Lush Money (Filthy Rich)

by Angelina M. Lopez

  Roman just walked in with that relentless but expressionless manner he had, the way Mateo had seen him walking through vineyards and talking to townspeople and even having dinner with Sofia a few times. The man certainly wasn’t trying to smile his way into anyone’s heart, and no one, from what he’d heard from his growers and Sofia, trusted him yet or had a bead on his intentions. But no one not trusted him either. With a military and security background, he seemed really good at keeping his thoughts under wrap while getting people to open up more than they’d like. And faced with the king’s and queen’s histrionics—and, hell, even Mateo’s drama over the last few months—he imagined his people were unwittingly drawn to the solid, Texas-lawman image that Sheppard seemed to effortlessly project.

  The fact that he’d rescued the teenaged daughter of Mexican tycoon Daniel Trujillo several years earlier, an abduction and rescue that made international headlines, didn’t hurt his image either. Even grudgingly and slowly, Mateo could tell his people were coming to respect the man.

  With a fervency coming to define his existence, Mateo wished for the slap of rain against the window.

  Roman dropped into the heavy, straight-backed chair in front of Mateo’s desk. “You hear from your wife?” he asked without hesitation.

  Mateo stiffened. Sheppard apparently had warmed up the Castillo staff enough that people were letting him know when Mateo got courier-delivered packages. “That’s none of your fucking business,” he shot back.

  But Roman’s eyes were already tracking the check, letter, and thick packet of stapled documents on Mateo’s desk. Mateo imagined those light green eyes had lasers in them, that they’d been souped-up by some secret military agency to scan, store, and process information to most elegantly flay the enemy. With his dark hair cut almost military short and his tendency to wear black, Roman Sheppard looked like a highly trained soldier, albeit with a bit of hair gel and decent fashion sense.

  He’d make an excellent king.

  Roman nodded at the stapled papers. “If you let her go, you’re going to become the piece of shit you already think you are.”

  His delivery in the Texas drawl was so soft and casual that it took Mateo a moment to process the content. He turned a granite face on the man. “You get the fuck out of my office.”

  But Roman kept on like Mateo hadn’t spoken. “Not that I’d mind if you were more of a dumbass. I’d love to get my hands on that woman.”

  Fury like a forest fire roared through Mateo as he bolted to his feet. “You keep your goddamn hands off of her!”

  “Since you’re just rolling over and giving your kingdom to me, I guess I can take care of your queen, too.”

  Mateo was around his desk and pulling back his fist as red filled his vision.

  Sheppard looked supremely unconcerned. “There he is...” the man murmured as Mateo let his right fist fly...and saw it wing off into air.

  Only slightly tilted in his seat, Roman said, “It’s about time you stopped being such an emo princess and tried to kick my a—”

  Mateo connected with a cross from his left. “I can do more than try, hombre,” he purred as Roman shook his rung bell and stood up from the chair. Roman backed away from the desk, fists ready and smirking. It was the first time Mateo had seen anything approaching a smile on the stern man’s face.

  “Wondering how long you were going to offer up your ass for their boot, Príncipe.” Roman said the honorific with a drawn-out twang. “You got your people wonderin’, too.”

  “I’ll make sure to toss your bloody carcass out on the lawn so they’ll know,” Mateo jeered back.

  Mateo’s jab was a test, and Roman reacted as such, dodging and smiling wider as he paced back into the office’s open space. Mateo’s next three shots were a miss, but he connected on the fourth, getting a satisfying “oof” out of Roman when his fist hit the man’s solid side. Quickly, though, Mateo felt himself on the defense, raising his forearms to protect his head and torso from Roman’s fast taps. As sweat began to bead and roll down his sides, he wished he’d taken off his goddamned suit jacket.

  He hadn’t been in a fistfight since college. He was winded and starting to ache. It felt fucking incredible, movement when everything else was stuck in tar.

  Roman dropped his shoulder. Triumph roared through Mateo at the opening; he leaned in to deliver a victorious uppercut. And found his hand captured, the momentum of his own body sending him forward and turned around, that once-victorious arm now a bound captive behind his back. Roman slung a restraining arm around Mateo’s neck and said in heavy breaths against his shoulder, “You can keep slapping at me until one of us gets hurt or you can—”

  Mateo lifted his heel, slammed it down on Roman’s toes, and then leaned his head forward to jam it back into Roman’s face. Roman grunted and let go of Mateo, stumbling back. Mateo whirled, and found the man down on one knee, holding his nose as he blinked away tears.

  “Ha, tough guy, I learned that from my wife!” Mateo jeered, blood racing. “She’s gonna love it when I tell her how her moves took down the big, bad Army Ranger.”

  Still holding his nose, Roman looked up at Mateo. And kept looking, his green eyes steady.

  Mateo panted around his rabid smile, big exhausted breaths like he didn’t regularly jog miles. His shirt stuck to his chest. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry.

  His smile slipped a notch.

  He took a couple of steps back, weirdly light-headed like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the high-ceilinged room, and felt behind him for the wooden chair that he’d punched Roman out of. Its solidity, when he smacked his hand against it, was soothing and cool. He circled around, dropped onto its hard, carved seat, rested his elbows on his knees. He hid his face in his hands and felt the weight of the ring he hadn’t earned but hadn’t taken off.

  He wouldn’t be talking to Roxanne. He couldn’t call his partner, his friend, his best sparring buddy, to let her know that her grabbed-in-a-parking-garage self-defense moves helped him score one on his brother. He couldn’t call his Aphrodite-shaped bundle of spontaneity and laughter and joy because he’d turned his back on her and let her walk out, crying, into a dark Kansas night.

  He couldn’t call his wife because on his desk was a letter that said in a few simple sentences that she was letting him go, a check that would see the Monte through until the Vino Real was profitable and he could pay back her low-interest loan, and a document nullifying their contract and requesting a divorce.

  He groaned into his hands. “I’ve lost her.”

  Roman Sheppard’s voice was an amorphous weight in his office. “Then get her back.”

  “She doesn’t want me.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “I’m not good enough for her.” That was the truth, at its barest.

  “Be better.” The man was a tried-and-true American, always with an answer for everything. Always with that confidence that the worst can be fixed.

  “It’s too fucking late,” he said, swiping his hands away from his face, swiping at the tears and the misery. Roman was sitting on the edge of his desk, looking at him with those intense eyes. “Fuller threatened her and she didn’t tell me. She thought I was too weak to handle it.”

  He’d wrapped her betrayal around himself like cold comfort during the weeks he’d been home, repeated to himself over and over again that she hadn’t believed in him, that she’d seen into the core of him and thought he was worthless as a man, husband, and ruler. The looping mantra that he’d been right, even justified to leave her, had gotten him through his days. However, at night, he hadn’t found the amount of alcohol that would drown out her throaty, heartbroken sobs.

  “I saw the way she looked at you,” Roman said. “No way a powerful woman looks at a weak man like that. More likely, she’s a take-charge woman who was just taking charge.”

  Jesus fucking Chr
ist, billionaire Roxanne Medina was just supposed to be his temporary wife. His baby mama. And that was easy and good and emotionless...until it wasn’t. Until being with her was hard and fantastic and filled every cell of him with terror and exhilaration and so much fucking love.

  Every cell screamed with love and terror.

  Noble or worthless, brave or such a fucking coward, he loved Roxanne Medina. It didn’t matter if he was prince or pauper. It didn’t matter what she thought of him. The sky was blue, the vines were green, and he loved his wife. There was no hiding or shielding himself from a reality that was as inescapable as the wall of his mountains, the needs of his people, and the mocha brown of Roxanne’s beautiful eyes.

  Beautiful eyes that had shined naked truth at him when she told him she loved him. I don’t think you’re worthless. I think you’re perfect.

  Mateo shoved his knuckles against his teeth.

  “Get her back,” he heard his brother say again.

  “How?”

  “If I knew I’d be sitting on a porch behind a white picket fence somewhere.”

  “It’s too far gone,” Mateo said. He rested his forehead against his fists, breathing through his mouth. His stomach rolled. “I fucked up.”

  She’d overcome so much to love him. She’d climbed mountains of toxic waste to become the woman she was, topped that mountain with her empathy intact, her sense of self firmly held, her commitment to her responsibilities unshakable. And when this tough-as-nails, brilliant, perfect-for-him woman had opened her hand and offered him her tender, terrified heart, a heart violated by her mother...he’d slapped it away. Ignored her. Denied her. Let his hurt and fear lash at her. And then crossed an ocean to hide.

  Of all the transgressions he’d committed, this had been the worst.

  “Picking up the phone would be a good start,” Roman said.

  “Fuck.” Mateo dropped his fists and leaned back in his chair. “What would I say? I’ve got nothing to offer her but ‘Sorry. I’m the piece of shit I always thought I was.’”

  Roman gave a quick shrug. “Sure, use my line if you want. Sometimes a good grovel is all a woman needs.”

  And Mateo could maybe picture it working, throwing himself repeatedly at the wall he’d created around Roxanne until he reached her big generous heart. He’d weasel under or try to scale high, chain himself to her desk until she heard him out, bribe the shelter kids with trips to the Monte if they’d plead his case. Tie her to his bed so he could whisper a million “sorrys” into her skin. He would match Roxanne for insanity to get what he wanted.

  But if he could lure her back into his arms, if, by some miracle, she let their lives once again wind together... Then what?

  Then they’d just be where they were in her mother’s living room, their dark secrets being shaken and teased in front of them by the worst human beings on the planet. Mateo’s home and people would still be in jeopardy. Roxanne would still be victimized by a horrible woman, still fearful that everything she’d worked to overcome would be used to humiliate her in the press. And their child, that son or daughter that Mateo felt a glimmer of hope that he’d still be able to make with her, would still be threatened by the stigma of being a product of a signature on a dotted line.

  Another failing Mateo had to hold himself accountable for: in the midst of his righteous indignation, he hadn’t reassured Roxanne that Tonya Medina would never step within a thousand feet of their child, no matter what it cost. No matter if Mateo had to give up his legacy to a brother he didn’t know.

  He narrowed gritty eyes at Roman Sheppard, perched on the edge of his desk. Already making himself at home.

  “What are you doing here, Sheppard?” he asked. “What do you want?”

  Roman pushed off the desk and took a seat in the matching wooden chair next to Mateo’s. He leaned forward and clasped his hands together. Mateo hadn’t noticed it before, but saw then that the man was missing the tip of his right ring finger. The second knuckle and nail were gone. On his left hand, an inch-wide burn scar left a stripe of shiny skin across the back.

  “My mother never had more kids,” Roman said, looking at his hands. “Having a brother might be nice. Having a sister is already growing on me.” He saw Roman’s jaw firm. “I think I’ll skip the dad thing.”

  “I thought you were making nice with the king,” Mateo said. “You’ve let him prance you all around the village, let him introduce you as his long-lost son.”

  Roman rubbed his hand over his jawline. He was one of those guys that had a five o’clock shadow at 10 a.m. Rugged. Mateo hated those fucking guys.

  “The first thing they teach you when you join the Rangers isn’t weaponry or victim extraction or secret ninja moves,” Roman said. “The first thing they teach you is patience. They make you wait and wait and wait. In cold. In heat. Standing on a beam a hundred feet in the air. Because you have to assess the situation. Hold your horses and gather your intel. You watch. And you wait.”

  He leaned back in his chair but kept his eyes steady on Mateo. “Reading people is all I’m good for. I read that woman and knew she was in love with you. I read the way you fight and knew you were going to try to take me down with a girl move.”

  “There was no ‘trying’ about it,” Mateo smirked.

  The humor in Roman’s eyes slipped away as he said, “I was told I had a father and that he might want to give me a kingdom. I had to assess what was going on.”

  “And what do you think is going on?”

  Those steady green eyes narrowed on Mateo. After a beat, like this warrior-spy was assessing whether Mateo was worth the intel he’d gathered, he said, “You’re a decent guy. Your heart’s in the right place. But you pay way too much attention to the worst voices in your head.” There was something about being stripped down as methodical as a gun that made it easier to bear. “So now you’ve got a million things working against you. And one thing still on your side. You don’t deserve it and you’ve done everything in your power to fuck it up, but people still love you. Your sister loves you. Your kingdom loves you. And by some unfair miracle, that gorgeous woman loves you.

  “If all these good people are willing to risk themselves on you, well I’ve got to back them up.”

  Mateo’s brain was spinning. “I thought you wanted to take over.”

  Roman scoffed. “I don’t want your kingdom, man. I’m a soldier, not a king. I had to pick a side and I pick yours.”

  Dumbfounded by his brother’s analysis and choice, Mateo shook his head. “I hope you do a better job of picking sides when you go to war,” he ground out. “If you don’t, you’re not gonna survive long.”

  Mateo was exactly where he’d always feared being: on the lost side with his cowardice exposed to his family, his people, his stranger brother, and the love of his life. Every ditch he’d dug in the last six months, every time he walked the trench thinking the absolute worst had happened, he’d found a deeper hole to trip into. But now, right now, he’d actually hit bottom. Every horror he feared was coming true. Everything he tried to protect he was losing. He was truly as worthless as he’d always thought he was, and now everyone knew it.

  There was nothing else to lose, nothing else to protect. Nothing else to hide.

  Nowhere to go but up.

  Mateo felt a tug, a lightness, like a tiny helium balloon set free in the darkest, dankest pit of himself. He’d lost everything. So there was nothing to cling to anymore. His ego, his fear, his nobility, his worthlessness, those useless weights, he could just let them go and fly. Everyone had already seen him, naked and exposed.

  And yet they still had hope. His sister still had hope. His brother, this terse American offering his sword, still had hope. And his wife, while she may no longer believe that he was wise enough to care for her heart, she still believed he could care for his kingdom.

  The Vino Real can save the Monte. You can
save the Monte. I never doubted it; not then and not now, she’d written in her letter. Her words had been spare beats of emotion in her otherwise all-business packet. But they’d stabbed at him.

  Now they could set him free.

  He had no need to save anything for himself since he was a self-professed and actualized piece of shit. But he could save them. He could save his sister’s inheritance. He could save the future of every person of the Monte del Vino Real. He could save his wife’s reputation and legacy, protect the majesty of her creation and its beneficiaries from the greed of their parents. And he could save their future child—that little girl or boy—from ever thinking for a second they weren’t wanted and loved by their mom and dad.

  All he had to do was sacrifice himself.

  “Fuck it,” Mateo said, popping to standing, almost cracking heads with Roman. “Okay.” His shirt was clammy against his body. His hands shook with possibility as he circled around his desk. “Then we’ve got work to do.”

  His brother looked at him like he was cracking up. “Work?” Roman said, dark brows raised. “What?”

  Mateo leaned his fingertips on his desk and smiled the bloodlust smile of their ancestors. “Welcome to the losing side, brother.”

  June: Day Two

  Sofia waited anxiously by the sleek marble-and-chrome security desk in the lobby of the Medina Building, trying to wrap her pure-bred stubbornness around herself to stem her nerves. She straightened her shoulders and flicked up the oversized faux fur lapels of her sweater, closer to her face. Damn these San Francisco summers.

  What was she doing here? She could have been in the Monte, soaking up the sun and shine, enjoying the evening in the arms of Farid, one of the grower’s handy-dandy interns, and spending the night among the dirt and green and creatures of the vineyards. She had that crystal-cool world to herself when she checked the sugars.

  Instead she was here, in the fog and the damp, while a blond man the size of a bull bore down on her like she was the matador he was going to impale against the wall.