Violent Delights (White Monarch 1)

“No.” He tilted up my chin with his knuckle. “Like a heart. Like blood in your veins. Like bones.”

“You’re wrong.” I tried to focus on anything but his skin on mine, but it only made me more aware of his touch. “Every day I cut more and more of this cancer from my body, and I’m still standing.”

“You can’t remove it completely. Pretend it’s gone if it helps you sleep, but the poison’s already in you. You grew up feeding on it, and any predator who comes after you will get a bitter taste. Because you’re a survivor. Like the monarch. Like me.”

Taken aback, I blurted, “I’m not like you.”

He finished his shot and signaled for another. “Let’s hope you’re never forced to find out.”

“With a bounty on your head, you strolled back into our lives. That sounds more like a death wish than a will to survive.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” he asked. “I was driven from the only life I knew with nothing but what was on my body. Now, I’m back with the world at my fingertips.”

“But it’s not enough.”

He tilted his head at me almost imperceptibly. “Meaning?”

“You want more than you have. I know that’s why you’re here.” I rested my elbow on the bar. “Give me another reason that makes sense. There is none.”

“What about history? A sense of home?” He raised his glass to someone across the room and drank. “I’ve found myself a family who’d die for me and I for them, but I’ve discovered a man can travel the world and never find home, Natalia. And you will never escape it.”

Cristiano was more machine than man, always calculating, always locked and loaded to kill. Perhaps he couldn’t help what he’d been taught, but it didn’t make it any less true. “Maybe my father trusts you,” I said, “but I don’t. I know what I saw that day. I believe what I’ve heard, both when you worked for us and after. You’re not here out of nostalgia.”

“Why am I here then?” he asked. “Tell me, Lourdes.”

“Power. Revenge. If you take out my father and steal his business, you get both.” I hadn’t meant to say so much, but with Cristiano, candor was best. It was becoming clear he and I could talk each other in circles—I needed answers, though. “And don’t call me Lourdes.”

“Why not? Because your mother did?”

My heart palpitated once. That was exactly why. It surprised me he remembered. “Yes,” I said. “It reminds me of her, and for you to use it is a slap in the face.”

“It suits you, though,” he mused after another sip. “Natalia is a girl’s name.”

He thought he had me pegged, but he’d been gone a long time. I wouldn’t try to change his perception of me. Any misconceptions could only hurt him—and help me.

“What if you’re right about my plans?” he asked, setting his glass on the bar. “Will you stop me?”

I couldn’t. He had an army and the means to fund it. All I had was a sliver of hope that somewhere in his body, a heart still beat. That maybe he’d cared for my parents and me once. “Don’t hurt my family any more than you already have,” I said. “That includes Diego.”

A smirk ghosted over his hard, chiseled features. “No, I never forgot little Talia, fiercely loyal to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Where is my snake of a brother anyway?”

Cristiano calling Diego a snake was like my nine-year-old self stumbling across my mother’s body and taunting her murderer for being scared. “You have that one backward.”

“Do you still believe after all this time that Diego would stick out his own neck to save yours?” Cristiano asked.

“He already did,” I said. “He took a bullet for me. You’ll remember—you were the one who shot him.”

Cristiano scanned my face a moment, then laughed. It was a foreign sound that caught me off guard, a rumble both dark and delighted. As he reached up, I flinched, but it didn’t deter him from pinching my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “You have no idea what it means to be willing to die for someone. Diego took a bullet, I’ll give you that. But for you? No, mamacita. When someone does that, you’ll know.”

That was bullshit. Diego had been brave. There was nothing else he could’ve done. And if there was, I didn’t blame him. We’d both been in shock—scared and worried for each other. Once he’d been shot, he’d passed out. What did Cristiano expect, that Diego would magically heal his leg, regain consciousness, and throw himself down the tunnel after us?

Why was I even questioning it? Diego had warned me Cristiano would try to manipulate the truth. “You’re wrong,” I said. “He’ll always have my back.”

“And yet, the evidence of his cowardice stands in front of me. Diego has sent a woman to do a man’s job.” He swept his thumb over my bottom lip and released my face. “Where is he?”