One dark eyebrow rose almost imperceptibly. Though she’d grown up in the eye of the tornado that was this world and had perfected her mask, I could tell she wasn’t deterred. “When? I didn’t know you were looking for a wife.”
“It’s an arranged marriage,” I said, showing her my ring. Or more accurately, I thought, a forced one.
“Who makes a more powerful alliance than me?”
“I didn’t know you were looking for a husband,” I pointed out.
“I’m not.” She smiled a little. “But for the right cock, I might make an exception. And, baby, there’s isn’t a cock more right than yours.”
I snorted. “My wife’s is a different kind of alliance.”
She played with one of the buttons of my shirt. “You mean because her family offers some other vice we don’t? Business is expanding, you know.”
“No. Not that. I mean . . . they don’t give me as much power as yours would have. But she brings other things to the table.”
“Such as?”
“It’s not something I can really put into words.”
“I see.” She licked her lips. “You love her?”
“No.” I wanted that very clear to anyone around me, including Tasha, even if I did trust her.
“Who’s the family?” she asked.
“The Cruzes.”
“Ah. Bianca’s daughter.” Tasha eased back but kept her hand on my chest. “She’s young.”
“Twenty.”
“I knew you when I was twenty,” Tasha said. “I wasn’t naïve enough to fall in love, but if I had been, I wouldn’t have stood a chance against a man like you. She must be following you around like a lovesick puppy.”
I grunted. I was the one constantly trailing her. Watching her. She was on my mind too much. I normally traveled with more men, but I’d left everyone except Max and Daniel behind with instructions to keep her safe.
Barto breaking in had shaken me. In my absence, I’d increased security tenfold around the Badlands, even if it meant traveling light. And I wouldn’t relax again until I was back in her presence.
“This is an arrangement between her father and me,” I explained. “She could care less what I do.”
Tasha’s button nose crinkled with a smile. “A shame. She doesn’t know what she’s missing . . . but I do. What does it matter if we spend one night together?”
I’d walked right into that one.
She pursed her plump, red mouth. A mouth that sucked dick like a pro and enjoyed every minute. Her eyelids lowered as if she was also remembering her lipstick smeared all over me. But there was something even better about my wife’s nubile, naked mouth tasting a man for the first time. Tasting me. And I was going to break in that pussy as a faithful husband.
And if I never gained Natalia’s complete trust? If I came home empty-handed? What then? I’d be forced to choose between life as a celibate husband or an adulterous one.
It was a line of thinking I couldn’t afford to follow. I’d press forward to the south as The Owl had suggested, and if I didn’t find what I needed, I’d go deeper, harder, and more ruthlessly into the dark corners of this country, no matter the risk.
If I wanted Natalia to fall completely into me, without any reservations, then I had to be successful.
And I would be.
“It matters,” I said.
“Because she gives you a different kind of power than anyone else could,” Tasha concluded. “She’s your past. The things you lost. The people you failed. That doesn’t mean she can be your future, Cristiano. You should be careful.”
A chill passed over me despite the fact that it was a warm night. Her instincts hit too close to home, and I didn’t like it. “You’re warning me about my marriage?”
“If you’re putting the pressure of the past on her and expecting her to fill those voids, you’ll probably be disappointed. There are plenty of other women you could make a family with. Why does it have to be her?”
My heart thumped once. I’d asked myself the same thing over and over since Diego had begged for his life in my office.
Why did it have to be Natalia? Why couldn’t I have let her go and stayed on course to bring my brother down? Why did I still feel drawn to her, and protective—even after she’d betrayed me and she continued to turn her head when I tried to kiss her?
In weak moments as a young man, I’d confided things in my friend Tasha. I hadn’t seen her in at least a couple years and was surprised she could read me so easily. Then again, she’d been there from the start, when each side of her family had tapped their local and Eastern European connections to get me as close as possible to righting past wrongs. Wrongs that continued to plague me.
Was Tasha right? I missed the warmth and acceptance Bianca and Costa had given me after all I’d known was the dismissal of my own parents as they’d busied themselves playing with innocent lives.