And like splashing alcohol over a wound he’d created, he’d done it an hour after I’d learned he was an advocate for women.
I was the exception. The one captive. Keeping his dick in his pants allowed him to convince himself he was different. That he was a protector. That he’d made up for his father’s sins.
No monster thinks of himself that way. He’s just living by a different code than yours.
Frustration over my traitorous reaction, and with Cristiano himself, simmered close to the surface. I needed somewhere to direct it. I knew just the man to receive it. If Cristiano’s definition of evil was a man who liked his women helpless, then I’d hold up a mirror and show him the reflection of a soulless beast.
I turned away from my naked body. The black and gold bedroom on the top floor of La Madrina looked like the kind of bachelor pad you’d find in a nightclub. It shared the same soundproof walls and one-sided window as Cristiano’s office so he could look out over the dancefloor in complete silence. I imagined him standing here, choosing a woman, and having her sent up to him. And the thought of him touching someone else, putting his mark on someone else, made me even more eager to rail at him.
Surely the playboy mini-mansion was woman-friendly for the many guests it saw. I found pink disposable razors, a blow-dryer, lavender-scented deodorant, and a black satin robe in my size on the back of the bathroom door.
The bedside clock read one in the morning, and once again, I was alone. He was a hypocrite to demand I sleep in his bed while he came and went as he pleased. Every day he asserted more dominance over me, and tonight, he’d taken control over my own body. But I suspected neither of us completely grasped the power I possessed.
I slipped into the robe, leaving my shoulder uncovered as I cinched the sash around my waist. Descending the staircase to return to his office, I was unsurprised to find Eduardo out front, his back straight and hands crossed in front of him. Even as I approached, he kept his eyes trained forward, as if I were Medusa, and one look would turn him to stone.
If only.
I reached for the door handle, but Eduardo blocked me from it.
He held his two-way radio to his mouth. “Your wife is here.”
“Uno momento,” Cristiano responded and cleared his throat.
Another power play, making me wait to see my own husband. I folded my arms over my chest and muttered, “Asshole.”
“He’s not,” Eduardo said, his voice quiet but sharp.
I balked at him. “Excuse me?”
He rubbed his face over the tattoo darkening his cheek. “You’re lucky to have his protection and affection.”
“Lucky? You were in the church when we married. You know the truth of the situation.”
“The truth is, he’s our leader. He puts all of us before himself. He puts you before himself. And we reciprocate—but do you?”
It was, in much subtler words, the same threat Jazmín had leveled at me my first morning in the Badlands.
“If ever I come in here and find you’ve betrayed the man we consider our savior, you won’t make it off the property.”
The office door opened and a tall, slender blonde in skinny jeans stepped out. Her damp hair made wet spots on a white t-shirt. She waited for me to move so she could pass, but I was too stunned. My already sizzling anger boiled over. I didn’t want to move. He was seeing another woman in the middle of the night while I was upstairs? Regardless of our arrangement, he was my husband. Her eyes sparkled as she ducked her head and went around me with a small smile.
Eduardo grunted what sounded like a laugh.
“Come in, Natalia.” Cristiano called my attention to where he stood at his desk in a white, ribbed undershirt. His gaze drifted down my body as he picked up a tumbler of alcohol. “I thought I told you to go to bed.”
“I’m not a child,” I said.
“Then don’t make me spank you like one, or that tattoo would’ve been for nothing.”
My insides tightened with a rush of desire, but equally potent mortification ripped through me as Eduardo listened on. On some level, I must’ve believed Cristiano when he’d said there was nobody but me, because now, the blow of seeing a woman exit his office had turned my feet—and possibly my throat—to concrete.
“Eduardo’s standing right there.”
Cristiano sighed. “I can see to it that to him, you’re only one of my prized possessions. Like a car or watch. That my men hear nothing, see nothing, touch nothing, and wouldn’t think of you as a female.”
I gaped at Cristiano. “He thinks of me as a car?”
“He might, if he knows what’s good for him—but would you like me to enforce that on him?”