Violent Triumphs (White Monarch 3)

“We were talking when it happened,” I said. I’d heard his smile through the phone when he’d realized I was calling out of concern. To ask him to abandon such a risky mission. After weeks of resistance on my part, how horrible it must’ve been for him to think he finally had me on the hook—that the only danger was the usual minefield our conversations presented—only to be met with . . . a knife.

“Did you see his phone, Tasha? It’s offline,” Alejandro said. “Was he holding it?”

“Cristiano was barely conscious, slurring his words, unable to do much more than lie on the ground,” she said.

“Slurring?” Alejandro asked. “If he was drugged, it would explain why he didn’t fight back, and why he didn’t alert us to trouble.” Alejandro unlocked his phone and began typing. “See if your men can locate and destroy his cell.”

I tried to keep up without getting emotional. On the ground? Drugged? Cristiano loomed over everything, and not just physically. At the thought of him unable to defend himself, a lump formed in my throat. “How’d you get him here?” I asked to shift my focus.

“My bodyguards,” Tasha said. “I didn’t know what else was coming, so we got him into my car. Maksim didn’t pick up, and I didn’t have anyone else’s number, so I called my father. He sent a helicopter for us. We did our best to stem the bleeding.”

“He could’ve died on the way,” I said. “He should’ve gone to a hospital.”

Tasha snorted. “Don’t be naïve. They’d have sewn him up and turned him over to the authorities.”

“Do you think I care as long as he’d lived?” I asked, heat rising up my neck. “It wouldn’t matter anyway if he was detained—Cristiano de la Rosa can get himself out of any situation.”

“Assuming he survives,” she said, taking a compact from her clutch, “he may not be able to much longer.”

Alejo paused and looked up from his phone. “What do you mean?”

“If Belmonte-Ruiz is on to Calavera’s games, others will be soon, too.” She checked her lipstick in the handheld mirror and ran a finger along one corner of her mouth. “Rumor is, Cristiano has stopped supplying arms to those who do business with BR.”

“And any syndicate heavily involved with human trafficking of any sort,” Alejandro said with a nod. “It’s not a rumor.”

She glanced sidelong at him and snapped her compact shut. “That’s a big enough number to ruffle some feathers.”

“It is,” Alejandro agreed. “Especially if the truth about the Badlands gets out. But it’s what we all decided as a team.”

I bit my lip, struggling to keep up, but still following. The truth about the Badlands . . .

Gruesome rumors surrounded the Calavera cartel, a reputation Cristiano and his men had cultivated in order to insulate themselves. Calavera was a top dealer in weaponry worldwide, and that made them nearly untouchable. But would it be enough to protect them if word spread that the Badlands actually acted as a rehabilitation hub for those the other cartels had sold into slavery?

The leaders of this underground world I’d grown up in could justify and support nearly anything. But the disruption of the way things were, theft that dearly cost Cristiano’s rivals, and the unraveling of decades’ worth of industry . . .

That was business nobody around here would support.

But it wasn’t anything I could worry about now. Cristiano’s life was on the line.

And I didn’t want to think of what could happen to all of this without him.

3

Natalia

The balcony doors had been shut, and the curtains drawn, but through the sheer white fabric, the night sky lightened to royal blue as dawn began to break.

Doctor Sosa stepped away from Cristiano’s bed to make notes on a clipboard. It was the first time she’d separated from the trauma team, and I didn’t waste my opportunity to try to get answers. “Doctor Sosa? I’m Natalia,” I said as I approached her, and added, “de la Rosa. Cristiano’s wife. Is he—will he live?”

She stuck the clipboard under her arm. As she pulled her surgical mask’s straps from behind her ears, pieces of her light brown hair fell around her face. Judging by her haphazard bun and the puffiness around her eyes, she’d been asleep when she’d gotten the call. “Sí.”

Air rushed out of my chest. I hadn’t expected a simple “yes” for an answer. I opened my mouth but couldn’t find the words. “He—really?”

“Cristiano was stabbed three times,” she said. “Two deep but clean lacerations in his abdomen, and one that just missed his heart.”

I covered my mouth. Hearing his brush with death put so bluntly, my chin wobbled.

A hand on my shoulder alerted me to Alejandro. “‘Just missed’ is a good thing, Natalia,” he said.

“Cristiano is very lucky,” Doctor Sosa agreed. “Well, either that, or the attacker was extremely skilled.”