Violent Delights (White Monarch 1)

“I have enemies, Natalia. Do you know what they do to daughters like you? Kidnap, rape, and beat you half to death as—”

“Enough,” Cristiano said.

“As they videotape it all for me. Then they cut your neck. Is that the memory you want to leave me with?”

My throat closed hearing him talk more candidly than he ever had around me. “But I was with Diego—”

“You will never—ever—see him again. You’re forbidden.”

I closed my fist against the tile. “You can’t do that,” I said.

“Do not talk back to me.” He raised his hand, and I ducked to cover my head. “My father would’ve belted me a hundred times by your age for all the ways you’ve defied me.”

“Enough,” Cristiano repeated. It was the calmest, most controlled threat I’d ever heard. I peeked out from under my arms. Cristiano filled the doorway but said no more.

Papá started as if broken from a trance. He began to shake and lowered his arm before limping forward to steady himself on the foyer table. “I can’t lose you too,” he said shakily as tears filled his eyes. “Nothing scares me more than that possibility, Lourdesita.”

He hadn’t called me “Little Lourdes” since before I’d left for school. And he’d never even come close to laying a finger on me. He was in pain. I scrambled to my feet and hugged his waist. “I love you. I never want to hurt you.”

His heart pounded against my cheek. “I’m—I’m sorry, mija. You’re not the one I’m angry with, and you know I would never . . .”

“Yo sé, Papi. I know.” I buried my face in his chest and cried until he kissed the top of my head.

“All right, Talia. I have to deal with this fire. Go upstairs and get cleaned up.” He pulled away and said over my head, “Ride with me.”

“I have transportation,” Cristiano answered.

I’d almost forgotten he was there.

“I’ll see you at the warehouse then,” my father said on his way out the front door. He disappeared into a black car. Trucks rumbled and shuddered with power. The first in a line of cars tore down the winding road, and the rest followed, kicking up clouds of dust.

The house became eerily and unusually quiet. For everyone except a couple guards out front to leave, it had to be serious. For them to leave me alone with a killer, it had to be life or death.

And it was. Reality dawned. The warehouse . . . the goods inside. The damage done was enough to seal Diego’s fate. There was no escaping a loss of this magnitude.

“You’re responsible for this,” I said. Had Cristiano’s talk of games the night before been a warning? If so, he’d made a move that would put us all in the crosshairs of the Maldonados. “My father trusted you. Diego trusted you, and you tried to kill him.”

“If I had, he’d be dead.”

“Like your parents?”

He took a step toward me. “Meaning?”

“Diego told me everything. If you’d have your own parents killed, you wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to anyone else.”

As he advanced, I retreated until I was up against a wall. “And you think I’d destroy my own livelihood to do it?” he asked.

If it meant getting what he wanted, I wouldn’t put it past him. Which suggested he’d go to great lengths to grant his own wishes. To position himself at my father’s side and strike when Papá least expected it. To see Diego gone.

To take back what he thought he was owed.

What did loyalty mean to a man who’d betrayed and been betrayed by those he’d trusted? Even if he hadn’t committed the murder, what loyalty remained after eleven years on the run? A feral cat could be domesticated, but it would never stop looking over its shoulder.

If Diego’s suspicions were right, then Cristiano wouldn’t stop until he got what he’d come for.

The question was—did I fit into this somehow?

The answer, I feared, I was about to learn.

“My father’s expecting you at the warehouse,” I reminded him.

“I’m not going to the warehouse.” Cristiano wore no expression. He spoke with the ease and confidence of a predator who’d cornered its prey and had the time and proclivity to savor picking it apart. “I’m staying right where I am. Now, come here.”

15

Natalia

Was this how my mother had felt? Cornered by Cristiano with nobody in the house to protect her? No. It was worse for her. Cristiano wasn’t breaking my trust like he had hers. And he couldn’t destroy my sense of safety in my own home. He’d already done that years ago. It wasn’t the first time Cristiano and I had squared off under this roof.

His eyes lingered over my dress. “Did my brother do that?”

I followed his gaze to the blood and dirt smeared on my legs. As soon as I noticed the bruises on my forearm and wrists, and the cuts on my ankles and feet, they began to throb. “I already told you, he isn’t like that.”