Fallen Empire (Dirty Empire)

19

Gabriel

The steady whir of a ceiling fan is the first sound I process as my eyelids crack open. My head throbs. Whoever drilled my skull is going to regret that—

Mercy.

I bolt up to a sitting position, only to lurch forward, nausea roiling in my stomach. I take a few deep breaths to stop from puking and moments to process the four-poster bed and the posh bedroom. Wherever I am, at least it’s not a dirty cell.

A low murmur snaps my head to my left, to the door where a man stands, a phone pressed to his ear, a gun in his free hand. He’s the dickhead standing behind me when we got out of the car, and likely the one who thumped me.

“Where’s my girlfriend?” I croak, my voice still unsteady after being knocked unconscious. My girlfriend who should be my wife. We would have been married by now, if not for these fucking clowns.

He ends the call with a “Sí,” and opens the door. “Follow me.”

I pull myself to my feet, pausing to smooth my palm over my rumpled shirt, when really I need a moment to steel my wobbly legs before I stumble like a newborn foal.

“Come,” he beckons, guiding me with a wave of his gun.

“Yeah, yeah.” I follow his directions, stepping out into a long window-lined hallway. Through the glass, rolling hills and green landscape stretch in every direction. This isn’t Arizona. “Where is the woman I was with?” I ask again.

My guard trails behind me. “Do not cause problems and you will see her again. Cause problems and you will see her again, but it will not be under pleasant circumstances.”

If you touch her, your death will be slow and painful. I stifle the urge to threaten him—he’s just a lackey—and instead focus on my surroundings. The house I’m in is a modern, spacious place of sand-colored travertine stone and beige walls. I’m guessing southern California, somewhere near the Mexican border.

He leads me down one side of an elaborate dual staircase with wrought-iron railings and around a corner. An armed man opens a set of double doors and shifts aside, his hands at the ready on his gun.

Inside, I find an impressive office lined with mahogany bookshelves and decorated with large, broad-leafed plants. And Ava Navarro, perched on the edge of a desk, arms folded across her ample chest, all prim and proper as if posing for a business magazine cover.

“Gabriel Easton,” she announces again, my name sounded more like “Gabrielle” on her tongue.

“If you’ve hurt her, everyone you’ve ever loved will die.” The warning slips out without a thought and in that moment, I mean it.

Maybe I’m not so different from my father after all.

She studies me for a long moment before commanding, “Leave us.”

“But, Ava,” the man who escorted me here begins to say.

“It’s alright, Tony. He isn’t foolish enough to lay a hand on me,” she says to him, though her gaze never leaves mine.

The door clicks shut behind me.

“Your reputation precedes you.” Her dark eyes drag over my body, stalling just below my belt before drifting back up, a knowing smirk touching her lips. “I’ve heard much about Vlad Easton’s sons, pretty men who love women and fast cars and little responsibility. He’s kept you distant from his empire, aside from laundering money with your nightclub.”

“You’ve done two seconds of research. Good for you,” I drawl.

She slides off the desk and makes a point of walking slowly around it, her shapely hips swaying with each step. “Tell me, I wonder what you have heard about me?”

It’s my turn to smirk. “Not much, to be honest. I didn’t even know you were working for your father.” I’d heard Luiz had two children. His eldest—a son—was murdered by Eduardo in one of their cartel turf wars years ago, leaving him with a teenaged daughter.

She’s no teenager anymore.

I will admit, Ava Navarro is a stunning woman, with sharp cheekbones and an angular jaw and curves that can make a dick hard with just a thought, and if Mercy weren’t in my life, she’s exactly the type of woman I’d be aiming to bend over a table within the hour.

But all I want to do is wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze the life out of her slowly until she gives me back my heart.

“Yes, that is precisely how my father would like to keep it.” Her tone is bitter. “I have spent years within the organization, learning the rules and earning the men’s respect. But I am a woman and his daughter, and he is only amusing my lofty ambitions, I know this. Now that he is aging and looking toward the future of this business, he is entrusting his righthand man with everything.”

“Mateo Estrada.”

“Yes, the man you spoke to on the phone yesterday about a sit down with my father to discuss a truce.”