the one to put my life in danger.
Was it because he hadn’t shown me cruelty yet? Or was it that I knew, instinctively, he never would—no matter what evidence I mounted against him?
“How much longer do I have to stay down here?” I asked.
“He’s gone. I just like having you there.”
I sat up quickly to glare at him. In his black baseball cap, he looked younger, slightly less menacing, and he almost verged on . . . carefree. “I thought you weren’t making jokes.”
“It wasn’t one.” His eyes shone, but he didn’t keep them on me long, shifting them to the blonde instead. “The Belmonte-Ruiz cartel has been tracking Sandra since we put her on these streets a few days ago. They know she doesn’t have a pimp yet, or she’d be working a street in the next neighborhood. Hopefully they’ll pick her up tonight.”
A small tremor of panic worked its way through me. “But you won’t let them take her, will you?”
The man who’d passed our car earlier approached Sandra, and after a quick exchange, she handed him a lighter. After a few drags of a cigarette, he said something, and she smiled.
“He just complimented her looks,” Cristiano said. “Sometimes they grab girls. Other times, though, the girls go willingly.”
There was that word again. Willingly. I was beginning to think Cristiano thought it meant something different than the rest of the world.
“They’re lost and looking for connection,” he said in an instructional tone. “Protection. Could be that they come from a shitty, abusive home and this is one way out.”
Sandra fidgeted with her hands in her lap.
“Anyway, this guy?” Cristiano continued. “He’s feeling her out.”
An SUV rounded the corner and crept toward them. The smoker said something, laughed, and nodded discreetly at the car. Sandra turned her head over her shoulder, and her grin vanished as she shot to her feet.
I sat forward as she took off in a sprint, but Cristiano shoved me back into my seat. “Don’t call attention, for fuck’s sake.”
The man flicked his cigarette away and ran after her. “But you have to do something,” I hissed.
The SUV reversed, trying to catch up with her, tires jumping what was left of a crumbling curb before the car screeched onto the sidewalk to block her path.
“Cristiano,” I said more firmly. “Do something.”
Cristiano said nothing. Did nothing. The man grabbed her, and she struggled against him. Suddenly, he howled like an animal, jerked, and fell, clutching his leg. The driver bolted out of the car and stopped at his partner’s feet, his face scrunched in confusion.
Sandra whipped a knife from under her skirt, raised it over her head, and plunged it into the top of his neck.
I covered my mouth to conceal my gasp, but it filled the car.
“See how she stabbed into his spine, not through?” Cristiano asked. “I hope you’re taking notes.”
My stomach churned violently as I watched blood spurt everywhere. The man who’d approached her on the bench writhed on the ground, trying to yank what looked like an arrow from his leg.
A third man I hadn’t seen ducked out of the passenger-side door and crept along the side of the car that was hidden from Sandra.
“Fuck,” Cristiano said, grabbing his two-way and barking into it, “Now. Go!”
The blood was excessive and I hadn’t seen that much of it since my mother’s death. The thought, the sight, made me woozy, my jaw tingling as bile rose up my throat. The third man snuck up behind Sandra until she whirled. He smacked her across the face, and she stumbled back, tripped over the smoker’s foot, and landed on her back.
The man jumped on top of her with a pair of handcuffs, wrestling her wrists to the pavement.
Cristiano sat forward. “Come on,” he said in a way that sounded as if he was cheering her on.
A Honda screeched around the corner, followed by a convoy of speeding cars. They skidded to a halt in the middle of the street, distracting the man long enough for Sandra to knee him in the balls.
“Yeah,” Cristiano said, hitting his palm against the steering wheel triumphantly.
As my attention darted between him, Sandra, and everyone else, my head began to swim, but I narrowed my eyes, focusing on the scene in front of me.
As men from the warehouse swarmed out of the cars, Sandra’s attacker released her wrists. She punched him hard enough to send blood and teeth flying.
She shook out her hand, and gold flashed in the headlights. She had a ring on every finger—thick, heavy bands and gems. Not even brass knuckles. Just rings.
I glanced at the massive diamond on my finger. Earlier, I’d regarded is as stunning and elegant—if not over the top. Now I saw it as a potential weapon.
Just the motion of bending my head to look down made me feel queasy, so I raised it again, trying to ward of the sick feeling.
Cristiano unbuckled his seatbelt and tossed the hat aside. “Stay,” he ordered. “Or so help me God, I’ll leave you here tonight.”
I shrank down in my seat but kept him in my sights as he marched across the street, rolling up his shirt sleeves. The menace in that one move, in the way he exposed his veiny, hirsute forearms, made sweat trickle down my temple. Who could ever stop Cristiano when he was hell-bent on anything?
One thing I knew—it would take more than physical force.
A man like Cristiano could only be brought down through mental and emotional warfare—carefully chosen words, intimate, deliberate touches, manipulations and schemes so subtle, he would never see them coming.
But as far as what he was walking into now? I wasn’t worried for his safety, though I was surprised by how vehemently I wanted it—especially if the alternative was him getting hurt and me having to fend for myself.
By the time he reached them, Max had the smoker and the third attacker on th
eir knees by the curb. The man with the knife in his neck had to be dead.
When Cristiano reached them, he squatted to face the first man who’d approached Sandra. They exchanged words until Cristiano seized him by the neck—or was it his trachea?
Cristiano released him and circled the two men. He stopped behind the smoker, accepted a machete from Max, and decapitated him in one clean slice. I covered my mouth to hold in my scream as the body slumped over, bleeding and convulsing.
Vomit rose up my throat, and I swallowed over and over to force it back down.
I wanted to look away, but I forced myself not to. I’d wanted answers, and I was getting them. I wasn’t sure what they meant yet, and perhaps I’d regret having them. But I was beyond the point where I could look away.
Cristiano moved behind the last one and paused. I held my breath as I waited for him to send the last man’s head the same way of the smoker’s.
But Cristiano passed the machete back to Max and gestured for Sandra to take his place. She didn’t hesitate—just sliced her blade across the man’s neck, leaving him a bloody heap with the others.
I’d heard the rumors, but I’d not yet seen Cristiano in action. He’d delivered death without hesitation—and faster than it would’ve taken me to cross the street to him.
That was the vicious killer I’d grown up with. The man who’d stolen me out from underneath his brother. That was also the man whose tie I’d fixed earlier, who’d just made a crude joke, who’d served me duck confit over a bed of precious memories.
That was my husband.
And he’d been right—I wasn’t ready.
I put my head between my knees and retched.
15
Natalia
Black, vomit-splattered pavement blurred with tears as I emptied my stomach again. The car door had been opened, and a hand had gathered my hair into a too-tight ponytail, away from my face.
“You puked in the car and somehow managed to avoid your shoes,” Cristiano said, wrapping my hair around his wrist. “Mine weren’t so lucky.”
Violent Ends (White Monarch Book 2) Page 19