Time is ticking away.
“What do you want?” I say, throwing myself open and vulnerable. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
She wastes no time. “You will stay with me. For good, this time.”
“Madre.”
“You said you will do whatever it takes.”
Tick tock. I groan to myself. “I can’t promise you that. This situation is complicated. I will need to finish the job before I can commit to anything.”
“Then you will get engaged while you are here, and you shall return once the situation is no longer complicated.”
Fuck.
“Is there nothing else?Madre,I have money, I have connections. I can get you anything you want in the world. Please don’t do this to me.”
“What I want is for my son to be happy.”
“Iamhappy!”
“...and for him to take his rightful place as the don of the Grasso de Ferro. I am old,amore mio.Please give me this comfort. I will host you and your hostage without question. You have my word.”
And there it is, the perfect solution to an impossible situation. All at the expense of my un-marital bliss.
We’re late. Leon needs me. What choice do I have?
“Then you have mine,” I say bitterly. “I will see you in ten hours.”
I hang up the phone without another word and begin racing down the stairs.
With every step, I tread deeper and deeper into my own dreadful despair.
The only thing that keeps the fire warm in my veins, the thing that keeps me pushing forward to my inevitable fate, is my anger.
The manifestation of which sits in the back of the car parked outside, blindfolded and radiating a particular brand of hatred of her own.
As I get behind the wheel and look in the rearview mirror, something as hot as molten lava settles in my stomach.
I have never hated anyone more than Carmen Rubio.
4
CARMEN
Iam, quite frankly, very, very bored with being moved around and manhandled against my will.
Truly, I’ve almost lost count of all the times I’ve been tied up and shoved into the back of a car. It’s probably a smart move on the Prince’s Guild’s part to have kept me moving this long.
But this time, they made the mistake of telling me where they’re taking me.
“If you think for one second I’m going to willingly get on aplanewithout screaming up a storm, you are sorely mistaken.”
Embarrassingly, despite being blindfolded, I knew it was Dante who got into the car the second he closed the door, effectively trapping his scent inside.
I tell myself that the man had been too close to me that night he kidnapped me. And with little else to do these last few days other than plot my escape attempts, it was perfectly normal to ruminate on certain details.
His scent has stuck with me only because my mother used to wear amber, and the note is familiar. It invokes hazy memories of ballgowns and vanities that I haven’t thought about in the fifteen years since her death.
