Violent Triumphs (White Monarch 3)

“You said you wanted . . . that we’d do this together,” I called after him. “Like my parents.”

Cristiano stopped where he was, then turned back. “We will do it together.”

The drop in his voice registered deep in my stomach, a threat. “Then why can’t I come with you?”

“Now?”

“Yes. Now. Show me what’s downstairs.”

He strolled back to me, his eyes roaming from my ankles to my eyes. “You haven’t got the first clue what you’re asking to be a part of.”

“So tell me.”

He massaged his chest. Fisker said Cristiano sometimes got heartburn. He liked his liquor, cigars and cigarettes, and red meat—the constant stress didn’t help. I made a mental note to request something light for dinner.

“The Valverdes were around when you were a child,” Cristiano said. “Rivals of your father’s.”

“Some of the old guard, then,” I said. Many of my father’s original associates had been murdered or demoted, their cartels dissolved, overthrown, or eliminated. My father had mainly survived due to his shift from narcotics into his safer business around shipping logistics.

“Something like that.” Cristiano rubbed his temples. “It could be dangerous down there. I’ll assess the situation and come upstairs when I know more.”

“So you get to pick and choose what I see? How is that a partnership?”

“Partnership? Mmm.” He wet his lips, giving me a onceover. “I have to say, I like to hear you own it, my love. I like it very much.”

A pleasant warmth traveled up my chest. I hadn’t even realized that’s what I was doing. The word had just come out. But that’s what was developing between us. Cristiano had sought me out to be his queen, and every day, it became more true.

Because what life was there for me now that I’d seen all that I had here?

Now that I’d known a man like Cristiano?

California hadn’t been home. It’d been a place to escape my fears and responsibilities. And I didn’t want that anymore, which was good—because I’d never be able to go back to that.

Choosing this life left no room for hesitation. Either I was in or out, and Cristiano had to know my decision. “I heard what you said the other night about Mamá wanting me to live honestly,” I said. “I don’t want to be a victim of my fear. I don’t want to be a bystander in my life. I choose this. Whatever’s in there, I can handle it.”

“I know you can, but certain things, you can’t come back from.”

He warned me with haunting words, but I couldn’t ignore the one truth that had persisted since I’d stepped foot in the church over a month ago. “I can’t go back anyway, can I?”

Alejandro whistled for Cristiano.

Cristiano retreated. “Wait upstairs. I’ll come soon.”

With him, soon could’ve meant minutes or hours.

He turned and strode around the side of the house where the mountainside had the thickest vegetation. I hadn’t explored much in that area. I hadn’t thought there was anything there but overgrown trees. Now I wondered how it could possibly have a “downstairs.”

I returned to our bedroom, turned on the shower, and started to remove my racerback tank when I caught sight of the new definition in my shoulders and biceps. My body was changing. Strengthening. Just like my emotional and mental state.

I left my top on and leaned over the sink to look in the mirror. My first night here, I’d found myself in the ground floor bathroom staring at the reflection of a terrified, angry, and exhausted girl who thought she was headed upstairs to be proverbially torn limb from limb by her greatest enemy.

How much had changed since then. I’d been willfully naïve. Scared to learn truths I’d assumed would be ugly. The result of a lifetime of being coddled by Papá and Diego.

Would I trade the darkness of Cristiano’s world to go back to living blindly if I could?

It didn’t matter. I couldn’t. At least it was honest here.

Steam curled over the shower door. My ponytail had come loose during our sparring and hung over my shoulder. Scars began to take form, a tiny one on my cheek, and a slash under my chin. My cheeks flushed from my morning workout and the running hot water. My eyes had seen things I couldn’t forget.

“Certain things, you can’t come back from.”

What things? I’d already watched Cristiano slit the throats of the men who’d tried to kidnap Sandra. I’d seen the faces of the lost, but not forgotten, taped to a whiteboard, probably no longer waiting for saviors like Calavera. I’d fought off my own attacker. But there was a more horrific side to what Cristiano did. El Polvo pouring sand down the throat of his worst enemies. I’d heard of a slow death, but had not witnessed the intricacies and unspoken truths of what it really meant.